The more modern term is "game."
In the marginal Roissysphere, maybe. I've seen many attempt to get away from words like "pickup" or "seduction" though I haven't seen any consensus on an alternative. The problem is that our culture simply has no value-neutral or positive terms for, uh, how do I put it... systematically investigating how people induce each other to want sex and relationships, and how one can practically make use of that knowledge oneself.
(It took me about four tries to write the part in italics after thinking about this subject for years, and it's still really clunky. I could have said "understand the mating process and act on that understanding," but that's a bit too watered-down. My other best attempt was systematically investigating the process by which people create contexts that raise the chances of other people wanting to have sex and relationships with them, and how one can practically make use of this knowledge oneself. That phrasing is clunkier, but gets rid of the word "induce," which a bunch of feminists once told me is "mechanical" and "objectifying.")
"Game" has its own problems, of course. What I like about the term is that it implies that social interaction should be playful and fun. "Game" also highlights certain game-theoretic and competitive aspects of human interaction, but it might risk leading people to overstate those aspects. What I don't like is the connotation that a game isn't "serious" (e.g. "you think this is just a game, huh?") and that PUAs (or critics of PUAs) may believe that "game" involves not taking other people's feelings and interests seriously.
As I'm sure you know, some gurus (e.g. TylerDurden) have advocated viewing the process of learning pickup like learning a videogame. A similar frame is the "experiment frame," where you think of yourself as a scientist engaging in social experiments. Such frames can be extremely valuable for beginners who need to protect themselves emotionally during the early stages of the learning process, when most of what they try isn't going to work. Yet they are a form of emotionally distancing oneself from others; in a minority of people with existing problems, they could inhibit empathy, encourage antisocial behavior, or exacerbate feelings of alienation. In general though, I view the possible harm of such attitudes as mainly affecting the PUA.
I see these frames as training wheels which should soon be discarded once the need for such an emotionally defensive stance is gone. Most socially cool people don't see other people as part of a video game they are playing, or as subjects in a science experiment they are running (though some Dark Triad naturals do... one favorite quote of mine from an intelligent and extremely badboy natural friend of mine who had no exposure to the seduction community: "I love causation... once you understand it, you can manipulate people"). I still engage in social experiments all the time, but when I go out, I no longer think "I'm gonna run some cool experiments tonight," I think "I'm gonna hang out with some cool people tonight."
I have the impression that "game" is used much more widely even as the primary general term, let alone when people talk about specific skill subsets and applications ("phone game," "day game," etc.). But I'm sure you've seen a much broader sample of all sorts of PUA-related stuff, so I'll defer to your opinion.
That said, I see game primarily as a way of overcoming the biases and false beliefs held about male-female interactions in the contemporary culture. I would say that by historical standards, our culture is exceptionally ...
Followup to: Do you have High-Functioning Asperger's Syndrome?
LW reader Madbadger uses the metaphor of a GPU and a CPU in a desktop system to think about people with Asperger's Syndrome: general intelligence is like a CPU, being universal but only mediocre at any particular task, whereas the "social coprocessor" brainware in a Neurotypical brain is like a GPU: highly specialized but great at what it does. Neurotypical people are like computers with measly Pentium IV processors, but expensive Radeon HD 4890 GPUs. A High-functioning AS person is an Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition - with on-board graphics!
This analogy also covers the spectrum view of social/empathic abilities, you can think about having a weaker social coprocessor than average if you have some of the tendencies of AS but not others. You can even think of your score on the AQ Test as being like the Tom's Hardware Rating of your Coprocessor. (Lower numbers are better!).
If you lack that powerful social coprocessor, what can you do? Well, you'll have to run your social interactions "in software", i.e. explicitly reason through the complex human social game that most people play without ever really understanding. There are several tricks that a High-functioning AS person can use in this situation: