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A Report on Swearing in Online Games
A Next Generation article references an informal study done on the frequency of swearing on Xbox Live. From the study: "When you logon to Xbox live more often then not you will be greeted by a 14 year old that learned a new word on the playground that day, or maybe it's the drunken 24 year old who hates black people, gays and anyone who isn't in his frat. No matter who you are if you have played on live you have run into cursing and lewdness. If you look at the rating for the game you can see that it is intended for ages 17+ but parents don't care/understand/listen so lots of underage kids have [Halo 2]." Warning: links contain profanity.
Considering that the bulk of online gamers are of the age where they probably speak like this in real life too, it shouldn't be very surprising that it spills over into their online activities as well.
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No noes!!! Teh teenies are swearing!
Yeah, I never once used a "bad word" when I was a kid. Never... nope...
While true that we shouldn't encourage this behaviour, for the most part kids are gonna use profanity and when you put them in an "anonymous" situation, well, the flood gates will open. Kinda like all the arseholes that will post in this "anonymous" thread.
Does it really surprise anyone that kids actually swear? You can't blame this one on video games. I learned all my swear words when my parents argued when I was a child and picked up a few more colorful words from my sister-in-law when she got a divorce from my brother. I didn't start using swear words until I got into middle school where colorful language was a prelude to a fist fight. A long time ago, parents used to take responsibility for their children's language devopment. These days, no one gives a fraq!
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WTF (that's "What the fuck") is with the warning that the link contains profanity? There's enough profanity on Slashdot that I would think it doesn't need to be stated that you might see some naughty words. I think we're all plenty prepared, seriously, thanks.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
In many poker tournaments, use of profanity at the table is forbidden.
Making your opponent lose his cool is ok, but if you have any talent at it, you dont need profanity to do it.
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
I don't play Xbox live (or own an Xbox) but I'm french (as in the language, not the country) and compared to french, english is extremely limitated insult and swears wise so I'm not that surprised :)
On the other hand, we don't have any word as versatile as 'fuck'.
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preface: I speak mainly of Halo-2 ...one of the things I've hated most about the environment is the things that "little boys" do that really get under my skin. Playing "cheap" is one thing that comes to mind -- sniping too much, maintaining control over the biggest-badest weapon or whatever. I don't mind getting my ass kicked, but at least let the game be fun! Then there's the kids who would otherwise suffer the wrath of the back of my hand for saying crap they shouldn't. Call me old school, but I think respect has a role in all of society.
Incidentally, the "solution" to the "cheap boys" I have found is to speak to them first, and then don't let them win. Invariably, these cheap players play that way because they lack good general skills and strategy. I recall one time I was being "cheaped" and after a few kills, I put my foot down, played the same game he was and whooped his butt to the point that he simply disconnected from the game since he wasn't going to win and wasn't going to get another kill from me.
The general solution to this should be self-evident: no admission into adult areas without parental permission or otherwise proving you are an adult in some way... otherwise keep kids at the kiddie table. A tough notion to apply to the net though.
by a 14 year old that learned a new word on the playground that day [my bold]
I'm always amazed by people who simply seem to never have been young at all, ever.
Or else, there is some condition or secret government experiment that causes people's brains to be wiped of all experiences had before age 22.
Earth to shut-in researchers: Most kids know all such words well before age 12.
Maybe some parents don't manage to hear them until 14, but that's because they are uninvolved with their children's lives, or else drastically shelter them.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
If that were my kid I would have walked in there with a sledge hammer and blasted his Xbox into a billion pieces. I can't belive people let their kids get away with that kind of behavior.
Tinfoil hat? Naa, I long since replaced it with a reinforced titanium alloy.
Nerds are pussies, just like 12 year olds that play xbox. They *get away* with it because there are no consequences for their actions.
/irony intended
I'm not offended easily but the fact that every Halo2 game you jumped into had a 12 year old pussy calling you a nigger every 10 seconds was more than irritating. They wouldn't last 10 seconds in real life with that mouth.
Look, I used to have lots of dumb ideas about parenting too - I probably still have a couple - but I try not to post them on slashdot.
Think about what you are saying: essentially, when you become a parent you become an infallible, unsleeping, globally omniscient being. Is that realistic? Did you never manage to fool your parents? Then you are hardly representative of the rest of the human race!
No American working parent can monitor any child (much less multiple children) 24 hours a day, because children are autonomous beings with their own self-generated objectives. If your friends think they know what their kids are doing at every moment, guess what? They are wrong.
Anyway, the way to deal with this kind of issue is not to seal your children in a skinner box and prevent them from having any experience of the grubby old world. Instead, make sure they understand what your values are, and actively demonstrate why those values are superior to those of some foul-mouthed knucklehead online that you don't want your child to emulate. How is centering your life around monitoring your child's every movement going to do that? Instead, take your kids to the damn zoo, where they can see the difference between (happy, well-spoken people with clean clothes and healthy diets) and (foul-mouthed, dirty street people being preyed upon by law enforcement) and make some intelligent "there but for fortune go I" comments.
A responsible parent (to use your own category) doesn't need orwellian monitoring to teach children. And teaching children how to live in the world is the only task a responsible parent should be focusing on - a parent's main job is to train the children to function optimally after the parent is gone!
I can completely understand your point. When it's appropriate, I curse like a sailor. I have zero problem with it--words are just words and all of that--but over the past few years there's been an outrageous increase in the number of times I run into people screaming racial slurs online. I am a firm believer in the thought that nothing is sacred, and everything is up for a potential laugh, but the manner in which these words are used is insane. It's like every fourteen year old in the US has replaced the word noob with another n word.
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jonathan barket
I agree with the other responders. In that situation my kid would no longer have an X-Box, Mt. Dew, Chocolate Milk... and basic life functions are really touch-and-go at that point. If I ever talked like that to my mom, I'm certain either my mom or dad would have killed me. Twice.
I just don't get all these objections to swearing in games, at all. IMHO, you are suppose to swear, and swear like a sailor, that's part of having a rip roaring good time.
I run into this on Battlefield 2 servers, where they all post prohibitions against swearing, which makes absolutely no sense. At all, period. People are killing other people, snipers are picking you off, your teammates are acting like retards, there's chaos and slaughter and its the nature of the game to swear. All is fair in love and war. In real warfare, you swear and you swear loud and dirty. You swear at your enemies, you swear at your son of a bitch commanders, you swear at your team, you swear at your comrades. Its part of the comaraderie. Its part of the fabric of war and competion.
Back in the day when we'd fire up a lanparty, and dive into the continual bloodbath that was Quake 2 and 3, or maybe a good viscious game of GTA2 (arguably the best multiplayer lan game to date), swearing was the communication in the game. When someone ran you down like a dog with a fast car, it was obligational to say with absolute score "fucker!" at your assailant, who thereby got a bit of smugness as a reward, and spurred you on to nail his ass back, and for him to be even more on the lookout for the insane stunt you were going to pull to even the score.
These pansy rules against swearing... well, quite frankly, are for pussies. Yeah, I can understand it maybe in a civil game of GO or Backgammon on Yahoo Games... but not in a violent death and kill oriented competitive game where testosterone and ego surge and flow like diesel through war vehicles.
Bollox. The word "fag" has by no means lost its association with homosexual, even just based on the context in which it's used in voice chat, let alone the fact that if you ask people, they all know that 'fag' can be used a word for gay, unlike 'idiot,' where most people genuinely don't know it's origin in the scientific racism of the 19th and 20th centuries. It's apologists like you that drive me especially nuts -- you may like to think you're not being grossly offensive, that you're a good guy, but ask an actual gay person what they think of the term 'fag' and its use in chat, I'll think you'll find you are being a best offensive, at worst conducting verbal assualt. If you're sincere in not wanting to spread bigotry, you'll stop. The turning of certain words from specific insults into generic ones make the situation worse, not better -- you're declaring that an entire class of people are inferior -- that any gay is crap, or trivilizing some of the worst violence around -- rape is equated with winng a game? And why is it okay to consider 'gay' as an insult in the first place? Believe it or not, unless you're gay, black or been raped, you really have no right to declare "these insults are okay, they're meaningless." Almost the only people who think those words are meaningless, are white, straight males who haven't been the victim of sexual assault, and if you can't see an perpepuation of abuse and injuctice in that privilege, you're living a very insular life indeed.
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