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.

Comments

Gamesmanship

[MBraynard]

In some Xbox games, if you are trying to win, you can use the other person's emotional state to overcome their reason/rational thought. Normally when someone is cursing up a storm, they are letting their emotions overcome their rational thought and they make mistakes. This is both in fast games (Halo2) and slow games (World Championship Poker).

If you can just goad them a little bit into cutting loose with their mouths, you are are halfway to victory.

Conversely, it is important to keep your own cool and your focus on the game. A few taunts when the other guy is down may help in keeping him down as you compound his anger, but this must be done out of strategy, not out of an effort to verbally 'get back' at your opponent.

Re:Gamesmanship

[Mr. Flibble]

In some Xbox games, if you are trying to win, you can use the other person's emotional state to overcome their reason/rational thought. Normally when someone is cursing up a storm, they are letting their emotions overcome their rational thought and they make mistakes. This is both in fast games (Halo2) and slow games (World Championship Poker).

I used to play Half Life 2 with a guy who was obviously a troll. His nick was "sand nigger" and he kept uttering profanities all over the chat, both profanity and ethnic slurs.

People used to get all worked up about him and play badly, or type often and get killed - which is exactly what he wanted.

I decided to try anti-trolling him, and instead of responding to the "nigger" in his tag, I began objecting to his use of the word "sand". This confused him, and when I said things (that I don't actually agree with) like: "Well, I find the word 'sand' and all the implications that it carries, I am offended by that. You can keep using 'nigger' thats ok, I am not offended by that, 'nigger' is an ok word to use."

He suddenly lost his temper - and began accusing *ME* of being a racist, because I was clearly not offended by the term "nigger". I kept harping on him about his offensive use of the word "sand" and ignored all his ethnic slurs. His voice became very animated over the chat until he was positivly screaming. He finally left the server in disgust.

So, clearly, he was using his nick and his ethnic slurs as a way to get to people and have an advantage, when I came along and pretended not to be offended by these things, he thought I really was a racist, and went off on me.

That is really the best way to handle people that are trying to emotionally troll you - either ignore them, or troll them back, most will quite ironically bite.

Profanity filter code.

[LightningBolt!]

When I worked on a networked EA title a couple years back, we were required to put in a chat profanity filter. We were given some code and a file with the obscenity list that had been developed for a previous title. The obscenity file was pretty funny, containing some words we'd never heard before, and some ordinary words that we couldn't imagine used as obscenities. Combined with the code that tried to detect variations, it was weird, because it would allow some really standard obscenities you'd expect to filter out, and blocked stuff like "assume" and "sucker". Also amusing, the file ended up in plaintext on the disc. So if you dumped the disc contents, it looked like some disgruntled programmer had put all sorts of swears into the game.

Re:One reason I let my XBox Live account die.

[orac2]

I agree -- the swearing's fine, it's all the racism, misogyny and homophobia that's really starting to get old. I've attended press conferences with video game execs[1] and when I ask them about the dichotomoy between wanting to be treated like a legitimate, mainstream activity on the one hand and the hostile and exclusionary nature of an average morning on X-Box they, at best, shrug their shoulders with a "what can you do?" attitude or, at worst, fail to even understand the basis of the question. How about enforcing your damn ToS??? For younger players Xbox live requires a credit card to use, so there's supposed to be some adult around -- why capture a few seconds of the audio stream and send them a damn letter with a link explaining why their son has been banned? A few hundred "Notes home to the Parents" would have a definite chilling effect -- at the very least, it would finally say, "You know what guys, this isn't okay" instead of the wink, wink bullshit from the game companies that happens now, to point where some kids don't even understand why anyone would object when they spout some of this garbage.

And just in case any of those kids are reading, let me spell it out: it's not okay to use "gay" as a synonym for "crap", "fag" as a synonym for "asshole", "rape" as a synonym for "achieve victory over" or "nigger" as a synonym for, well, anything.

[1] These are often the same execs who mouth platitudes about wanting the industry to be less male oriented, and more welcoming to women, while surrounded by giant advertising placards featuring anatomically impossible women with heavy weaponry.