Cleaning up Thunder Bluff

An anonymous reader writes "Colleen Hannon at Gamers With Jobs is mad as hell, and she's not going to take it anymore. 'Unless you're playing Neopets, online servers are full of foul-mouthed, racist junk-monkeys. The hate-filled miasma they spatter around them has reached the point where many people who could be on those services won't go, and those who do brave it won't go without a posse and riot gear.' She plays out every side of the argument: why things have gotten as bad as they've become, what publishers have and haven't done about it, and why she thinks things are now at unacceptable levels of incivility. She's calling on us gamers to get together and figure this out, because: 'If we wait for the new sheriff in town to fight this battle for us we might not like the town we're left with.' Is it as bad as she says?"

Comments

Just leave general chat

[WinterSolstice]

Seriously - it's the only way to retain any hope for mankind :)

Re:Just leave general chat

[OglinTatas]

I have left general chat. I also left trade channel and defense channel, because there are few on topic postings if any. Trade and defense are mixed in with the garbage on general chat. I've never been to LFG channel. Face to face talking and obviously /p or /g are about all that are not full of trash talking. (Or not.)

That takes care of all the profanity, but now I get in-game spam-mail and spam-tells from 'xssdfjbv' or 'jwedexxsd' about gold prices. And if I /ignore, in 5 minutes I get "xlxsow removed from ignore list--no such player" then another spam-tell from 'wossdddd'

Blizzard needs to do 2 things: 1) a "mark as spam" button which automatically logs a complaint and the evidence, and ignores the user for chat, tell, and mail; 2) as another poster put it, if I /ignore a player, I want the option to ignore the WHOLE account, no matter how many alts the guy uses--chat, tell, mail, duel spam, plain talking, yells, and emotes.

Re:Just leave general chat

[C0rinthian]

Here is a better analogy: If you own a store, and someone is inside verbally abusing your customers, do you:
A) Tell the abuser to leave.
B) Tell your customers to deal with the abuser.

Which do you think is better for your business?

Ignoreing them doesnt solve the issue really.

[Kaffien]

Back in the day, and still up until now even on this board. We have moderators. They should have chat moderators in games such as wow. Repeat offenders should be banned from chat rather than the whole game. Someone starts lipping off incoherently, they get kicked and if they keep it up banned until further notice. Being banned from general and shout etc would be a server pain. Theres ways around but still ... it might be a start.

Re:Just give us the option

[Saxmachine]

Me too. I worry about what the future of video gaming holds for me when I read review after review forgiving a game's insubstantial single-player mode because "online play is what it's all about." What about those of us who play video games (as opposed to sports, board games, etc.) as a way to have a bit of fun without human interaction? It looks like the best I can hope for is that I'll become too busy to play before everything becomes a foul-mouthed back alley wrapped up in a thin MMO tortilla.

Maybe... just maybe...

[__aaclcg7560]

If the video game industry wasn't an extended boys locker room where everything goes because there's no parents or teachers around? I worked for six years in the video game industry where such childish behavior was the norm. The supervisors called each other "douche bags". A woman lead tester was fired for calling a tester an "a**hole" for screwing off on her project, never mind that male testers routinely called each other "hos" and "bitches". Maybe it's time for the video game industry to clean up its act.

Re:Maybe... just maybe...

[moderatorrater]

Or maybe, just maybe, that woman lead tester was fired because she was assaulting the person she called an "a**hole" whereas the people calling each other hos and bitches were joking with each other. It's the difference between arresting someone for trying to beat someone into submission and arresting a few guys who are wrestling with each other for fun.

Re:Maybe... just maybe...

[__aaclcg7560]

In the professional companies that I worked in, you could get fired for either remark. It really comes down to whether you're a professional or not, how you treat people and how you want people to treat you. Professionalism is sorely lacking in the video game industry.

Re:There's this thing...

[faloi]

All too often, it's not quite enough. Ignore would be great if, to use WoW as an example, you could ignore an unlimited number of people AND have it ignore the account as a whole, not just the toon causing the problem. I care less about profanity than I do people spamming channels, but when I /ignore someone...I want them completely ignored.

The more you try to clean things up...

[moore.dustin]

...the louder the people will get. If you tell an idiot in chat to hush up, does he? No. Instead he doubles his attacks and focuses them at you. You cannot change this, sorry, it cannot be done. Instead, use the functions and tools in game to ignore people and leave chat channels. I am sure there is some UI thing you can get that will help you block people in chat who curse, yell, whatever.

What a dumb article though. Really, how can anyone believe that they can clean up the chat rooms where people with anonymity reside. It just wont happen. It takes people years of online participation in one community or another to stop using LOL let along stop attacking people.

You can use this as your litmus test though. If "teh" and "pwn" are still in use, nothing has changed and people are still tards online.

taboo words, racism, and trash talk

[Lord Ender]

I don't know whether it is cultural or instinctual, but when boys compete, they "trash-talk" eachother. It is the competitive spirit of the game bleeding into language.

Think about a street basketball game and the "yo momma's so fat" jokes. The same thing happens in online FPS games.

Players tend to build up an immunity to such insults, so there is an arms race of conceiving increasingly offensive verbal jabs. It gets worse and worse.

The solution, of course, is to just ignore offensive words altogether. Think "sticks and stones" and get on with the game! Racism in online games is a joke anyway--nobody knows your race so they can't mean it seriously. There is nothing special or magical about taboo words, either. Hearing "swear" words only hurts your feelings because you let them. You have nobody to blame but yourself.

If you can't handle trash talk in competitive games, whether they are on the court or on the net, you can either stop playing or stop giving taboo words power over you.

Alternatively, start a girls league or have referees which enforce a code of good sportsmanship. Pick-up games of basketball and of counter-strike don't have refs, so you will always have boys' competitive spirits showing in the language.

This the Reality of ANY Pick Up Game

[PM Guy]

Did anyone play pick up basketball games at their local playground growing up? Racist, sexist, homophobic, profane... you name it! It was called smack talk and some people were incredible at it. This is the modern day equivalent. If you are a 30-year gamer with a job (like me) and you go into a game filled with teenagers... guess what? Smack talk. It's no different than heading to your local basketball court and trying to hang with the teenagers there.

Re:There's this thing...

[TNTSoggy]

Actually no freedom of speech does not apply to game servers because they are the equivalent of private property, I'm a member of the gaming clan and we have a ZERO tolerance policy on racial terms and most profanity. if you use it your warned, the next time your kicked, and if you comeback and do it again your banned. we ban a lot of people but we gain even more because we run a clean server.

Re:Just give us the option

[Red Flayer]

You have no clue, do you? You've never raised kids, have you? Until you have, STFU and GBTW.

I have my preferences, you have yours. Big fucking deal. If there are a lot of people like me out there, why shouldn't a game company cater to us? It's not like the people like you and the people like me can't both be satisfied.

Or you could teach the children to ignore it and thicken their skins a little, but hey, since daddy can't and would rather be shielded from all the naughty words and thoughts than just do the same, why should they?

Seriously, get a clue before you spout off your nonsense. If you ever have kids, you'll learn that parenting is not easy, and that making sure your kids are exposed to the right influences is one of the keys to ensuring that they establish behavior patterns that are healthy for them. Teaching them to be able to handle bad situations and assholes is important, but I want to be able to do that on my own terms. Then again, I *care* how my kids turn out, so the above may not apply to you.