Online Hate Speech Issues Finally Starting To Hit Mainstream
The issue of hate speech by players of online games has been a problem for a long time and only recently have the creators of these games really started paying attention. We here at GayGamer have been fighting the battle against such behavior since we started the site four years ago and have spoken about it on panels and in various articles. However, until now the problem has been reported on almost exclusively within the insular world of the gaming press.
Two weeks ago I was contact by Nick Geranios of the Associated Press who had recently discovered this problem via his young son who was playing Call of Duty on XBox Live. Needless to say, Mr. Geranios was shocked by some of the things he heard and decided to write a story about it. He came to me for my thoughts on the issue and the story has now been published and picked up by quite a few papers and news sites.
I would like to thank Mr. Geranios for taking this ongoing issue and bringing it to a more mainstream audience. I sincerely hope that players and video game companies alike start taking the hate speech problem as seriously as they should. I hope parents read this article and realize that the they should be paying attention to not only what their kids are playing but who they are playing with.
I'm sure there will be those that try to use this as a way to continue vilifying the video game industry, but as I have said many times before, the industry may have its issues, but the real problem in this case are the players themselves. Until the public consciousness raises to a point where everyone realizes this sort of behavior is unacceptable, there will be hate speech on TV, on the radio, in online gaming and on the streets. The best we can do is recognize it when it happens, expose it for what it is and punish the perpetrators the best we can.
If you have been the victim of online hate speech, don't just sit there and take it. Take names and report them to the proper authorities be that on Xbox Live, PSN, WOW or any other online game. The game companies can't deal with these people effectively without cooperation from you.
Hate speech corrodes online games [AP]
Fruit Brute
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 19 April 2010
· Comments (15)
Other stuff like this: hate speech, online gaming, pc, ps3, xbox
Wow, even more news that should have been posted, like, five years ago.
Something must be done!
I don't know what, but something must be done!
One of the bartenders down the street talks to me about video games quite a lot because his son is high school age and obsessed with COD. So when I was talking to my friends about the "fun" of paying 8 dollars a month to be called a f**** or a N***** he chimed in that he pays attention to his son's gaming habits and finds that sort of thing bizarre and upsetting. It made me feel at least a little better that some people are actually attempting to steer their kids away from being loutish homophobic smucks when they're not looking.
It was a good story. I'm a page designer for a daily newspaper, and I made sure it got on our entertainment page. The language of Xbox Live idiots is one of the reasons I didn't bother to renew my Gold subscription.
I'm a moderator on my TF2 clan's servers, and one of the things I have a itchy finger on the permaban for is homophobic language. They get one warning, and the next incident they get the ban hammer. I do NOT tolerate that kind of thing while I'm on.
It seems to me the only way to solve this problem is to provide a seamless, simple way to friend, silence, and block people you choose. So easy that you can do it in an FPS without taking your attention from the game. Perhaps software that automatically detects derogatory words, and, when enough flags are raised from one person's frequent use of those words, they are silenced by default and if you want to hear what they're saying you have to opt-in to turning on their audio feed. Though voice-recognition has a ways to go. Maybe a system where people can flag people for using abusive language and if someone gets enough flags an independent moderator listens to their audio feed and then penalizes them by banning them for a set time. - Successive infractions receiving progressively longer bans. I don't see how such a system can work though without independent, human moderators making judgment calls. Hopefully developers can step up and either provide those moderators, or provide a system for people who are willing to volunteer to moderate from time to time so that the gaming community can police itself.
And if bigots really insist on being able to scream abusively at each other they can setup a private server.
Figures the gay people would ruin it for everyone !They are the worst online ! Does am XBox controler fit nicely up a faccots ass ?
@MC:
So the gay people ruin gaming by... being a target? Wow. God. I've been doing it wrong. THE ERROR OF MY WAYS!
MC, dude (or more likely 14 year old jerk), just a word to the unwise. Its actually MORE insulting when you make sense. Thanks for playing!
Figures people like MC would ruin it for everyone! They are the worst online! Does your keyboard fit nicely up your umbilical cord?
Freedom of speech! You people are really slow ! Google Erik Estavillo and see how far he got sticking his gay nose where it does nor belong with Sony ! Any parent that bought a "M' game for his kid and just figured out the online problems 4 years later should be jailed . FREEDOM of SPEECH and nothing you homos can do!!!!.
The irony? This douchenozzle's talking about freedom of speech in one breath and jailing parents for being oblivious in the other. And for the record, junior, I'll stick my "gay nose" anywhere I fucking well please...those freedoms apply equally to all American citizens...or did you fail American History and Ethics?
OK so twist things around till they make sense in YOUR mind .Like you have to do to defend sex with the SAME sex? Forget about common sense.
Stikkk your nose wherever you like .When you come out your tent in the morning and see the real world tone it down clown .People are getting tired of having this shit in there face all the time .Live and let Live your no better than anyone else .
Fail troll is fail. 0/10. Try harder next time.
I resent immediately the invocation of "think of the children" to forward this cause. It's a tried and true method of hammering forth forms of censorship that otherwise would meet with broad opposition. Usually we of the tubes are honest and straight-forward enough not to use such rotten tactics.
I think of the drug war...it costs the country around 50 billion dollars a year(state and federal) to combat it(ineffectively). The illegal drug trade pumps billions into organized criminal enterprises here and abroad. This has had no small destabilizing effect to our supposed allies to the south. And why does the electorate put up with it? Why do they care enough about their fellow citizens toking up or shooting poison up their veins to engage in something as disastrous as the Drug War?
"Think of the children."
That phrase, and the world stops turning...and people act (and vote) like idiots. I can't understate just how angry I am to see one of my leftist feeds(I would be very confused were I to learn that this site were to the right ^^ ) advocating for censorship.
Almost every online game I've played in the last 15 years has had some kind of block function. Use it, love it. But "punish the perpetrators best we can"? What's the point of this? In 20 years time, nobody in the western world is going to give a damn about sexuality. And it won't be because of efforts like this(if anything, this hurts us).
LET CENSORSHIP NEVER BE A DRIVING FORCE OF PROGRESSIVISM.