International Conference Meets to Solve In-Game Hate Speech

[Gunner 51]

I think this is a noble thing, at least in it's intentions. After all, in most decently structured games there's rules against players being complete dicks to each other. But I think in reality, the whole thing will prove to be as useful as a chocolate fire-guard. (Boy, that's showing my age.)

After all, who wants to hear a thirteen year old squeaker telling everyone to fellate him? Hell, why has it got to the point where most people will automatically mute other players before they open their mouths? I have my theory is that the squeakers generally wouldn't talk like that if their parents were in their rooms supervising them.

But why pick on children entirely? Anyone can be idiots, screamers, ragers, bullies and cheaters.

Perhaps moderators would be a good idea. But the question is, who's going to be putting their hands in their pockets to pay for it? Gamers, publishers, developers or even the console manufacturers?

Everyone acting with a mutual respect for each other is a wonderful thing, but it's all pie in the sky.

 

[nuttshell]

Amazing how people can find excuses to meet for cofee and cookies.

 

[bjj hero]

Someone called me a goth-tard on cod. Better call a conference....

Mute fixes nearly all of the bad language and hate. As in real life, if you dont like someone just avoid them.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Someone let me know when they hold an international conference on how to grow a backbone and/or use the mute button.

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

This is a useless waste of time and money. Nothing could possibly be accomplished by such a conference and many trolls and bullies, after catching wind of this, will likely act more atrociously out of spite.

 

[Hawk eye1466]

Hey good luck to them but whenever people are anonymous they'll be whatever they want and often that's a terrible person if they find some way to help at least curb that a little good for them but I doubt they'll fix anything.

 

[Genocidicles]

Christ, it just sounds like they're trying to make gaming some kind of bland experience like Facebook.

"Oh no! We can't have a dislike button! That'll foster negativity in the community!"

Ok, I can understand stopping the racist insults and stuff like that, but If I'm playing a game with adults and I want to call someone a stupid, fucking **** because they cost us the game, then I should be able to.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

I really think people are to soft-skinned on the web nowadays. How can some swearwords written down in a game actually hurt you? Nobody that has actual parents can be this emotionally unstable.

Real cyberbulling is a diffrent thing though. That usually contains spreading lies locally - but over the web, takin' horrible picures or creating hate-sites.
That can/will really affect you and there should be stuff done to prevent that.

 

[MHR]

It sounds like a bunch of seniors forming a committee to stop the teenagers from skateboarding on the sidewalks. It's going to be so important and effective.

 

[Strazdas]

Ultimately pointless conference about a thing we already have the power to control.\

Back when I played CoD, I used to actually make a game out of muting everyone in the room except the people that I already know/play with. The objective of the game was to mute so many people that I'd eventually start entering matches full of players that I've already muted.

The closest I ever got was getting into a match with all but 4 people already muted. :3

Thats interesting but kinda unfair. Lets say i play the game, and i hardly ever speak, and when i do its about something important, like giving intel to the team. i join a match and you automatically mute me before i even say a word and miss on the intel. you didnt even give me a chance. seems kinda harsh.
I do similar game differently, i block everyone who goes on a rampage of how gay i am for not shooting this guy. My record is 6 guys pre-blocked in a new match, and i often get good experience. But the game i do it isnt COD so it may be dofferent there, but the format is very similar (two teams want to kill eachother). I even made a couple friends by meeting them in random match.

 

[Hagi]

However, much more importantly than this is that video.

That has to be one of the most freaking annoying videos I've ever seen announcing something. Seriously, if you're going to show us text then don't put freaking blobs of black ink over some of the letters even if it's only the first few. That doesn't make your video cool, it makes it an amateurish failed attempt at being cool.

As for the conference, could be interesting I guess. Although I'm not sure how effective it will be.

But that video? KILL IT WITH FIRE!

 

[Antari]

Another attempt to change human nature. They must really like being paid to fail. Wish I had a job like that.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

Here's what you do. Have parents raise children, rather than xbox live. You're fucking welcome.

This, so very fucking much.

And like every other attempt at curbing something or other, it's not going to work because it will be badly executed and no one is going to play along with this.

These guys are preaching to criminals.

 

[RJ 17]

Ultimately pointless conference about a thing we already have the power to control.\

Back when I played CoD, I used to actually make a game out of muting everyone in the room except the people that I already know/play with. The objective of the game was to mute so many people that I'd eventually start entering matches full of players that I've already muted.

The closest I ever got was getting into a match with all but 4 people already muted. :3

Thats interesting but kinda unfair. Lets say i play the game, and i hardly ever speak, and when i do its about something important, like giving intel to the team. i join a match and you automatically mute me before i even say a word and miss on the intel. you didnt even give me a chance. seems kinda harsh.
I do similar game differently, i block everyone who goes on a rampage of how gay i am for not shooting this guy. My record is 6 guys pre-blocked in a new match, and i often get good experience. But the game i do it isnt COD so it may be dofferent there, but the format is very similar (two teams want to kill eachother). I even made a couple friends by meeting them in random match.

Sorry, but I lost faith in "Green Arrows" (random players on your team that show up as green arrows on your minimap) a long time ago. I jokingly came up with a motto of "If there's a Green Arrow behind you, you're about to get shot in the back." The really sad part is that once I actually started taking this motto seriously and living by it, my game actually improved by a noticeable margin.

Maybe it's different for other shooters, but the vast majority of random players on CoD that have mics are just complete jackasses. That's probably the biggest reason the game gets as much hate as it does...it's not the game itself (though some hold a grudge against the game itself due to it being assembly-line made and pumped out every year) but rather the community of players. You're either listening to someone spout off racial slurs and calling everyone "gay f*gg*ts" and what not, listening to a 12 year old boy cussing like a sailor, listening to some perfectionist rage because his KDR dropped beneath 12 to 1 for a match, or listening to someone playing gangster rap over their mic. I'm sure there's decent people out there, but in my personal experience (that being the key phrase here) it seems like a good 90% of the people that I encounter are people that I really, REALLY don't want to be listening to.

 

[Strazdas]

Ultimately pointless conference about a thing we already have the power to control.\

Back when I played CoD, I used to actually make a game out of muting everyone in the room except the people that I already know/play with. The objective of the game was to mute so many people that I'd eventually start entering matches full of players that I've already muted.

The closest I ever got was getting into a match with all but 4 people already muted. :3

Thats interesting but kinda unfair. Lets say i play the game, and i hardly ever speak, and when i do its about something important, like giving intel to the team. i join a match and you automatically mute me before i even say a word and miss on the intel. you didnt even give me a chance. seems kinda harsh.
I do similar game differently, i block everyone who goes on a rampage of how gay i am for not shooting this guy. My record is 6 guys pre-blocked in a new match, and i often get good experience. But the game i do it isnt COD so it may be dofferent there, but the format is very similar (two teams want to kill eachother). I even made a couple friends by meeting them in random match.

Sorry, but I lost faith in "Green Arrows" (random players on your team that show up as green arrows on your minimap) a long time ago. I jokingly came up with a motto of "If there's a Green Arrow behind you, you're about to get shot in the back." The really sad part is that once I actually started taking this motto seriously and living by it, my game actually improved by a noticeable margin.

Maybe it's different for other shooters, but the vast majority of random players on CoD that have mics are just complete jackasses. That's probably the biggest reason the game gets as much hate as it does...it's not the game itself (though some hold a grudge against the game itself due to it being assembly-line made and pumped out every year) but rather the community of players. You're either listening to someone spout off racial slurs and calling everyone "gay f*gg*ts" and what not, listening to a 12 year old boy cussing like a sailor, listening to some perfectionist rage because his KDR dropped beneath 12 to 1 for a match, or listening to someone playing gangster rap over their mic. I'm sure there's decent people out there, but in my personal experience (that being the key phrase here) it seems like a good 90% of the people that I encounter are people that I really, REALLY don't want to be listening to.

BUt thats my point, you will never know about that 10% if you just mute everyone. and in online games its ithat 10% that makes it worth it.

 

[RJ 17]

BUt thats my point, you will never know about that 10% if you just mute everyone. and in online games its ithat 10% that makes it worth it.

Meh, I prefer to just write them all off entirely. Keeps things simple. If you've got a basket with 100 rotten apples but 10 of them are fine, do you really want to bite into every one of them to see if they're rotten or not? Personally I'd say it's easier to just throw the whole basket out.

It's really a moot point, anyways, seeing as how incredibly rarely I play CoD. Whenever I do it's with a full party of friends so I won't be listening to outside players anyways.

 

[Strazdas]

BUt thats my point, you will never know about that 10% if you just mute everyone. and in online games its ithat 10% that makes it worth it.

Meh, I prefer to just write them all off entirely. Keeps things simple. If you've got a basket with 100 rotten apples but 10 of them are fine, do you really want to bite into every one of them to see if they're rotten or not? Personally I'd say it's easier to just throw the whole basket out.

It's really a moot point, anyways, seeing as how incredibly rarely I play CoD. Whenever I do it's with a full party of friends so I won't be listening to outside players anyways.

i actually had that situation last week but with pears. i did open every single one of them to find the 10 that were good. i give food/people a try before writting them off. maybe im unreasonably patient, i dont know. i acually bite 2 weeks old meat to check if its rotten or not even. i dont like throwign away food or friends.
OF course if you always play with friends then well you can jsut go into seperate chat like vnetrilo and that fixes everything. though to do that i would first need to have friends.

 

[stulle]

Hi folks,

as one of the creators of GameOverHate I wanted to give some comments regarding this conversation.

Our team of volunteers undertook this endeavour because having to "deal with it" is rather pointless, if the options for dealing with it are either excluding the social factor of MMOs or dropping playing with other people. I am also convinced that a reflection on the terms community and MMO would not hurt every now and then. Recent announcements of Youtube and Gamespot are making pretty clear that the frequent outbursts of hate need to be addressed stronger.

What we are facilitating is an sphere of common interests between the gaming community and the campaign against hate speech of Council of Europe (http://nohatespeechmovement.org/). Therefore we are very much emphasising the Human Rights angle of this debate. Defending Free Speech is quite questionable if that results in diminishing the Human Rights of others. Why defend the right to speak freely of any asshat, attacking women or people of colour and others, instead of defending the other people's right to equality, dignity or participation in cultural life? PvP is more fun without sore losers, co-op without rambling hate, competition is carried to the next level, if you have proper team work.

It is a rather wearily attitude to accept that hate as part of the game instead of contributing to change the community. Accepting that creates dieing communities. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy to say "haters gonna hate" and just shut up until players are forced to quit playing games or worst. It is of little surprise that the most popular MMOs have community management beyond the mute button.

Changes to a bad community do not happen over night. Brian Crecente, co-founder of Polygon pointed out at GameOverHate that it is much harder to introduce changes to the community at a later stage. The thing is, introducing a hate-free community from scratch is much easier. If you let the players rage for a couple of month and then try to change them, it becomes a matter of education; hard on the people that are used to vent and offend. Haters need victims but victims do not need haters. We are seeking to empower players that play inclusively and facilitate a network that is supporting them.

We are not looking to create change from scratch. There is plenty of initiatives out there, most of them USA based and we want to bring the discussion to Europe too; gamers are a global community after all. We had inputs from the European Game Developers Federation, Polygon, CCP Games and the MIT GameLab. We discussed big cases like Feminist Frequency or Gamepot's GTA V review, as well as smaller cases which you can find all over the internet. We are still looking for input and feedback and will continue to gather cases and information.

This is the last day of our conference in Budapest. It was a blast, a creative and committed community flowing over with examples and good practices. Cherry in top was the social programme with foxes, disco, lots of moustache and Nightmare 2.0. Greetings to the Escapist community from sunny Budapest and let's chat some time, unless we are already on mute.