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The Word “Gay” and Others Blocked From Games

As MMO games continue to multiply, what is and isn’t acceptable speech varies greatly.

Anyone who has seen certain comments on our own site know that websites and MMO’s are subject to the use agreement of the particular institution that runs the site. That is, speech of a specific nature can be censored at any time, any where, and in accordance only with the policies, written and unwritten, of the administrators.

The problem is, are the words gay, lesbian, and transsexual bad words? According to some companies, they are.

The mega-MMO, World of Warcraft, run by Blizzard, had this as a major issue for many years after its launch. While the word “gay” was not banned, words like “lesbian” and “transsexual” were. Either with the release of version 3.0.2 or prior to it, those words were removed from the censor list.

Sony, however, struggles with this issue while building their own virtual world called Home.

Sony’s Home is suppose to be a virtual world for gamers. In many ways, it mirrors environments like Second Life and is more a virtual social world rather than a gaming environment where players slay pixilated monsters for quests, gold, and treasure. Playstation Home users start out with their own virtual apartment which they can purchase modifications for, as well as purchase other spaces for friends and family to virtually visit.

Home has been plagued by problems since it entered Beta. Not only have players faced issues with language such as terms associated with the LGBTI community, but words such as “Jesus” and “Jew” have been filtered by their program. This has created a major problem when it comes to attempts to create virtual groups. The censorship software was so strict that it even filtered out the word “hello”.

Censorship issues aside, one of the biggest issues has been the harassment of online players who have reported racist and sexist language from some users, and undoubtedly homophobic language as well. Sony states that there is a zero tolerance policy on this issue, and to report any harassment to moderators. Unfortunately, as the community grows larger, that policy may be harder to enforce, as Blizzard Entertainment discovered as their virtual world went from a million subscribers to over eleven million in four years.

Playstation Home has been plagued by problems and has been slow in reaching beyond its Beta, or secondary testing, stage.

The treatment of the LGBTI community by gaming organizations is something that has been lamentable. The bloggers at Lesbian Gamers have noted that there are many gaming companies which have deep homophobic tendencies. Policies concerning the LGBTI community have changed in the last four years for several gaming companies. In 2006, Blizzard had to change its policies regarding the creation and advertising of LGBTI friendly in-game groups called guilds to reflect a more open policy towards the Community after Shimmre, played by Sara Andrews was threatened with being banned from the game by a Game Moderator for advertizing her guild Oz. Unfortunately, Shimmre appears to have gone inactive, and the guild Oz on her server (though there are other guilds with that name).

It should be noted that, since I began playing World of Warcraft myself in 2003, I have been in close to a dozen guilds, of which only two still exist, if you count the one I am currently in. Guilds and players come and go constantly.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/28/BU1T14RGRV.DTL&feed=rss.technology
http://www.gamesdog.co.uk/news/news.phtml/8525/9549/PS3-Home-chat-LGBT-censoring.phtml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4700754.stm
http://www.lesbiangamers.com/2008/12/is-penny-arcade-homophobic-nah-probably-not.html

Sei is a trans-lesbian who lives in Vermont and has a strong passion for LGBTI rights. She has a BA in History and her hobbies include sci-fi, anime, fantasy, action movies, video games, and more. You can visit her Blogger profile here.