Gaming News update: Saturday, January 29, 2005

Gaming News update

Saturday, January 29, 2005

Point + Click :: Discrimination in Gaming

The following piece contains adult language that may not be suitable for the easily offended. Please read on at your own precaution.

Having committed a good chunk of the last five years of my life to the advancement of video gaming in America, I have seen all kinds of advancements. I’ve seen technological advancements from developers, business advancements from producers and publishers, and behavioral advancements from the players and managers.

While the first two advancements are rather self explanatory, the third – behavioral advancements – is no doubt an ambiguous term. When I say that I have seen such advancements, I mean that I have seen a large increase in the level of professionalism among the players from all competitive games. And, if you think about it, it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

More and more, players are picking up games like Counter-Strike, Painkiller, or Warcraft III with the distinct purpose of trying to make it to the next level. On the other end of hours of dedication and practice is a potential sponsorship, cash purse, and even – in the most drastic of cases – a worldwide following. But to make it to the top level, you have to have much more than gaming skills; in fact, the ability to interact with others may be just as important as the ability to play at the highest skill level.

Having established that, I find it inexplicably unfortunate that there is still a solid majority of our community that finds it acceptable to use racial slurs in every day games. Let me clarify:

Nigger does not mean “noobie.” It does not mean “idiot.” It does not mean “loser.” Nigger is a derogatory word that hearkens back to a time when an entire race of people was forced to work and live under inhuman conditions because of the color of their skin. And every time that you use this word, you indirectly extend that racism into our modern day. You extend that racism into our games, our rooms, and our lives.

Stop.

“It’s just part of the game,” one player said, “When I say it, that doesn’t mean that I’m racist. It’s just a term.” Other gamers, though they may not use the words themselves, sacrifice their own feelings in order to play a good game. When I asked a friend of mine his thoughts on the matter, he responded, “What else are you going to do? You have the choice to quit a good game or deal with the word nigger. Personally, I’m going to just keep playing and forget about it.”

So let me see if I can get this straight. Not only do some people sacrifice their own personal morals and/or beliefs for a game, but some people still find it okay to use racial slurs in a gaming environment simply because “it’s part of the game?” Somehow, because we’re in the virtual reality that is the world of Counter-Strike or Painkiller, we are somehow now able to accept racist, sexist, or homophobic slurs?

I don’t think so. Not at all.

And this is what we have to eliminate for our field to move forward. This is what we, as an entire community, must now take aim at and destroy if we want video gaming to be taken seriously. Let me ask you something – if you screamed at someone calling them a faggot on the soccer field, would there be serious consequences? Absolutely. However, in this – our virtual world – we are somehow able to eliminate those consequences and throw ourselves completely backwards to a time that most morally sound humans are absolutely disgusted by.

And don’t try to feed me the ideas that this kind of behavior cannot be changed, because it can. Ask the player to stop. If that doesn’t work, ask an administrator to remove the player. If that isn’t able to be done, ask your fellow gamers to take a stand for a cause that is worth much more than one round of a game, and ask them to leave the current game that you are playing so that this player may be left out of a competition.

And I realize that my previous solutions may not be the easiest things in the world to do. But no one ever said that making such an adjustment to our community would be easy. In fact, the largest changes are always the hardest ones. But they’re also the most defining of any time period or group of people.

So if you see this kind of nonsense, try to stop it. Let everyone around you know that behavior like that shouldn’t be accepted. At the risk of being pushed out by those other gamers, stand up for a cause that deserves to be stood up for. And if you say these kinds of things? Do your best to quit. Think about what you’re actually saying. Think about what words like that mean. Then maybe you’ll see exactly the problem that you may be creating.

The civilized world acknowledged the foul of discrimination long ago. Now it’s time for our virtual world to do the same.

Paul Toms, a full time student at Boston University, is a weekly columnist for Amped News. Questions and comments about this, or any other, Point + Click can be sent to ptoms at ampednews.com.

¶ 11:06 PM //