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Recommended Reads: Overal Profanity

"...we're adding 500 to 1000 words every day to the filters, simply because of slang that works its way into the language." (Lane Merrifield, Club Penguin)

Did you ever had the feeling there is too much name-calling profanity in your favorite multiplayer game? There have been various blog-posts touching the topic of abuse of foul language in MMOs lately:

Josh Smith posted a (somewhat limited) statistic on the frequency of curse words on XBOX Live, namely on Halo 2. F*-words were most widely encountered (43 percent of all profanities, at an average of around 8 F*s per hour), along with sexual and homosexual derogatory terms. Racism had a share of around 9 percent.

Adult language has also become an increasing problem in children’s online games--according to an interview with Club Penguin’s co-founder and general manager Lane Merrifield on GamesIndustry. She claims the games-industry has been irresponsible with kids: “We know the limits of technology, even though I would put our filtering software up against anybody’s, especially because of that human element - we’re adding 500 to 1000 words every day to the filters, simply because of slang that works its way into the language.”

Such “bad word filters” are a inevitability in the anonymity of multiplayer worlds, sadly, because it speaks for itself if members can’t treat each other with a minimum of mutual respect.

via BigDownload

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