Hold up Profanity Update
Reading through various linking sites regarding my Halo 2 Profanity Study, coming in from Fark.com, joystiq.com amongst others, it seems many people think I am uptight or want the government to crack down on the gaming industry.
You couldn’t be more wrong
If you re read the article please notice I do not want the government to do anything about this. We are adults the game is meant for adults and adults curse, hell I do it. I don’t want you to stop cursing. Cursing does not bother me if it did I would simply stop playing Halo. The only people who may want to do somthing about this should be Parents. My thinking is that if parents will take more responsibility then fewer will complain to the government and cause shackles to be put on the gmaing industry.
I wanted to know what the amount was since I play Halo so much. So I decided to do something semi productive and record the results.
Some people have also pointed out the survey size was too small and not spread out enough, True it could have been done better, if you don’t have a 40 hr a week job or if your job is studying stuff like this please by all means do better.
To sum it up, I want the government to get involved in the gaming industry as much as Gamers love Jack Thompson, aka not at all.
Past rants about the government and gaming
BBC article Parents don’t care about game ratings: imjosh
Response to CNN blaming video games for Violence: imjosh
Have fun and remember “Damn the man, Save the empire” Empire Records
Josh Smith is a blogger, database manager and adjunct professor of business and technology. 
Jack Thompson sucks ass. He seems like someone who is against freedom of speech. As soon as we silence the voices of which we do not want to hear we are no longer a democracy.
Very cool of you to do this, though if you’re open to more ideas I’d love to hear one that compared the amount of time spent on what I would consider the three categories worth comparing: Disparaging other players, talking about non-game related issues, and actual in-game chat. (Like planning or teamwork.)
Or if you’re not interested in doing this, I don’t suppose you’d be willing to part with your raw files?
D’oh! I just reread it and couldn’t discern if you actually did record this all, or just made mark of the instances of cussing. My bad.
I think it’s hilarious that you did a study. Could it have been more scientific? Probably, but that doesn’t mean its completely useless. And anyone who’s trying to give you crap about you wanting the government involved in gaming is just a fanboy who likes to leave rants on every page/forum/blog they can… don’t listen to them.
Congrats on getting listed to fark!
Cool study. I don’t play Halo 2 but my kid does. I just don’t let him talk or hear others talking. I used the mute option, cause he is only six but loves the game. And after I spent time on Halo 2 and seen how alot of the gamers acted, I didn’t think he needed to be subjected to any of that.
And, BTW, I have been known to throw alot of curse words in Ghost Recon, as I’m entering the dead room. lol It’s not so much the cursing as just the overall attitudes of alot of Halo 2 gamers I’ve personally encountered……that’s why I ban him from communicating. That and as I said, he’s only six.
This is awesome. I’m a linguist, so collecting any kind of usage corpora for anything, even video game chatter is fascinating to me.
I’d be interested in seeing the (obviously subjective) breakdown of slurs intended as slurs vs. slurs used as non-descript outbursts.
For example, if someone says (in the context of online gaming), “Oh, fuck you, ya fag! That was gay!” to a friend the words essentially hold nothing more than the emotion of being unfairly sniped or killed by dumb luck.
The exact same phrase can easily be said in such a way to imply the speaker means precisely what the words denote.
I would expect/hope that it would be 90/10 or better in favour of simple outbursts.
There would be some real hatred out there, as with any population. I’d be curious if the percentage is different from a “real-world” sample. If it were, and heavily skewed, that is what would concern me.
I’m with you Josh!
Get the lamer 14 year olds who clutter chat channels and can’t play outta the game so we can have somre REAL fun!
Did one of these guys just say he lets his 6 year old play Halo online?
Quick: Call Jack Thompson!
Incidentally, by the time that kids old enough to buy his own copy of the game, he will own SO hard…
This was just what I f-ing needed! I and my husband are sailors, and have been known to curse a blue streak, but not in the improper places…our kids have been harping on us to let them play XBOX Halo at their friends’ houses because “everybody else does” and we said no because of the M rating…the kids are 6 and 8! Without a doubt, your profanity article helped me make that decision immediately!!
I like a good toilet joke as much as the next guy, but if you have visited Halo 2 live recently you will find, I suspect, even more profound verbal abuse and obscenity. It is not the governments job to police the site. It is Bungie’s job to enforce their eula’s. The idea that a site frequented by preasolescents should allow the degree of peurile, misogynistic, scatologic, meanspirited profanity that is spewed out by older teens and young adults is unconscionable.
sorry,
puerile not peurile