Frequency of Profanity in Halo 2

February 8, 2006 by Josh · 222 Comments
Filed under: Games, Tech

Thanks for visiting, please realize that I’m not writing this to advocate censoring or that I’m surprised by swearing or don’t like it, I was just curious to see what the frequency was.

Master Chief

When you logon to Xbox live more often then not you will be greeted by ~~a 14 year old that learned a new word on the playground that day, or maybe it’s the drunken 24 year old who hates black people, gays and anyone who isn’t in his frat.~~ individuals afflicted with IAS (Internet A-hole Syndrome). No matter who you are if you have played on live you have run into cursing and lewdness. If you look at the rating for the game you can see that it is intended for ages 17+ but parents don’t care/understand/listen so lots of underage kids have this game. Another important thing to note is that the rating includes a warning that the game experience changes with use of online features. Please do not confuse this with a plea for the government to crack down and tighten control on the gaming industry. If anything this information should be used by parents to educate themselves about what their child is involved with and then make an educated decision to let them play or not.

Last December I started recording the frequency of profanity that I was able to hear while playing Halo 2. The results of the study which lasted 33.9 hours were surprising.

Disclaimers:

1. The curse words were those which I could hear, more may have occurred and other players in a given game may not have heard the same number of curse words I did. The ability to hear other players depends on your proximity to them.

2. The times recorded are the times I was signed into Xbox live and either engaged in a game or in the process of joining a game or viewing the results and listening to the discourse of other players. The times do not reflect solely “in game” time. You can view my games at bungie.net with the gamertag Ca1vin. note the ONE in the gamertag.

3. Do not proceed if you do not want to view words which may offend some.