Below is a fantastically edited sample of the daily antigay crap that we put up with in online gaming. Audio is NSFW; "gay boy I hope you die and burn in hell" is as mild as it gets. Frankly it's so upsetting I only watched the first half.

The problem here is that Halo 3 is a testosterone pumping game played mostly by young guys. And the game has an open voice chat channel that's essentially anonymous. And so people say horrible things on it all the time. The only way I could ever play it online was to mute the voice chat entirely. But then you miss out on any strategic coordination and half the fun.

There's an argument that "xxxGayBoyxxx" provoked this response by choosing an obviously gay name and using pink for his colours. Well, yes, he is provocative. But you get this kind of homophobia all the time without any provocation. I've spoken up when some horrid child started babbling "you faggot you killed me" and the response from the other folks in the game was pretty unpleasant.

Casual gay bashing is all over gaming culture and it's hideous. It affects which games I play and how I play them. Part of what's fun in social games is playing with other people; but when those other people continuously act like assholes it's not fun. Fortunately most games aren't quite the sewers of bad behaviour that Halo 3 is.

  2007-11-28 17:22 Z