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Sunday Debate: What is acceptable in gaming lingo?
Two generations of chronic gamers discuss the abusive language used while playing interactive games today
“What’s said in the heat of the moment should be ignored”
By Richard Steele
I have been gaming since I was 18 years old and am now into Call Of Duty and Destiny. People can get nasty when you’re playing in a public forum, using foul words and slurs.
If someone says, ‘hey, could you not?’, we do turn the abuse down. If someone gets too nasty, someone else does ask people to calm down. But in general, things get heated up. That’s because the games are competitive and you play for long periods of time. If you slack off, even your own team could get abusive with you. However, I think anything said in the heat of the moment should be ignored. It’s a few seconds of abusive language and you can brush it off. It’s just a game after all.
If you’re going to get so involved in the words flying about as you play that you will be upset by them, then it’s no longer a game. You’re just stressing yourself out when the point of playing is to de-stress.
But you can report abusive people these days. The platforms are quite stringent. They block the abuser for a couple of months or even indefinitely because all the voice and text messages are being recorded.
Pune-based businessman Richard Steele, 44, has two sons who game but aren’t allowed interactive ones yet.
“Anyone who plays should tell abusers to mind what they say”
By Manjeet Ahluwalia
I have been gaming since I was in class 7 and today the two games I am invested in are Call Of Duty and Rainbow Six Siege. These two are Player vs Player games, which are highly competitive. Rankings matter in these games, so people tend to be pretty serious about them and when they are losing, they start lashing out and pulling you down, using slurs and cuss words.
These days, gaming platforms will ban you instantly if you make racist slurs. This ban can range from two hours to 24 hours to even forever if you persist in using these slurs. But bans like this are not applicable to misogynist threats and slurs, which often can be really objectionable.
There is a kind of mutual understanding among all the players that this kind of bad language is common while playing these games. It’s almost taken for granted. Perhaps this is because there are very few female gamers. However, there is no doubt that the slurs and threats can be harsh and very intense, making a lot of players feel weird.
A lot of male gamers say that female gamers should speak up. But I believe anyone who plays, male or female, should tell the abusers to mind what they say.
Manjeet Ahluwalia, 26, is an entrepreneur from Vadodara who plays for about six hours a day.
From HT Brunch, November 28, 2021
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