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| Will the Circle Be Unbroken? | | By Myschyf | | April 19, 2000 | The first online game I ever played was a MUD called Arctic Sun -- or something like that. I didn't play it very long and it was about 8 or 9 years ago. You had to submit your name for approval to the powers that were and if they didn't like it you couldn't play. A pixie named Myschyf was deemed 'cute' and there I sat, facing the newbie forest, butterknife in hand.
When I played Neverwinter Nights on AOL we didn't have GMs. We had NWs. NWs were like cops. They sought out people with bad and offensive names, who used bad and offensive speech, hacked (NWN stored the character information on the client side so hacked character stats was a little problem that continually pervaded the game), or used bad or offensive language on the message boards. They were tough, too. Among the words you couldn't use in a name were negro, pimp, whore -- any of the George Carlin big 7 was just right out. You couldn't even think about those words. There was no masking, either. A$$ was the same as ass and you could get a warning or lose your account for saying it or making a character name that contained it.
Legends of Kesmai was such a polite game. Mild-mannered compared to today's slamfests. The players of that game did such unusal things as to actually help other players retrieve their death piles. Looting wasn't unheard of but was uncommon, and if you were caught doing so, you had a good chance of winding up dead. Players still had names like Rand al'Thor and Merlin, but that wasn't a big deal. If you made a character named Assmaster or FunkyRapePimp (sorry, that would be FuNkYr4p3P1mP -- which I don't remember anyone doing), a game representative might quietly meet you in the game and politely suggest that your name was inappropriate and should be changed. (You could change your character name once a week in LOK). This was if you hadn't been laughed into changing it of your own volition long before game staff needed to take action. It wasn't ever a problem that I remember.
Before the Ultima Online beta came out, I had probably beta tested a good dozen games. Even the most hardened of pk/pvp players had names like Hedron or Mad Drunk. Hardly offensive. It was just never an issue. Even more than that though, had As$M4St3R shown up in NWN or LOK or any of these games, he would have been laughed out of the game. "Your name is what?! You can't do any better than that?" The players, for the most part, were roleplayers. They usually had roleplaying backgrounds and roleplaying names. Even if the game or their playstyle had compiled into one big PVP fragfest, it was still a roleplaying game and an original imaginative name got you the gold star of creativity. People complimented each other on their names.
Then along came Ultima Online. You can imagine my surprise when I entered UO to be greeted with names like As$M4St3R or P1mPd4dDy or, simply, Whore. Who on earth would name a character Whore?! It was inconceivable (in the Princess Bride definition of that word of course).
Actually, the first time I ran into 'bad names' was running into the Fuckheads on Ocllo during the beta:
"Hi. We are the Fuckheads. This is our island. Leave."
"You are the what? You mean that's the name of your guild? Really? You actually called yourselves the Fuckheads? What kind of a name is that for a guild?"
"Vas Flam! Vas Flam! Vas Flam!"
Well, this was just the beta. Surely this was just an oversight of an overworked game development team and they would take care of it before the game went live. Surely no game company could afford or want to allow this type of name into the game. Wrong!
Three years later, OSI has finally entered the fray. Yesterday they released this statement on the UO website.
Character Names in Ultima Online
We would like to take this opportunity to remind you that inappropriate (racist, discriminatory, sexually explicit, derogatory, or offensive in any way) names are in violation of both the spirit of the Ultima Online community and the Ultima Online Service Agreement. As such, we urge that you take the time to delete any characters on your account that have names that may be considered inappropriate.
This warning extends to guild titles as well. If you are a member of a guild and have an inappropriate guild title, it is your responsibility to change the guild title (if you are the guildmaster), or have your guildmaster change it for you. Guildmasters are responsible for the titles associated with their guild members and will be held accountable for inappropriate guild titles. If you are unable to contact your guildmaster, then you should resign from the guild to remove the title.
Please be aware that if we find characters on your account with inappropriate names or guild titles, your account will be subject to discipline and may be subject to permanent suspension.
Today, the Lum Collective received the following letter by email (complete with scatalogical language and misspellings).
I hope yah can post this for a Joke or something, the OSI fuckheads suspended my account, and later baned becuase of a character name on the TEST CENTER, below is the notice I recieved.
This is a final warning.
Your account has been suspended for 72 hours for offensive character name(s).
These character(s) must be deleted immediately.
Any further violation of the rules of conduct or other inappropriate conduct in Ultima Online of any kind will result in the immediate termination of your account.
Specifically we refer to:
Character : test center
Shard : jewishomosexual
Please delete these character(s) immediately upon your return to Ultima Online to prevent the termination of your service.
Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.
I have to tell you, I'm not feeling sympathetic here. JewishHomosexual? Are you kidding me? You can't do any better than that? But this begs the question: Are game companies doomed to having a GM force that exists to police their client base?
I think the only game I've ever played that didn't have such a 'police force' was LOK. Their client base was much smaller at the time, however, and there were one or two 'ghods' that pretty much kept an eye on everything. But you know, their player base wasn't that much smaller than NWNs, but it took a veritable squadron of NWs to police NWN. Fred from Lords of Empyria (which I believe is now defunct) was so uptight about language and names that he kicked one player and that player's guild out of the game before the game was even into the beta. This was a result of postings on the game company's message boards.
In Everquest, even non-roleplaying names can be wiped on a whim. When you make a name in EQ, it is put into a pool. Any guide can look at it. Most of the time, they will just go through with no action, in which case it just gets checked on the current filters -- obscene names, Merlin, Arthur, etc. However, if a smurf is feeling in a particularly bad mood, they will just veto names they don't think are roleplaying enough. There are numerous instances where a name that made it through one day, something innocuous enough like Vargos, didn't make it through the next day, even though the character had since been deleted.
Have we then come full circle? In UO, GMs are running around looking for macroers and inappropriate names. In EQ, guides are wiping any name they feel isn't fit and Verant is frantically looking for ShowEQ on their client's machines. Is this what we've been reduced to in order to play together -- game company police forces? I feel as though I've been transported back in time to NWN where your account would be regularly inspected by game staff to ensure that you hadn't altered your character's stats. Well, we've learned not to keep character information on the client side. I suppose that's something.
I have mixed feelings about all this. Should someone be able to name his or her character JewishHomosexual? What if it were worse? Do I really want to see the game staff wasting their time and money on tracking down names that most people know are inappropriate? Or is this something I can live with so that game staff doesn't have to spend their time policing names? I've lived with it for three years. We all have. Would another three hurt so very much?
The freedom of speech thing doesn't bother me much. Its their game. If they want to have every single character in the game named Lord British or Lady Minax they can do that. It is simply the waste of time, money and resources. It is also one more thing that pits the game company against the players when they should be walking hand in hand down the path to a better game. And for what? To get rid of JewishHomosexual? I can ignore the little twerp. Can't we all? And wouldn't that be more effective in the long run? |
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