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[MrRoboto75]

What is a swear and what is not changes a lot. The reason why some words are "bad" is that we acknowledge them a as such. For example, one of my friends started using "Corona" as a swear word.

But a more pressing problem could be overzealousness of such program. I know that in text, automatic censorship sometimes censors stuff it should not.

Either you will be forbidden from talking about beaches and beeches, or it will be easy to speak of female dogs.
Shitake mushrooms will be banned.

And that is just english. What if someone talks in a different language, with different curse words?

IIRC there was a set of Godzilla alt-art cards for Magic: the Gathering, which was slated to release a month or two into the corona quarantine.  One of the cards was something like "Space Godzilla, Death Corona" which they quickly rescinded and reprinted with some other title.

Probably the most egregious example was Dark Souls, which had the knight k***gt class.  There was also TF2's "Lord Cockswain's Pith Helmet" when on the official forums would become "♥♥♥♥♥wain".

[Kagus]

A lot of game devs have been on a long quixotic journey to reduce the toxicity of their online video games.  It never really solves anything.

Remember when the devs behind Sea of Thieves--not having any experience with multiplayer games--solved toxic player behavior?

That was nice.

[MrRoboto75]

A lot of game devs have been on a long quixotic journey to reduce the toxicity of their online video games.  It never really solves anything.

Remember when the devs behind Sea of Thieves--not having any experience with multiplayer games--solved toxic player behavior?

That was nice.

Actually I'm not very familiar with anything going on in Sea of Thieves.

I know it vaguly No Man's Skyed into some sort of relevantcy, but that's it.

[Yellow Pixel]

At some point, we'll end up in society where people have forgotten what the original n-word was and
n

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

ice things

will be
ba

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

nne

d

Except that we can still hear the n*****-word aplenty in movies (some of them being very critical of racism or just so old that it's normal to hear the word). But I guess we should ban them all?

[Kagus]

My favorite potato chip flavor is Salt & Vi[redacted]

Sea of Thieves.

Yeah, ever since back in semi-early development they, uh... Decided to "fix" toxic players.

With about as much consideration for reality as one would expect.

[hops]

I think it should be said that the experience in a lot of the kind of "multiplayer games played solo" would probably be improved by this (assuming it doesn't actually bleep, and just cuts the audio). Many people, probably a majority, get fatigued by garbage on voice comms and write it off altogether while keeping everyone muted (and a feedback loop of nobody using them seriously develops as a result).

But it also needs to be said that the "opt-in", "end-user" experience thing is obviously horseshit; an insignificant number of people would willingly put this gross bloat on their machine, and Intel would never make money off it. The only way to profit would be licensing it to companies like Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, and the owners of the largest multiplayer PC games, where there's no reason to believe it would be either "opt-in" or "opt-out" (or not just used to automatically ban/suspend people). They might also end up selling it to any government interested in mass-surveillance (not real-time censorship, that's dumb) which doesn't already have this in development (but if Intel can do it, any other tech company can, and the NSA almost certainly already has this cooking somewhere or already in use in select circumstances).

It's also questionable just in the sphere of video games. The drive for market share of these mindless corporations leads to taking every aspect of human life and transforming it into a commodity (an inferior substitute) that can be bought and sold exclusively on their terms, which ultimately means the terms of a monopoly or cartel catering to the widest market. The kinds of games that would be improved by this are basically antisocial experiences, thoroughly in line with the general trend of compartmentalizing existence into a miserable work-life relieved by a feed of entertainment that subtracts the remaining hours from the day. That this would just let them do one-half of that better (i.e. more profit, more consolidation, more barriers, with more people) doesn't really seem worthwhile.

TBF this would be an upgrade from Nintendo's usual policy of having next to no ingame communication.

[Rolan7]

It's tricky because they're often thought to have only children in their customer base.  Largely because of a console, the Wii, which was released over a decade ago.  15 years, actually.  oof

Which is super ironic when their primary business is nostalgia.  Pokemon, Legend of Zelda, Mario... (a little Metroid but I guess that's off the map nowadays- Oh noo, this isn't becoming another Other M rant)

Point is that Nintendo gets a lot of young children from some of its games, but it also keeps a lot of older gamers with its legacy IP.  And that leads to some hilarious tension, as some gamers whine about the accommodations made for new gamers.

Oh but communication:  Yeah it's valid that Pokemon GO and other Nintendo-umbrella games don't allow text messages, because there are a lot of kids playing.

[MrRoboto75]

Nintendo: Alright so online smash can get a little salty so we disabled taunts.

Also Nintendo: Hey check out this cool wrestling heel pokemon that has taunts literally baked into his moveset.

[Lord Shonus]

It's tricky because they're often thought to have only children in their customer base.  Largely because of a console, the Wii, which was released over a decade ago.  15 years, actually.  oof

Nintendo's "Kiddy" reputation has nothing to do with the Wii. It is entirely due to Nintendo Of America's extremely aggressive censorship during the NES and early SNES era. It was not always followed to the letter, but under the policies of that time, anything that wouldn't give a "G" rating in a film today was forbidden, as well as things that wouldn't be a problem in a "G" movie. Any mention of religion was outlawed, as was the concept of death, blood, and (of course) any mention of sex. Besides the incredible limitations of cartridges, this is a big reason several of Nintendo's bigger third-party licensees jumped ship to Sony when the PS1 was released.


Nintendo's been trying to kill this reputation for decades now - the entire reason Killer Instinct exists is the backlash over the heavily censored SNES version of Mortal Kombat, they made sure to have properly gory games on the N64, and eventually contracted Capcom for an exclusive Resident Evil license for the GameCube. All to shed their "for kids and kids ONLY" image. It didn't work all that well, even though Nintendo now has some of the loosest content standards.


The Wii was Nintendo being smart - since the PS3 and Xbox 360 were locked in a death struggle for the high-end console market, trying to break into that would be pointless. A cheaper unit designed to be approachable to casuals as well as the traditional gamer market? That could hit an entirely different segment and not have to compete at all!

[hector13]

Nintendo has been the kids console since the NES though. One of the marketing things about the Mega Drive/Genesis was to target older kids who may have had younger siblings in order to tempt them over to the other side.

This is also part of the reason Mortal Kombat was such a big deal on the Nintendo console, and the Nintendo version didn’t have blood in it.

Awww ninja’d

[Lord Shonus]

I didn't get into the SEGA connection because I thought it was getting long, but you're quite right. A big part of "Genesis does what Nintendon't" marketing was the stuff that Nintendo wouldn't allow.

[martinuzz]

My supermarket is all out of cheese.

Hackers broke into a major distribution firm that supplies supermarkets in the Benelux and Germany, messing up their logistics. Supermarkets all over the place did not get any cheese delivered.
I can only imagine this being a warning from the hackers. 'Now it's only the cheese, pay up or we will disrupt all your food deliveries.'

Scary how vulnerable our daily food supply is to random idiots with a computer.

[heydude6]

I wonder if this has anything to do with the Solarwinds leak, like with the hackers who hacked the water purification plant.

[martinuzz]

Perhaps. Perhaps not.
The Solarwind debacle is still lingering with 3d party users unaware of the problem.

[TamerVirus]

Cheese today
tomorrow, the world