fabs
03-29-2012, 07:03 AM
Hello all.
I'm interested to know the thoughts behind the system which filters some abusive and some non-abusive words and replaces them with asterisks. I refer to the in-game system which converts words like **** (such as "**** your gun" telling your ally to prepare for a fight) to "****" (which causes ganks to be lost because of bad communication).
Has anyone with access to the accounts data considered doing a study to find which age groups of players play hon, and which languages they speak? I consider it offensive for my in-game language to be censored based on the US dialect of the English language, considering that many censored words are not offensive in places such as Australia. It is also offensive to consider the fact that very few non-English words are censored.
The system also allows people to use "offensive" language by simply capitalising one or more letters. So the system fails anyway, allowing people to type "**** OFF", but blocking other more innocuous phrases.
The question is: Is it worthwhile to enforce a censorship system based on the ideals of one nation, when the system does not even work effectively and it also offends people of other regions? Is the demographic of HoN players really offended by the blocked words, and how many of HoN's players are even Americans?
I'm interested to know the thoughts behind the system which filters some abusive and some non-abusive words and replaces them with asterisks. I refer to the in-game system which converts words like **** (such as "**** your gun" telling your ally to prepare for a fight) to "****" (which causes ganks to be lost because of bad communication).
Has anyone with access to the accounts data considered doing a study to find which age groups of players play hon, and which languages they speak? I consider it offensive for my in-game language to be censored based on the US dialect of the English language, considering that many censored words are not offensive in places such as Australia. It is also offensive to consider the fact that very few non-English words are censored.
The system also allows people to use "offensive" language by simply capitalising one or more letters. So the system fails anyway, allowing people to type "**** OFF", but blocking other more innocuous phrases.
The question is: Is it worthwhile to enforce a censorship system based on the ideals of one nation, when the system does not even work effectively and it also offends people of other regions? Is the demographic of HoN players really offended by the blocked words, and how many of HoN's players are even Americans?