Man Makes MMORPG Mad

I’m going to piss people off with this, so if you don’t like that, you can stop reading.

The Mittani got drunk at the Alliance Panel at Fanfest, made some very poor comments about suicide, and now is getting railroaded all over *gasp* the Eve blogoshpere.

Players (Human Beings) in Eve use terms like “rapecage”, “rape face”, homosexual slurs, racist slurs, and probably some things I have never heard.  Players in FPS games hump dead opponents.  Duke Nukem talks about sexual acts on amputated body parts.  “Gamers” have a lexicon that would make a nun burst into holy flames due to proximity.  This is insensitive and childish and immature.

This is also the state of online gaming, the internet and locker rooms in the United States, and I would wager in the world at large, in the bored male demographic.  What Alex Gianturco said was something I assume he regrets, but was nothing even remotely beyond the pale for gamers to hear.  This incident speaks more to the sad state of discourse in the greater gaming community at large, and if anything should a be point for gamers to rally behind.  Not to rally against one drunk guy, but to rally against all gamers who use such terms in any context anywhere.

If you want to get indignant, call, email and riot in every game you play against anyone who uses such terms.  Report every incident of any offensive language you encounter.  Stop using it yourself.  But until you can say you have never told someone to die in a fire, you’ve never drunk the tears of another player, and you’ve never done anything that could have made someone angry or mad or depressed, please spare the world your righteous indignation at one example of an otherwise pervasive trend.