The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Sony’s (embarrasingly non-innovative) Playstation-based virtual world, called Home, is experience more shrinking growing pains. This time, the issue revolves around censorship. From the article:
The problem was that the words he was using – “gay,” “lesbian” and “bisexual” – were being filtered from text chats and were not being allowed in the naming of clubs or in postings in club forums. Marsh, who is straight but supports gay rights, said he raised the issue with Home community managers during the private beta test, but the problems persisted after the public beta introduction of Home on Dec. 11.
“I can understand if they’re filtering out profanity, but if feel like it’s discrimination,” Marsh said. “By blocking a word like ‘gay,’ which is a preferred term by the gay community, you’re encouraging it as a bad word.”
There are a couple of things that strike me here. First, if you live in the midwest and have junior high-aged kids, the word “gay” is indeed used, too frequently, as a derogatory expression. If a teenager doesn’t like something he or she calls it gay. It’s quite common. I don’t know if it’s vulgar or not, but I don’t believe it’s censorship-worthy. Second, lobbying the proprietors of a miserable, unpromising project like Playstation Home about gay rights is like picketing fifty miles from the nearest Wal-Mart: unlikely to have any effect, and completely out of place.
If you don’t like something in Home, there are plenty of other options to suit your social (and yes, sexual) preferences: like Second Life, Sims Online, the list goes on and on. Heck, I’ve known (multiple) people whose marriages have been destroyed over affairs that started on World of Warcraft. Bottom line, if Sony thinks it’s accomplishing something by banning the use of the word “gay”, they’re wrong. And if a gay activist thinks he’s accomplishing something by complaining about it to Sony, he’s probably wrong too.
Interestingly, Sony has also opted to block the words “Christ” and “Jew”. So I guess neither gays nor religious advocates will have much success setting up special interest groups. The article goes on to say that because it’s early yet for Home, Sony can be forgiven. I say take a cue from Linden Lab: Second Life is the wild wild west; nothing is off limits. Kind of makes it more fun.
And I guess that’s the bottom line. In our initial evaluation of Home, my girlfriend and I basically came to the conclusion that it wasn’t fun. If Sony can solve THAT problem, all this other stuff would be worth talking about.
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