Home
"Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB."
I never put much thought into that phrase until I saw how depraved the Call of Duty: Black Ops community can be. In the last week, I've seen user-made gun emblems showing people having sex with animals (and vice-versa), KKK members lynching black men in a tree, a woman violating herself with a beer bottle, and countless instances of masturbation and drug use (occasionally combined into the same image).
When I originally bought Black Ops, I noticed a woman and her son (who looked no older than 13) were buying the same game and a PlayStation 3. Yes, it's a mature-rated title, but if Black Ops caught me off guard, I imagine that mom will auction the PS3 on eBay once she recovers from the shock of seeing what her son's new online friends created.
It's disappointing to see members of the community conducting themselves online in the most vulgar ways possible when society seems to be accepting video games more and more each year. Black Ops in particular seems to draw out the worst of the worst by allowing them to customize the emblems that represent their profiles. I doubt parents who felt their children were mature enough to handle the game's violence ever expected its online community included fans of rape, racial bigotry and bestiality.
To be fair, the majority of players don't have offensive emblems. Some users have actually made really clever use of Black Ops' limited selection of tools to recreate famous characters. I'm always stunned when I see Futurama's Dr. Zoidberg, the kids from South Park, pretty much everyone from the Mario series, and plenty of other pop-culture icons. Less artistic players like myself just stick with the stock images of guns and skulls, but the more creative community members really exemplify what developer Treyarch had in mind when it came up with the feature. Others, however, squander their time and talent by combining images in crude and superficial ways to make sick jokes with no punchline. Treyarch has provided an easy option to report offensive emblems and has banned players for recreating inappropriate images like the Nazi flag, but you can still stumble across these pictures far too often nearly two months after the game's release.
What's more bothersome is that people choose to represent themselves similarly on every online game and not just Black Ops. I've encountered players with ridiculous gamertags describing their genitalia (Long_Schlong) and racial prejudices (Fu_ck Nig_gers). Rather than a crude image found in one game, though, these names follow and represent players everywhere on their console. I can't imagine accepting a friend request from OBAMAKILLER480, but it's unfathomable that someone would even take the time to register such a name. What does it say about a person when they choose to be known for something so vile?
Forget about video games desensitizing children to violence. When people choose to be identified by their intolerance and sick sense of humor, and we simply accept it as part of the community, it's hard to argue that we're not becoming apathetic toward such despicable behavior.
It's frustrating when those who have never stepped foot inside the video-game community see nothing but violence from the distance, but I hope for the industry's sake that those people never take a closer look. What they find in communities like Black Ops' will only serve to embarrass and harm the medium's reputation for a long time to come. Do yourself a favor and report every offensive emblem you see (and report those inappropriate usernames/gamertags while you're at it). Otherwise, you're only contributing to a problem that's waiting to blow up in our faces.
