I play City of Heroes and City of Villains, an online massively multiplayer game or MMO. Recenty while doing some PuG [Pick up Group] missions the word rape was tossed around quite casually as an equivalent of really kicking some ass in the game. Now as a female player, it really bothered me and for the most part the team members were ok when I voiced a complaint about the casual tossing around of the word.

I was surprised that this kept happening all weekend while I played. I don’t know if this is a common occurence in online gaming now, but have people just lost all sense of propriety when interacting in an online environment or are more idiots just getting into online gaming?

I don’t want to come off as some over sensitive, whiney woman who can’t take the heat of the online gaming kitchen but since when was it ok to just casually toss about the word rape, fag, or use that’s so gay as replacements for beaten, destroyed, or that’s stupid.

I guess a part of me wants to believe its just the stupidity of teenagers or idiot frat boys that are usually playing online games, but if this trend continues I may just have to play solo all the time.

Published by cypheroftyr

Tanya DePass is the founder and Director of I Need Diverse Games, a non-profit organization based in Chicago, which is dedicated to better diversification of all aspects of gaming. I Need Diverse Games serves the community by supporting marginalized developers attend the Game Developer Conference by participating in the GDC Scholarship program, helps assist attendance at other industry events, and is seeking partnership with organizations and initiatives. Tanya is a lifelong Chicagoan who loves everything about gaming, #INeedDiverseGames spawn point, and wants to make it better and more inclusive for everyone. She founded and was the EIC of Fresh Out of Tokens podcast where games culture was discussed and viewed through a lense of feminism, intersectionality and diversity. Now she’s a co-host on Spawn on Me Podcast. Along with all of that, she’s the Programming Coordinator for OrcaCon, she often speaks on issues of diversity, feminism, race, intersectionality & other topics at multiple conventions throughout the year. Her writing about games and games critique appears in Uncanny Magazine, Polygon, Wiscon Chronicles, Vice Gaming, Paste Games, Mic, and other publications.

3 thoughts on “On the casual use of the word rape when playing MMO’s”

  1. I play COV and I think the noly thing you can do is add it to your filter and jsut ignore it unfortunatly alot of the player using that language are more of the younger kids whoe think its cool to curse like a pirate, but the sad truth i most of the college guys the Super Groups actually have less people using profanity then the single player which is kind of odd at least in my personal experience. There is alot of trash talk but nothing thats personality or feelings bound jsut the basic “F” this and “F” that LOL and maybe a couple of “Ass Monkeys”.

    There is nothing you can really do unless you go ahead and jsut quit all together…. I do feel a little bad for femail players mainly because as soon as anyone finds out there is a girl playing its like a date fest for them LOL I used to play with one girl that would never tell anyone on there she was really a girl because it like an online chat date contest LOL.

    Either way jsut a quick response my suggestion is just ignore it put on some sunglasses and let it be LOL there is nothing you can do about ignorant people.

  2. I see it all the time, in City and other games I’ve played and beta tested. I know there was one MMO out there where when a man was down, you could actually make your character appear to be giving to him up the chuff. More necro than rape, but I digress. :-p

    But mostly it’s just a very sad case of the watering down of language. I’ve said to groups that using words like ‘rape’ and ‘gay’ and ‘retarded’ isn’t cool and I’d rather not play with them — the response always comes back ‘we didn’t mean anything by it.’ And the thing is, I know they don’t, but it’s still hard to hear.

    As ‘gay’ is filtered out by the profanity filters, I wonder if ‘rape’ is as well.

  3. Actually, I’ve been noticing this too. I was on both Justice and Freedom servers and I was in three or four teams in which someone was misusing this word. I chalked it up to “the kids are in school so they grab their gametime on weekends and evenings and so I am seeing them more right now”.

Comments are closed.