Careful what you say in Halo 4 guys. If you're caught harassing a lady gamer with classy comments about the kitchen, popping out the titties or making you a sandwich, you could be looking at a permanent ban of your Xbox Live account. Microsoft doesn't want to deal with any scrubs.
Given that the biggest Xbox 360 game will launch next week and all sorts of unwieldy types will be flooding the multiplayer net-waves with all the typical trollism one would expect from the testosterone-inducing atmosphere of a competitive first-person shooter, 343 Industries and Microsoft want to ensure that the playing field is free from the sexist trolls that may invade the playing space.
In an interview with Gamespot, executive producer Kiki Wolfkill stated that...
"It can be dangerous to give adolescents a broadcast mechanism," .... "There are always going to be jerks out there, and if you give them a way to express that side of their personality without being seen, you're going to see this type of behaviour manifest itself."
343 Industries' head honcho Bonnie Ross added further to the discussion, stating that...
"As developers, we have a personal responsibility to think about how our games come across," .... "With Halo 4, we were very deliberate in thinking about who should be female and who should be male in the game, and if we came off stereotypical, we went back to question what we were doing and why.""Most people look at a franchise like Halo, and automatically assume it's run by a guy," .... "People are surprised to learn that it's a woman who's running the Halo 4 show. When Microsoft created 343 Industries to take over Halo, I was given first choice to run the studio because I had proven myself. My gender played no part in it."
343 and Microsoft, as noted by Gamespot, will be taking the security of the online play very seriously and perma-banning sexist or discriminatory remarks with zero-tolerance fervor.
I doubt this will stop most trolls from doing what they do best, but for those of you who can't afford to buy a new Xbox Live Gold subscription for every time you get banned, you might think twice about talking down or talking bad about a female gamer.
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