One of the biggest complaints about Xbox Live are all the little troll kids who happen to be racist, homophobic misogynists. It's so ridiculous and so bad that it's more hostile and volatile than the mutant infested future of 2019: After The Fall of New York.
Many websites and gaming outlets are now reporting on how Microsoft plans to take the little mutant brats bred from the mentality of trolls and sticking those rascals under a bridge where they belong. Originally, OXM managed to get the story from Microsoft's senior product manager Mike Lavin, who explained that...
There's a lot of folks, a lot of our core consumers who just want to basically kick back and stay in touch with some of their old college buddies,""But the problem we see is that this fragments voice communication within games. It's very difficult, because if you're isolated in Party Chat, you're leaving everybody else behind.""in order to do that, you need a community of folks that aren't screaming vulgarities every ten seconds, or the griefers or the harassers, those types of folks."What we're looking at doing is creating a very robust system around reputation and match-making,"
Lavin explains that they aren't going near the Friends List, and anyone who happens to be a close comrade in arms will be unaffected by the reputation they hold (unless of course, you ban them from your friends list, then they're fodder for the wild). But the new reputation system will affect only the people you don't know – the randoms, the PUGs and the online sub-culture newbies.
For those other unwelcoming types of a wanton nature, Microsoft has a plan in store for them: Troll status.
The company plains on following up with this crackdown on bad behavior since their release of Halo 4 last year. And just as the main image above indicates, courtesy of Major “Flip Switcher” Nelson, there will be tiers of trollism to ensure that only people of a certain personality color will be stuck together. You know, it's sort of like racial segregation back during mid-20th century here in Yankee country, but this time it's for separating trolls from decent people... it's not the discriminatory thing that got some rustling going on with the Jimmies.
What's more is that this policy is not just limited to vulgar speaking Call of Duty rejects and 12-year-olds who have been spending way too much time on 4Chan. The reputation management system will also apply, but is not limited, to: Harassers, sexual offenders, perverts, elitists, griefers and quitters.
Lavin goes on to explain that...
We've learned from everything we've seen, and we're trying to take it to the next level. So there'll be very good things that happen to people that just play their games and are good participants. And you'll start to see some effects if you continue to play bad or, or harass other people en masse. You'll probably end up starting to play more with other people that are more similar to you."
So if you like making comments that would cause someone like Howard Stern to cringe from your disconcert, there will be a nice little kiddie table with other people to huddle around and make similar comments with.
My only question is: What happens when these sorts of technological neanderthals are left to their own communities? I guess we'll find out once this new reputation policy goes into full effect when the Xbox One launches later this year. In some regards, I kind of want to see what a conversation in a room full of low-level trolls will turn out like. Could we literally see a cesspool take on a physical form through verbal communication? Time will tell. Time will tell.
Additional details on the rep scores will be available in the next issue of the Official Xbox Magazine.
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