Or maybe they hate you more? From their PR, it’s kind of hard to tell, but the gist of the news is this: Gamers can now use the word “gay” in their username if they so choose. Gay, yay! In a press release, Xbox Live General Manager Marc Whitten tells gamers:
“The Xbox LIVE Terms of Use and Code of Conduct are designed to create a place where people can safely enjoy all of the ways to interact on our service … without fear of discrimination or harassment…
[We've] update[d] the Xbox LIVE Terms of Use and Code of Conduct which will allow our members to more freely express their race, nationality, religion and sexual orientation in Gamertags and profiles. Under our previous policy, some of these expressions of self identification were not allowed in Gamertags or profiles to prevent the use of these terms as insults or slurs. … it inadvertently excluded a part of our Xbox LIVE community.”
Typically most corporate PR is horribly executed, but the above manages to paint the company in a positive light after what could’ve been a PR disaster. It manages to make me feel warm and fuzzy feelings for XBox when my first reaction was set to stun.
They’ve made an important distinction in admitting that gamers often use the word “gay” (and all its hatefully misspelled derivations) as an insult, and positioning themselves as simply trying to protect that demographic. Whether it’s true or not we’ll never know, but I kind of want to shake the hand of whatever PR flak actually wrote that letter, because we all know it wasn’t Marc Whitten.
To put this whole thing in context, here’s a PSA from Wanda Sykes waaaaaaay back in 2008:
What do you think, fellow nerds? Was it just an oversight on XBox’s part? Were they really trying to protect their gay players’ feelers? Or were they just being what most companies are: Juggernauts of social mores, laser-focused on the bottom line, and way behind the times?
*Photo from the wonderful Consumerist blog.
that video is hiLARious, had never seen it.that seems like the kind of tag a game would totally have. I kind of like to think most young douchy gamers don't care unless they get caught, which seems to have happened. but right on x-box for saying something, anything at all. that phrase is so ugly and so pervasively used by kids now.
I remember that phrase being used when I was in middle/high school, and it's only just now that I got the nerve to start calling people out on it. It certainly helps that there are amusing PSAs at which to point offenders!