Unfortunately, racist abuse is commonplace in a lot of online gaming communities. Developers from various studios have tried to fight against this phenomenon and their results have been mixed. Infinity Ward, the studio which has developed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, has just committed to increasing their allocated resources to monitor and subsequently remove any racist names and comments they identify in their game. They have also apologized for not doing a better job so far when It comes to combating racism.
According to a post that the studio made public on Twitter, there is absolutely no place for racist content in their games. They have now begun an effort to fight discriminate behavior. On Twitter, Infinity Ward has also mentioned that they are currently issuing thousands of bans because of hate-oriented and racist names and comments on a daily basis. The company is aware that they have to do more, however. In order to do that, Infinity Ward will implement the following in their games:
- Implement more resources to monitor and ID racist content
- Implement filters and more strict restrictions on name changes
- Increase permanent bans in order to root out any repeat offenders
- Evaluate in-game improvements, so that offenses are easier to report
- Implement more in-game reporting systems in order to increase the amount of bans given out within an hour
Tools are of course important, but changing the behavior of players within the game is no easy task. In a 2010 NPR report about “Concerns of Racism in Multiplayer Videogames” which actually happened to cite Modern Warfare 2 as one of the most popular video games of the time, readers were warned that racism is an issue within the gaming community. Recently, Triternion, the developer of Mordhau, has caused some controversy as they let players toggle off female characters and characters of color.