It’s been a long while since I’ve blogged here. Much too long really. That said though, I’ve been thinking of better, more intereseting content for the blog whilst I was spending time on tumblr and Instagram and thought about writing this as a regular blog “article”. It’s focused on SWTOR – the game I just can’t quit but with a funny and sometimes not so funny twist (depending on the context). So, one thing I’ve often been unhappy with in any video game I’ve played is inappropriate player behaviour. If you’ve been a gamer for any amount of time, you’ve probably run into a player or two that rubbed you the wrong way. I’ve come across dozens in the many years that I’ve been both playing and working as a journalist focused on video games and I’m almost 99.9 percent certain that any video game that has a substantial community behind it will also have its fair share of idiots; people that are there to do nothing else other than piss you off. There are many names for this type of person – “griefers” seems to come to mind but I think I’ve found a specific “niche” of player in SWTOR that I’m going to focus on for this weekly/fortnightly rant; players who are purposefully going out of their way to be inappropriate.

Welcome to my new blog topic – SWTOR Reported!

So to clarify – I don’t report players just because they disagreed with something I did or said or started to give me grief for some other aspect of my gameplay. That would be kind of pointless because you will ALWAYS come across someone who will make their thoughts about you known in a video game, especially in a MMORPG where you play with hundreds of complete strangers. No, my focus is on one particular type of gamer, the type of gamer that thinks its OK to discuss topics such as bestiality, sex with family members, rape, BDSM and a myriad of other inappropriate content that is OBVIOUSLY against SWTOR’S terms and conditions or breaches one of their terms of service or rules of gameplay. Here’s a snippet taken from the SWTOR support website:

Behavior or content that is harmful, offensive, defamatory, obscene, harassing, threatening, hateful, degrading, intimidating, discriminatory, or otherwise breaks the rules in our User Agreement.

I haven’t decided whether or not I’ll disclose player names in my blog posts. There is a website that does something similar but it focuses on abusive behaviour towards female gamers specifically. My rant won’t be about sexism because I don’t really care if someone thinks “female gamers shouldn’t be playing video games and/or they’re all horrible at it”. I think that’s a topic that’s too common place in the gaming community today. But players who talk about raping their own sister in general chat… yeah, nah bro you’re outta here – I’ll report your ass just as fast as I can type it into the reporting form. And please, don’t bother coming back on another character because I’ll only report that one too 🙂

Also for those wondering if it’s worth doing, yes reporting players for inappropriate behaviour DOES get investigated by EA. Whilst EA cannot disclose the outcome to you after you’ve reported someone, I know for a fact that people I’ve reported have either never returned OR they decided to play on another character somewhere else. As long as it’s not in my gaming space, I’m content.

So if you think you can just log onto SWTOR and discuss (in intimate detail) how you wanted to sexually abuse someone you know or even an NPC in the game and get away with it… think again, my friend, think again.