Latest / THINK BEFORE YOU SLEEP / Video Game Censorship Has Gotten Insane

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Video Game Censorship Has Gotten Insane · THINK BEFORE YOU SLEEP

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, I'm Anna, and I'm the studio head for Valorant,
0:03
Speaker 1: and I'm here to chat a bit about player behavior
0:06
Speaker 1: in the game. Since launching Val, especially with the addition
0:08
Speaker 1: of voice comms, we've known that fighting in-game harassment was
0:11
Speaker 1: going to be both something we needed to prioritize and
0:14
Speaker 1: also would be one of the most challenging issues that
0:17
Speaker 1: we would face.
0:18
Speaker 2: Who is this for?
0:19
Speaker 3: What Valorant players are asking for this? Because judging by
0:22
Speaker 3: the dislike ratio, the comments on this video, and the
0:24
Speaker 3: low view count relative to your other videos, It seems
0:27
Speaker 3: like pretty much everyone hates this, and any reasonable person
0:30
Speaker 3: would just mute players they don't like.
0:32
Speaker 1: I've spent the last couple of weeks reviewing player logs,
0:35
Speaker 1: looking at penalty escalation paths, discussing player behavior philosophies, seeing
0:41
Speaker 1: where they're working, and where we absolutely need to do better.
0:45
Speaker 2: Penalty escalation paths. Player behavior philosophy.
0:48
Speaker 3: Now I'm certain this is bullshit that no one's asking for,
0:52
Speaker 3: Because the only reason to use the human resources language here,
0:55
Speaker 3: instead of speaking in a way that's easy to understand,
0:57
Speaker 3: is to try and hide what you're doing. Using euphemisms
1:00
Speaker 3: and being unspecific is the tactic of liars.
1:03
Speaker 1: It's not the first time I've had to do this.
1:05
Speaker 1: It will not be the last. It's important work, but
1:09
Speaker 1: it's not always easy work. I'm a human and a
1:13
Speaker 1: parent and a caregiver and a team lead. And in
1:16
Speaker 1: almost every aspect of my life, I feel this deep,
1:19
Speaker 1: responsibility to protect people.
1:21
Speaker 3: Protect them from what? What do you consider bad player
1:24
Speaker 3: behavior philosophy and what sort of penalty escalation paths are
1:27
Speaker 3: you taking? Because right now you're just talking and you
1:30
Speaker 3: haven't really shown us any evidence of how big of
1:32
Speaker 3: a problem in-game harassment is or given us any specific
1:35
Speaker 3: examples of what counts as bad behavior, nor have you
1:38
Speaker 3: gone over how Valorant compares to other online games. So anyway,
1:42
Speaker 3: this is Anna Donlin, the head of Valorant Studios, who
1:45
Speaker 3: oversees a tactical hero shooter that was released during the
1:48
Speaker 3: COVID lockdowns. Several months ago, she was the presenter in
1:51
Speaker 3: this incredibly unpopular video called Keeping Our Community Healthy that
1:55
Speaker 3: discusses further crackdowns on hate speech from Riot Games, the
1:59
Speaker 3: people who make Valorant. So I thought, what an opportunity
2:02
Speaker 3: to check up on the state of affairs of online
2:04
Speaker 3: video game censorship as everyone forgets the sticks and stones
2:07
Speaker 3: metaphor that my generation was taught as kids.
2:10
Speaker 2: Let's continue.
2:11
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, there are still
2:13
Speaker 1: some people in this world who want to take out
2:15
Speaker 1: their insecurity or their bad day or their hate. or
2:19
Speaker 1: their whatever on some stranger through their computer screen.
2:24
Speaker 3: Or you're in a ranked match and they're mad at
2:25
Speaker 3: you because you caused them to lose. You know, like
2:28
Speaker 3: general behavior that would occur in any real life sports.
2:31
Speaker 3: But seriously, how commonly are people being deeply scarred over
2:35
Speaker 3: mean words on the internet? How do you know it's
2:38
Speaker 3: not mostly people who are not actually hurt but are
2:40
Speaker 3: reporting in retaliation because they couldn't think of a good comeback? Now,
2:44
Speaker 3: I get that sometimes there are threats and those should
2:46
Speaker 3: not be allowed. But I've played online games my entire life,
2:50
Speaker 3: and I cannot think of a single situation where I
2:52
Speaker 3: thought it was necessary to hit the report button because
2:55
Speaker 3: I was genuinely upset by something another player said. This
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Speaker 3: can't be that common, particularly considering the fact that you
3:00
Speaker 3: can just mute people you don't like.
3:02
Speaker 1: But I also want to make sure that I say
3:04
Speaker 1: this out loud. We have no room for these types
3:08
Speaker 1: of behavior in our game or in our community.
3:11
Speaker 3: I mean, what kind of behaviors are you talking about?
3:14
Speaker 3: You have yet to be specific about any complaint ticket
3:16
Speaker 3: that was received, or given any specific examples of a
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Speaker 3: behavior that's not allowed, which makes me think that you're
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Speaker 3: actually mostly censoring behavior that would be very unpopular to censor.
3:26
Speaker 1: Valorant is a team game. It's better played as a team.
3:30
Speaker 1: The strats are better. All of it's better. When you
3:34
Speaker 1: tell someone to just mute comms to avoid harassment, you
3:39
Speaker 1: are essentially putting the harassed person in a position to
3:42
Speaker 1: not communicate. to compromise how they want to play the
3:45
Speaker 1: game to accommodate you. Muting is a tool for people
3:51
Speaker 1: who choose to use it, not something that is there
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Speaker 1: to justify bad behaviors.
3:56
Speaker 3: Actually, harassment is exactly what muting is for. The main
3:59
Speaker 3: reason you mute people is because they're being annoying. And
4:02
Speaker 3: I mean, tell me that you don't play team games
4:04
Speaker 3: without telling me that you don't play team games. Most
4:07
Speaker 3: of these games you can solo queue up to higher
4:09
Speaker 3: ranks without ever even talking to anyone. In fact, in
4:12
Speaker 3: games such as League of Legends, not muting your teammates
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Speaker 3: can be a detriment. So all this kind of begs
4:18
Speaker 3: the question of, who is this person speaking, and what
4:20
Speaker 3: are her qualifications to determine what players want?
4:23
Speaker 2: Let's see.
4:24
Speaker 3: I found this Wall Street Journal article, and wow, it
4:26
Speaker 3: looks like Ana has actually lost a ton.
4:28
Speaker 2: Of weight since 2020. That's pretty impressive.
4:31
Speaker 3: Outside of that, there's nothing too interesting about this article
4:33
Speaker 3: other than the fact that it points out that Valorant
4:35
Speaker 3: is owned by China. Researching further, it looks like Anna
4:38
Speaker 3: worked on a ton of terrible games until she worked
4:41
Speaker 3: on Call.
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Speaker 2: Of Duty as a producer.
4:43
Speaker 3: Though, just because you produced the game doesn't mean you
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Speaker 3: actually play it to any significant extent. Then in 2015,
4:48
Speaker 3: she joined Riot and became a producer for League of
4:50
Speaker 3: Legends cosmetic content and in-game events. Great, so she's responsible
4:55
Speaker 3: for the overpriced skins.
4:56
Speaker 1: Just before Valorant, I was a senior producer on League
5:00
Speaker 1: of Legends. I was running the entire personalization department, which
5:03
Speaker 1: is things like skins and events. The Valorant team, they
5:07
Speaker 1: were going through some leadership changes. They really needed a
5:09
Speaker 1: producer who could come on board and really see how
5:12
Speaker 1: to take a game from a very advanced prototype to
5:15
Speaker 1: something that you could actually put into players' hands and
5:17
Speaker 1: be successful.
5:18
Speaker 3: Is she responsible for the DEI haircut in Valorant 2?
5:22
Speaker 3: The studio saw that Killmonger haircut in Black Panther and
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Speaker 3: just ran wild with it. The last paragraph of her
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Speaker 3: Riot Games profile says, Anna is a strong champion of
5:32
Speaker 3: women and marginalized genders.
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Speaker 2: Marginalized genders? So both men and women are marginalized?
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Speaker 3: And finally, I saw this article reacting to a tweet
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Speaker 3: that Anna made saying that she doesn't play solo queue,
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Speaker 3: which is essentially admitting that she doesn't engage with the
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Speaker 3: experience of the average player of her own game. So
5:48
Speaker 3: she has no idea how easy it is to mute
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Speaker 3: annoying players when you aren't click-farming for your Twitter account.
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Speaker 3: They act like men never encounter annoying or angry players.
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Speaker 3: We just hit the mute button and move on instead
6:00
Speaker 3: of crying about it on Twitter. Anyway, let's get back
6:03
Speaker 3: to the censorship video.
6:04
Speaker 1: Competitive games need to have room for banter. We believe this.
6:08
Speaker 3: Yes, but it's room for safe and non-offensive banter, right?
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Speaker 3: The kind of banter that you would expect people to
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Speaker 3: have at a corporate job where everyone's worried that they'll
6:16
Speaker 3: be reported to HR.
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Speaker 1: And I do understand the fear, the fear that we
6:20
Speaker 1: will sanitize gaming by over-addressing these issues. We have no
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Speaker 1: interest in doing that. That's not what we're talking about here.
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Speaker 2: Gee, why would players fear that?
6:30
Speaker 1: But we do believe that a person should not be
6:32
Speaker 1: in a position to have to grow a thicker skin
6:35
Speaker 1: or whatever other unhelpful suggestions have been thrown out there
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Speaker 1: just to avoid threats of violence or literal hate speech.
6:43
Speaker 3: Wow, those are two incredibly different things being roped in together.
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Speaker 3: Do you see why people don't trust you when you
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Speaker 3: say that you won't over-sanitize the game? In one category,
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Speaker 3: we have stuff like threats, doxing, and stalking, which should
6:54
Speaker 3: be banned, and in the other category, we have things
6:57
Speaker 3: that could be as benign as mean words. These days,
7:00
Speaker 3: lots of big gaming companies have a terrible track record
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Speaker 3: of defining exactly what hate speech is, and plenty of
7:06
Speaker 3: said gaming companies love to rope people who are simply
7:09
Speaker 3: being mean in with violent radicals when the company is
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Speaker 3: doing something they know is unpopular.
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Speaker 4: It's become an industry apparatus. Instead of engaging with player
7:17
Speaker 4: criticism in good faith, they've developed an overused playbook, Gaslight, Deflect,
7:22
Speaker 4: and Vilify. When players were pushing back against The Last
7:25
Speaker 4: of Us Part II, they were told that their criticism
7:27
Speaker 4: wasn't valid. They were lumped in with some of the
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Speaker 4: worst people online, the doxers, the threats, the actual extremists.
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Speaker 4: Instead of addressing real concerns... the character assassinations, the forced
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Speaker 4: narrative shifts, the retcons that broke player immersion, the conversation
7:41
Speaker 4: was hijacked by something else entirely. It was never about
7:45
Speaker 4: why players rejected the game, it was about blaming the
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Speaker 4: audience for not embracing progress.
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Speaker 3: So I did some research to find out what types
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Speaker 3: of things are considered hate speech by the Valorant team,
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Speaker 3: and I found this article titled, Beyond Your Best Behavior.
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Speaker 3: The subsection titled, Unsportsmanlike Conduct, details some of the types
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Speaker 3: of speech that can get you banned. Number one, insulting, threatening, harassing,
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Speaker 3: or offensive language. Okay, at least some of those should
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Speaker 3: be banned. Number two, abusive language targeted at players based
8:14
Speaker 3: on their performance or otherwise. You've got to be kidding me.
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Speaker 3: They'll ban you for saying other players suck at the game.
8:20
Speaker 3: Can someone get Ludwig, please? I feel like he should
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Speaker 3: see this.
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Speaker 4: I'm cool with people being mean because I am bad
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Speaker 4: or do something dumb.
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Speaker 3: I'm not cool with people being mean because I have
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Speaker 3: a trait that I cannot change about myself. Remember two
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Speaker 3: or three years ago when I said that all these
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Speaker 3: dumb censorship campaigns would lead to companies over-censoring things? And
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Speaker 3: Ludwig and Hasan made videos saying that that wouldn't happen?
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Speaker 2: Well, here it is.
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Speaker 3: Someone please go get those two to take a break
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Speaker 3: from showing off their dress collection and have them look
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Speaker 3: at this conduct page from Valorant. Valorant is censoring behavior
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Speaker 3: that both of them said was okay.
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Speaker 1: The vast majority of the time when someone says something
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Speaker 1: out of line and gets reprimanded, they learn as a
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Speaker 1: result of our feedback systems. They keep playing. They rarely
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Speaker 1: repeat offend.
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Speaker 3: All the more evidence that these aren't actually abusive players.
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Speaker 3: Abusive people will re-offend despite punishment. This is just over
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Speaker 3: censorship that is catching a lot of regular players in
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Speaker 3: the crossfire. This commenter says, I've actually stopped communicating with
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Speaker 3: teammates altogether since I'm expecting to get reported for something
9:19
Speaker 3: minor and I don't expect communication to matter. Tell me, Anna,
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Speaker 3: why should this player have to compromise how he wants
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Speaker 3: to play the game to accommodate a bunch of Karens?
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Speaker 3: I mean, God forbid you get banned for hate speech
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Speaker 3: because you told a player to put a battery in
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Speaker 3: their smoke detector.
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Speaker 5: I've heard all kinds of sounds through my headset, but
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Speaker 5: one in particular is annoying and troublesome. The sound I'm
9:41
Speaker 5: talking about is best described as a chirp, no doubt
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Speaker 5: emanating from a smoke detector, desperately signaling for a change
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Speaker 5: of batteries.
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Speaker 3: If you really have such thin skin or are so
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Speaker 3: poorly socially adjusted that you can't banter or handle a
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Speaker 3: few mean words... then there are plenty of single-player games
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Speaker 3: out there for you to enjoy. And again, who asked
10:01
Speaker 3: for this? It seems like most of the players are
10:03
Speaker 3: asking for everything but this. Can you guys put this
10:06
Speaker 3: much effort into solving the smurfing problem? There are creators
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Speaker 3: playing on their smurf accounts with zero consequence. For those
10:13
Speaker 3: of you who don't know, smurfing is when a really
10:15
Speaker 3: good player makes a new account so he can queue
10:17
Speaker 3: with a bunch of beginners. I have to say that
10:20
Speaker 3: outside of cheating, I don't think there's anything more annoying
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Speaker 3: than smurf accounts that make it impossible for new players
10:25
Speaker 3: to enjoy the game without having to spend a hundred
10:28
Speaker 3: hours practicing in Aim Lab first. But actually, the most
10:31
Speaker 3: requested thing from players seems to be a replay function
10:34
Speaker 3: that the Valorant team has denied them for multiple years,
10:37
Speaker 3: to the extent that a small YouTuber went viral for
10:40
Speaker 3: a passive-aggressive video showing them how easy it would be
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Speaker 3: for a single coder to make a replay system function
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Speaker 3: and just a few hours of work.
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Speaker 6: Fans have been requesting for a replay feature for years.
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Speaker 6: It would be helpful to see the mistakes you made,
10:53
Speaker 6: catch cheaters, show friends a cool clip, or even for
10:58
Speaker 6: content creators to make videos. That is why I made
11:02
Speaker 6: a replay system to prove that Riot Games is lazy.
11:06
Speaker 6: If I can do this in a couple hours with
11:08
Speaker 6: almost no scripting experience, you could easily do this with
11:11
Speaker 6: hundreds of employees given almost four years.
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Speaker 3: Now, I'm not a coder, so I don't know the
11:16
Speaker 3: specifics of this, but I can imagine that after this
11:19
Speaker 3: being requested for multiple years, they could have figured something out. Actually,
11:23
Speaker 3: I believe it still hasn't been released yet. But I'm
11:25
Speaker 3: sure they could have coded this by now if they
11:27
Speaker 3: spent less time making expensive skins.
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Speaker 6: Riot Games, you add dog crap gun skins that are overpriced,
11:34
Speaker 6: you keep reworking agents that don't need it, you add
11:37
Speaker 6: literal skid marks to this menu that you call the
11:39
Speaker 6: Battle Pass, remove game modes that were actually fun, content
11:43
Speaker 6: creators are losing interest in your game, you gave the
11:46
Speaker 6: sack to a bunch of employees who probably didn't deserve it,
11:49
Speaker 6: but guess what guys, we got a new gun! It's
11:52
Speaker 6: just a slightly changed Marshall. There's already a sniping problem
11:56
Speaker 6: in this game. Who actually asked for this?
11:59
Speaker 2: Right.
12:00
Speaker 3: I've played enough online games to know that there are
12:02
Speaker 3: issues that are far more pressing than what people say
12:04
Speaker 3: in online chat, yet fixing those things seems to be
12:07
Speaker 3: second to working on loot boxes, selling skins that cost
12:11
Speaker 3: more than a lot of entire video games cost, and
12:13
Speaker 3: working on the new Battle Pass. I mean, sure, hate
12:16
Speaker 3: speech is bad, but selling gambling to children or using
12:19
Speaker 3: psychological tricks to siphon money from minors who are too
12:22
Speaker 3: young to understand them is perfectly fine.
12:25
Speaker 2: This is some rat behavior.
12:27
Speaker 7: So you can either buy 3,190... or you can buy 1,240,
12:36
Speaker 7: but all of the skins, all of the skins are 1,300, 900,
12:42
Speaker 7: and 1,800.
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Speaker 2: It's ridiculous. It's rap behavior.
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Speaker 7: Yes, it is.
12:51
Speaker 2: It's ridiculous.
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Speaker 3: So why is so much focus put on censoring in-game chat? Well,
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Speaker 3: for those of you who know a little history, you
12:57
Speaker 3: might be aware that the short answer is that Riot
12:59
Speaker 3: got sued and lost. In 2018, Riot Games, the owner
13:04
Speaker 3: of Valorant, were sued for sexual misconduct and had to
13:06
Speaker 3: pay out $ 100 million. Holy shit, that is a lot
13:10
Speaker 3: of money. So, while I can understand that there was
13:13
Speaker 3: some foul play at Riot Games, I am a little
13:15
Speaker 3: concerned about Valorant's overly harsh community guidelines. Players just want
13:19
Speaker 3: to play a game where they can interact with people
13:21
Speaker 3: as they would if they were playing a sport in
13:22
Speaker 3: real life, and they should be able to do that. Also,
13:25
Speaker 3: these pro-censorship narratives have a really bad habit of empowering
13:29
Speaker 3: the worst types of people, as everyone publicly in favor
13:32
Speaker 3: of them seems to have something going on that they're
13:33
Speaker 3: trying to cover up.
13:34
Speaker 8: Okay, could we stop using terms like the F-slur?
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Speaker 1: No.
13:38
Speaker 2: Free speech. Okay.
13:40
Speaker 8: I just think that's just so weird and antisocial.
13:44
Speaker 1: Don't care.
13:45
Speaker 2: Yes, saying retarded is so offensive.
13:48
Speaker 3: Gee, Dean, I really hope you've never been caught saying
13:50
Speaker 3: slurs that people are actually offended by, like the N-word
13:53
Speaker 3: or the F-slur not that long ago.
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Speaker 2: Because that would just be horrible.
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Speaker 5: So the phrase DEI is just the new N-word to bigots?
14:00
Speaker 3: I guess you would know from first-hand experience. By the way,
14:03
Speaker 3: no one believes this apology, and you don't get to, like,
14:06
Speaker 3: cancel people for words that you were just saying, like,
14:08
Speaker 3: two years ago. None of these people actually care about
14:11
Speaker 3: the causes that they're fighting for. It's all just self-enrichment,
14:14
Speaker 3: and it's very apparent that's the case. When all these
14:17
Speaker 3: pro-censorship DEI people throw all their principles out the window
14:20
Speaker 3: and commit domestic terrorism by setting Teslas on fire... because
14:24
Speaker 3: Elon did things like expose social security fraud.
14:27
Speaker 8: Do y'all see this?
14:30
Speaker 7: Clown American.
14:32
Speaker 8: I don't know what this is. Is this paint?
14:36
Speaker 4: Look at this.
14:38
Speaker 8: All on my windshield. My car is destroyed. What the
14:42
Speaker 8: fuck do I have to do with Elon?
14:44
Speaker 3: Do the radical leftists know that this is technically a
14:46
Speaker 3: hate crime? But the censorship is getting ridiculous, and these
14:50
Speaker 3: people have realized that they've run out of words that
14:52
Speaker 3: people are offended by to cancel, So they've circled back
14:55
Speaker 3: to try and cancel the.
14:56
Speaker 2: R word for like the 30th time.
14:58
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm old enough to remember when Lex Friedman
15:00
Speaker 3: gave Destiny a full 30-minute tribunal because he says the
15:04
Speaker 3: word retarded on stream.
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Speaker 8: I'll tell you something that bothers me about your streams.
15:09
Speaker 8: Not your streams. Your streams and basically every other stream
15:13
Speaker 8: is the casual use of the R word.
15:16
Speaker 2: Oh, the ableism, yeah.
15:17
Speaker 8: I guess what I'm trying to say here is just
15:19
Speaker 8: because people speak in this kind of way in the
15:23
Speaker 8: gaming world and streams, doesn't mean that you don't have
15:26
Speaker 8: the responsibility to sort of stand alone from the crowd.
15:29
Speaker 2: Oh no, those horrible gamer words.
15:31
Speaker 3: Not that I'm trying to defend Destiny or anything, because
15:34
Speaker 3: he's like a sex offender now, allegedly, but I just
15:37
Speaker 3: want to point out specific tactics that the anti-free speech
15:39
Speaker 3: people use when they're trying to censor everything. Much like
15:43
Speaker 3: Riot will suggest that they just love banter as they
15:45
Speaker 3: are censoring banter, Lex proclaims that he is all for
15:49
Speaker 3: dark humor... as he tries to censor dark humor.
15:52
Speaker 8: Admire great humor. Dark humor.
15:55
Speaker 1: Wit.
15:56
Speaker 5: Right.
15:57
Speaker 2: Lex loves dark humor.
15:58
Speaker 3: Look at this dark joke that he showed about a
16:00
Speaker 3: trolley killing a bunch of right-wingers.
16:02
Speaker 2: That's so edgy.
16:03
Speaker 3: It's very safe-edgy of you to tell a joke that
16:06
Speaker 3: no one would be offended by, because the right doesn't
16:08
Speaker 3: care about this stuff.
16:09
Speaker 9: Let's say that, like, three years ago, I would have said,
16:12
Speaker 9: I'm no longer saying the R word. I'm just going
16:14
Speaker 9: to get rid of that in my vocabulary. Like, is
16:16
Speaker 9: there a chance that today... we would be having a
16:18
Speaker 9: conversation about like, why do you call people dumb fucks?
16:22
Speaker 2: Like, is that really appropriate?
16:23
Speaker 9: Like, does this attack at the core of like somebody
16:25
Speaker 9: who's like level of intelligence, education, opportunities in life?
16:28
Speaker 8: Like, is that a worthy, you don't think so? I
16:30
Speaker 8: think that's a, as the kids say, cope. Okay. Like
16:34
Speaker 8: I don't think it'll lead to dumb fuck being canceled
16:40
Speaker 8: two years later, unless that word is hurting people's experience.
16:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, uh, I wouldn't cancel the word dumbfuck unless people
16:49
Speaker 3: were offended by it.
16:50
Speaker 7: Right.
16:51
Speaker 3: I can see why this is the same guy who
16:53
Speaker 3: has a massive autoblock list for his Twitter account that
16:56
Speaker 3: strangely seems to include a lot of people who point
16:58
Speaker 3: out that he didn't graduate from MIT. With that said,
17:01
Speaker 3: there's a whole part of this Valorant situation that I
17:03
Speaker 3: haven't covered yet, which is quite possibly the scariest part
17:06
Speaker 3: of it.
17:07
Speaker 1: We've been testing riot voice evaluation systems in North America
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Speaker 1: in English only for a while now. It's still in beta,
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Speaker 1: but it's been working really well so far.
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Speaker 3: Remember when I said that Riot Games is owned by China? Well,
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Speaker 3: just note that Riot is recording all of your communications
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Speaker 3: in the game, including your voice. Oh, but don't worry,
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Speaker 3: they only save your voice chat if you've been reported.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't believe that at all.
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Speaker 3: Valorant is rated teen by the ESRB, which means that
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Speaker 3: 13-year-olds are playing it, and Riot is recording and storing
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Speaker 3: their conversations. Is this even legal? Did they get their
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Speaker 3: parents' consent to do that? How do we know they
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Speaker 3: aren't selling this data or feeding it into AI? So
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Speaker 3: I think there's a more nefarious narrative going on here
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Speaker 3: with the hate speech and harassment policies, as it's an
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Speaker 3: excuse to enact mass surveillance to help further ensure that
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Speaker 3: nobody passes through any piece of their history without being documented.
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Speaker 3: And if you're wondering why I brought up Lex Friedman,
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Speaker 3: well then, look who's making the same excuses to constantly
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Speaker 3: record people.
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Speaker 8: I think one of the mechanisms that could fix it
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Speaker 8: is make it super easy for For each individual person
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Speaker 8: to analyze all the stupid shit they themselves have said
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Speaker 8: in the past. Like a full recording. Because I think
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Speaker 8: people just honestly paint a very rosy picture to their
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Speaker 8: own brain of who they have been in the past.
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Speaker 9: Yeah, of course.
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Speaker 8: If we can have empathy for the fact that we've
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Speaker 8: said stupid shit, that would give us the ammunition for...
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Speaker 8: to have empathy for others that are like, okay, yeah,
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Speaker 8: this guy five years ago said this. Maybe that doesn't
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Speaker 8: represent who they are any more than stuff I said
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Speaker 8: five years ago represents who I am today. I feel
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Speaker 8: like technology can actually enable that.
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Speaker 9: Maybe, although you're talking about more recording and more stuff
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Speaker 9: which people are already wary of.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's not going to happen. Have you not been
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Speaker 3: on the internet for the past decade? What actually happens
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Speaker 3: is that recorded history is used by people who are
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Speaker 3: either a protected class or have not been caught on
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Speaker 3: camera yet, as a battering ram to cancel people for
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Speaker 3: behaviors that every normal person does, or cancel people for
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Speaker 3: behaviors that were previously acceptable, but were randomly deemed not acceptable.
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Speaker 3: Did we not just see that from Dean, trying to
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Speaker 3: censor people for saying retarded when as recently as two
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Speaker 3: years ago, he was saying the N-word and the F-slur
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Speaker 3: so much that he was caught multiple times? If you
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Speaker 3: start recording everything, then cry bullies will just use that
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Speaker 3: to abuse people. Also, it's kind of Orwellian and evil.
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Speaker 1: The goal is to make it so that the people
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Speaker 1: who want to play Valve are able to love playing Valve.
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Speaker 3: Yes, but only a specific group of people are allowed
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Speaker 3: to love the game, and you're only allowed to enjoy
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Speaker 3: it in a very specific way. Nothing like claiming to
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Speaker 3: be inclusive while constantly doing things that exclude most of.
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Speaker 2: Your player base.
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Speaker 4: Games that first and foremost should be video games are
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Speaker 4: being hijacked. by poor leadership and turned into battlegrounds for
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Speaker 4: personal ideologies. It's not about creating great stories or memorable
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Speaker 4: experiences anymore. It's about making a statement, drawing a line
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Speaker 4: in the sand, and daring players to pick a side.
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Speaker 4: The problem today is that things are so polarized. The
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Speaker 4: line is being drawn so deep that... We can't enjoy
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Speaker 4: the game unless we perfectly align with the beliefs of
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Speaker 4: its creator.
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Speaker 7: Right.
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Speaker 3: And the big problem here with the constant push towards
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Speaker 3: censorship is not just the self-censoring that results when companies
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Speaker 3: like Riot are extremely vague with what is acceptable behavior
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Speaker 3: and what is not, but also people have the right
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Speaker 3: to say mean things. That's what free speech is. It's
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Speaker 3: for mean language, offensive language, and criticism. And people have
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Speaker 3: the right to hear mean things that are being said
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Speaker 3: to them. People should hear mean things. How else are
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Speaker 3: they supposed to correct their behavior? Yes, you can be nice,
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Speaker 3: but being nice isn't always effective. Sometimes you have to
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Speaker 3: be strict, sometimes you need to maintain harsh boundaries, and
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Speaker 3: sometimes you have to say things that will offend people,
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Speaker 3: or they won't become the best version of themselves. Yet
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Speaker 3: Riot will literally ban you for telling people that they
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Speaker 3: are bad at the game, and they aren't the only
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Speaker 3: company that does that. The ability to be mean is
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Speaker 3: incredibly important for people's development, and if you want evidence
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Speaker 3: of that, then look how poorly adjusted people are socially,
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Speaker 3: when everyone is nice to them all the time or
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Speaker 3: walks on eggshells around them all the time.
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Speaker 2: They call those people spoiled for a reason.
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Speaker 3: Of course, there is a time and a place for negativity,
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Speaker 3: and it shouldn't be overused, but being happy and positive
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Speaker 3: all the time isn't actually positive. It typically means that
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Speaker 3: things are actually extremely negative and are being covered up
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Speaker 3: or not being talked about, and it's not wrong to
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Speaker 3: use a little appropriately placed negativity to break that cycle. Anyway,
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Speaker 3: thanks for watching, follow me on Twitter, and I'll see
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Speaker 3: you in the next video.