Female Gamers on MW2, More Game Less Abuse, Modern Warfare 2

This is something that I'd normally hold on to until Gamer Tuesday, but felt that it was too important to put off. Today I was pointed towards a post on All Things Fangirl where the author (Amanda AKA EruditeChick) describes a truly heinous encounter with a socially-retarded and misogynistic male gamer while playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on-line. Because the MW2 no longer has 'party chat', wherein players can communicate exclusively to each other within their groups, she had to endure the abuse of an unknown gamer. Here's an excerpt:

"A little later into the game, douchebag (who sounds about 15), makes a comment about shooting a 'n--ger', to which the black guy in the room does not take kindly. Douchey replies he can say whatever the hell he wants. I say "Maybe so, but that's really unnecessary."

Well, forget the blacks, because now he has a vagina to lash out at. He's probably had more contact with black people in whatever whitebread farming community he lives in than he has female genitalia. I know this, because he immediately questions me:

"Are you a dyke?...Women shouldn't be allowed to vote. [Five second pause] Women shouldn't be allowed to vote. Women shouldn't be allowed to buy Xbox games. Women shouldn't allowed to vote. I'm just saying the truth."

Now, I read stuff like that and it really makes my blood boil. If anything, we in the geek/nerd/gamer community should be ambassadors of tolerance and acceptance.

But you see it all across the internet, on comic-book and gaming message boards and in chat rooms, ignorant scum-wads who pollute the atmosphere around the rest of us. They spout their hate-filled rhetoric (with bad spelling even) and make the rest of us just cringe. There's just something about assuming a persona on-line that gives some immature douche-bags the idea that they can lash out at others behind a cloak of anonymity.

Read more after the jump!

It's because of this experience that EruditeChick wrote an open letter to the makers of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2:

Dear Infinity Ward:

Please release a patch or fix that will allow users to utilize party chat in all modes of online gameplay, if only for the sake of your female fans. We shelled out the money for the game, we stayed up all night and missed half a day of work playing it, we write and read reviews and buy MW2 caps for our avatars on the XBox Live marketplace.

Out of respect for us, since, sadly, the majority of the people who play your game online have none, give us back party chat so we can enjoy the wonderful evolution of the online play without being told how unwelcome, ugly, stupid, and useless for anything other than degrading sexual acts we are. Please give us back party chat so we can have tactical conversation with the friends we're playing with, without having to hear how we have no right to be there, no right to play; so we don't have to hear, out of the mouths of sexist, bitter virgins who have clocked months worth of their lives in game time that we are socially defunct and sexually wrong, somehow, for playing.

I would really appreciate it.

Sincerely,

Amanda

I'm with EruditeChick on this one. Although it saddens me the most is that there are those who troll the cyber-communities that are designed to bring us together, and force us to build walls so that we can simply enjoy ourselves. Why is being civil and respectful towards your fellow gamer such a chore for some of these dill holes?

So...to that jerky 15-year-old kid who thinks women shouldn't be allowed to vote, I hope your mom takes your Xbox away and makes you read Sense and Sensibility.