Call of Duty enlists AI to eavesdrop on voice chat and help ban toxic players
pcgamer.com
pcgamer.com
The AI tech's proficiency at identifying and banning slurs and what not was greatly exaggerated (ie, it did not work at all), but now every previously private conversation you have with your friends gets recorded and stored and can be accessed not just by Blizzard, or whomever eventually hacks Blizzard, but also by the police.
254 player first person shooter with cross-team proximity chat sounded like a recipe for disaster, but they made it work thanks to heavy moderation.
After 50 or so hours, I’ve heard no more than two handfuls of toxic, sexist, racist remarks. The global announcements when the banhammer swings are a glorious deterrent.
I can’t enjoy myself in toxic games anymore, so I’m glad to see this development happening in the AAA space, too!
Don't get me wrong, I love Doom Eternal, but this just seems hypocritical to me. FPS games aren't meant to be family friendly and safe. Their main attraction is that they're not.
I play a lot of rocket league. I always have a rainbow flag on my car. Every year during pride month I always play several games where I get lots of homophobic comments from my opponents. People using slurs, ranting about how “people like me” are ruining the game. I mute and block, and report these people, but it makes me sad anyway. Why do people go into the game with the intent to ruin it for others? I only ever get those comments during pride month. There’s a reason I play with voice chat disabled if I’m playing with randos, even if it would legitimately help to communicate with teammates.
And I wouldn’t even say rocket league is particularly toxic? I encounter teammates that throw games, and smurf accounts, way more than players that say toxic things in chat. I don’t play FPS games but from what I’ve seen they seem way worse, as voice chat is crucial.
I feel only slightly better the next day, when I get a notification about how my report got a player banned for toxicity.
Microsoft gonna Microsoft.
Some as terrorists.
Can't they just mute or block people they don't like? Cheating is the only real problem.
On that note, I have an offline dump of their gh org. If someone wants try resurrecting it, I can hook you up.
I can't leave my house without being monitored by ring cameras. I cannot go to work without being monitored by badge systems. And now, I can't play games without my voice chat being moderated.
I'm not a racist, sexist, terrible, or bad person. Why do I have to be forced to be surveilled and monitored like this in ever freaking part of my life, and why do you all jump so gleefully into these ecosystems? Why are you so excited to throw away these areas of your life to be monitored and controlled by companies?
I am not a racist, sexist, terrible or bad person, either. Why should I be forced to listen to that shit?
While I’m a huge proponent of privacy and against surveillance at scale, the truth is, neither of us are forced to do anything here. We can both turn off VoIP in these games.
In my 25+ years if gaming, I have only seen it (mostly) solved in smaller/niche games where the community is small and healthy already (usually targeting “older” gamers), and when server admins are actively doing “their job”.
… or, with a similar system as is being utilized (Battlebits Remastered)
But I am telling you that monitoring and surveillance is not the first, second, or even tenth potential choice available to start tackling this problem.
My best understanding is; this is human nature, and cannot be solved, only mitigated. Smaller scale and niche games do this with human intervention (server admins) and if the community is small enough, shame can work.
At a certain scale, it breaks apart. Toxicity unpunished leads us to the “toxic gaming culture” we have today.
Like you, I am horrified of the surveillance society being built around us. I genuinely wish there were a better way. Your OP gave me the impression that maybe you had an idea for solution, hence my follow-ups.
Barring that, in the context of gaming — where kids and teens spent a significant part of their lives these days — I’d rather see a non-optimal, opt-out solution that removes the toxic elements, so we don’t grow yet another generation of casual racists and sexists.