Online racist and sexist slurs

During Sony's PS4 unveiling they mentioned very quickly that the new PSN will require players to use their real name. This might be the simplest most elegant solution to stop unnecessary racist and sexist slurs that have plagued online gaming this generation. I would like to hear your thoughts on using real name on PSN and during online gaming with strangers.

No it doesn't.

98% of the time I use a fake name. Only my private Google account uses my real name.

according to Google my name is Blast Hardpeck. So no.

I guess you guys are right. I got a little too optimistic there!

You know what would really help deteriorate bigotry on the PSN? A report button and decent moderation.

I would be a cool feature if they let you select and actually support verified identities.

• Anonymous mode: You use your fake name and play against fake and real names.
• Don't care mode: You use your real name and play against real and fake names.
• Real name mode (aka anti-bullshit mode): You use your real name and play only against real names.

Then there should be a possibility to simply switch between login-modes as you go. That would be really cool.

It is a step in the right direction though.

Hm, I don't want to gather stalkers via PSN, so no, I don't like that :D

Or just go with my solution and play single player games, has worked great!

My name is Harry Hardic. Had a guy in school named hard-dick (sounded like it), he was Indian and hairy. So that week or something I was like, "imma use you as a fake name my brother". If only he knew.

Too late.

And you can never stop racism and sexism on the internet, or better yet stupidity in general. Not having anonymity will certainly reduce the number of people talking shit and expecting no consequence. But then again, just look at Facebook and Twitter.

Together with the "always recording" feature you could file a complaint against racial slur and actually provide evidence. I kind of like this idea, because I can't stand those bastards err I meant those bad people.

Let us have an option for a sane zone in online gaming with real names and an option to timeout people with foul language from this zone based on the severity of their violation. But also give us an option for an unrestricted anonymous mode for those who like it this way.

During Sony's PS4 unveiling they mentioned very quickly that the new PSN will require players to use their real name

Where?

@jayu26: Actually Mark Cerny said that they'll keep around the player icons and psn names, but they also want to support real names. So this sounds more like optional real names to me.

How could it be anything other than optional? Short of requesting ID verification, they can't do much to make people use their real names, and I doubt they'd go as far as that.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/

Listen to the PS4 unveiling video, it starts at about 25:56. Upon listing to it again I realized that they are keeping anonymous user names for online gaming, but things such as Facebook integration will probably force you to use real names for sharing game play and other social interactions.

@kaosangel said:

PSN can request that you update your account with real personal information, in other words, the exact same information on your private google account. They have never done this, but the point is they are very capable of doing so. There are many, many different bits of personal information which can legally be used.

Long story short, if they want people to use our real names then there just isn't a choice in the matter. You won't get around it without performing fraud (a crime) if they do it.

I'll say this: at least I don't have to worry about adding an xx or a number to my dumb name idea.

They never said they were requiring that.

Blizzard had the real name idea a few years ago, people went nuts, first thing I remember them abandoning due to players freaking out.

It's only for people on your friend's list I think, and even then you can change your name to something like Dick Cockson. The only way this would ever work is if you have to use a Facebook account and it ties in the names, and even then a massive amount of people would just make an alternate Facebook account and call themselves Dick Cockson. The whole "real name" thing is stupid and doesn't work. You can't really require people to do it either because of the expectation of privacy which is why they're not shoving it down our throats. People don't have to give their real name if they don't want to to a massive corporation like Sony. You do reserve the right to opt out of something like that because of the privacy issue.

And let's face it after the hack is ANYBODY going to trust Sony with their personal information? They haven't earned that trust as far as I, and many other people, are concerned.

Forcing people to use their real name would not accomplish anything, except stripping people of their privacy and anonymity. Have you seen the absolute horrid shit that grown adults post in the Disqus or Facebook-widget comments attached to any news article on the internet, with accounts that are displaying their real name? A quick way to find this is to go to DrudgeReport, click on any news article that leads you to a CBS regional news affiliate's article. Scroll down. Look at the dregs of humanity posting with their real identity.

The only people this impacts are those who care about anonymity. Stripping people of this is a weak and lazy solution (and something that gives government officials a permanent erection). It also opens customers up to all sorts of issues, like social engineer, harassment, and stalking. For these and countless other reasons, it will never be a requirement of any gaming system or network.

This also isn't what they were discussing at the conference. Like most other implementations of social networking (especially Facebook), tying into the API would cause it to use your real name in relation to those people who are on your friend's list. In other words, most likely, the people who are gaming with you and are on your Facebook friend's list would appear to you with their real name and you would appear to them with your real name. But to everyone else, you would be XxxWeedSmoker420KushDawgYOLOKobeBryantHulkHoganxxX. The benefit of this would be that you don't have to keep track of who the fuck the people you really know are, based on their (often changing) username. Of course, the downside is that you still have to use Facebook and I doubt that many people on Facebook actually know the people they are friends with on Facebook and I, certainly, don't use Facebook so it would be useless.

What I would like to see is some sort of a Raptr integration that performs this function and sucks in everyone from other services that I've tied into Raptr. So if you're my friend on Steam, 360, etc -- Raptr could dump that list to the PS4 and it would allow me to semi-automatically populate my PS4 contact list.

Indeed. And rightfully so. It was strange to see that Blizzard was so fucking myopic and it never occurred to them that people might value anonymity.

True. However, I think the going to make it optional.

As much as I am for using real names as "gamertags", there are those out there who prefer the convenience of being anonymous, in so not having to worry about what they say online to random people. It is terrible to see these interactions still being preferred when we as a collective should be beyond this sort of behavior by now. Sadly, these racist/sexist slurs being acted out by the ignorant few are somehow being seen by the mass media as the mindset for the entire gaming community which needs to stop.

@branthog: You remember me of the gun control debate... Hey gun control is not going to stop all gun violence, so let's do nothing.

Real ID might not be the ultimate solution, but its a step forward.

A step forward to what? At least with guns, it isn't ridiculously unreasonable to assert that "fewer guns should mean fewer opportunities for people to be shot by them" and you're talking life or death. I can give someone that, even if I don't agree with them. But erasing anonymity? One of the most fundamentally important pieces of the internet? For what? So that meany-heads don't say mean things on the internet? What a ridiculous trade-off.

The solution to shitty communities and communication on the internet is for those communities to develop and regularly implement solid moderation controls and policies if they don't want their communities to be filled with rabid festering racists and homophobes or just downright mean people. I suppose the other solution is for people to just grow thicker skin. As vile as I find a lot of things people say online -- especially in political forums or gaming forums and services -- I'd rather be sickened and offended at someone's ignorance and hate than lose the extremely valuable cloak of anonymity.

Says a person posting behind an user name.

Now I can rhyme people's real names with "fag" instead of just their screen names.

@branthog I agree they need to invest more in moderation, but I hardly think anonymity is the most fundamental piece of the internet.

I really don't understand this privacy/anonymity paranoia.. Besides sites like 4chan, neogaf, or Reddit built on "anonimity rights" more than often have awful awful discussions.

I agree with the idea of anonymity when interacting with strangers online. Sony is certainly not taking that away when it comes to online gaming. However, there is something to be said about the idea of using real names. It is not very easy to moderate communities as big as XBLA and PSN. Not to mention that neither would to be willing to spend lot of money on it. The three-teared system proposed by jgf seems to address some of the issues.

yeah, i'd love spawn killing a 16 year old shithead only to have him stalk my facebook page and make up lies spamming people with made up shit to try and ruin my life cus he's mad i took the sniper rifle or some shit.

yeah. real names would make things WORSE not better.

aimless insults are just that, aimless insults, if they bother you, mute the guy. i dont want my real name to be public like that, ive had people attack my personal life due to crap like that before.

i'd advise everyone else not to share any personal information online either.

South Korea has literally spent millions of dollars over the past couple of years on training cyber police (no really) to monitor MMOs who will back trace your ass. Sony's announcement is positively tame in comparison.

Bob Johnson?

Think of what information you can gather with a real name. Phone numbers, Facebook pages, mailing addresses, birth dates, all of that stuff is public. The Government already has your social security number and tax ID in addition to knowing what car or gun you registered. With a fake name and a fake identity you're virtually untraceable. Afterall, how can you hunt down or discredit a man that doesn't exist?

@deathstriker666: You sound a bit like a PR guy from ubisoft ;) , but of course this are valid points. Anybody who uses his real name should be aware that many things can be traced back. You definitely need to be aware of it or things can turn out bad, but thats kind of the point. Giving choice to the people does not sound like a bad idea, at least when it is a real choice.

When I go to the next soccer field for a random casual game, those guys are not anonymous. I could also trace them back by simply following them or asking their friends. Frankly most of them do not behave like idiots. And in my opinion this is due to the fact that they are not anonymous. They think a little bit more before they talk and they realize that I'm a person to. Thats why I think that optional real names in online games could help to make these places more friendly. Let me have my game with real name duders - I don't want to take away yours with anonym duders.

@kidavenger said:

This.

@ajamafalous: Blizzard tried to force it on everybody, without offering a choice. At least as far I know. I can understand the uproar. Just let me be clear, when there is only the choice between all real or all fake names, I'm for keeping the fake names,