This Text Contains Offensive Language

Kevin Larsen

That's my name. It's not really unique. But to Nintendo it's offensive. I found that out earlier this year when I used my name for my character in Tomodachi Life. I was still able to use the name, but could not make a QR code out of any of the characters that shared my last name. Why? Because if you take away the L and the N you get "arse".

Sorry to those with virgin eyes for me exposing you to such a horribly offensive word.

Today when I tried to use my name in Persona Q, I received the same message. Except this time, I couldn't use the name at all. I had to use a completely different name, which resulted in me using the unofficial official name of the P4 main character "Chuck Tunoku" since "Charlie" was too long for a first name. I could have changed my last name to Larson and it would have worked, but for all the times I've seen people spell my last name that over the years it's quite annoying seeing that spelling of my name. Also the fact that this was a M rated game that for my knowledge doesn't have any real online play that my name would be seen it is even more ridiculous.

I'm sure I'm not the only one that has had this problem with Nintendo games, and it seems weird that Nintendo doesn't have some sort of way of ignoring certain names. But to have something like that even be an issue just boggles my mind. I have never had that issue anywhere else. Is someone really going to look at my last name and only see the word "arse" and be offended? Heck, it took me almost 28 years to even notice it and I see it multiple times a day.

I now wonder if I would have problems with my last name in all games on a Nintendo platform. I would like to hope one day I would never have that issue on any of their platforms again, but this is Nintendo we are talking about so I highly doubt it.

Sorry that you ave that issue.

Also this is kind of hilarious.

I was similarly irritated when my "Assault" class in Modern Warfare 2 was refused by Black Ops. Ass-ault.

Ran into a similar issue with Xbox Live a while back(2007-8ish). It wouldn't let me use my last name, Jewett, in my bio(it was a link to my old blog on 1up) because people use "Jew" as pejorative -.-

I did some text-based language processing when I was in school, so I sort of appreciate how hard it is to automate filters like this.

At the same time, it is both hilarious and tragic that shit like this still happens. There should be a better, larger moderation team for this kind of nonsense.

That's a pretty shitty problem to have, especially in RPGs and life sims where you'd hope anyone could toss their own name in.

As long as corporations fear obscenity suits and customer backlash, there'll be overzealous filters. As long as it takes a significant investment to refine them, they'll be ham-handed and generally inefficient.

The name filtering in Dark Souls 2 is also pretty ridiculous, with names like Thomas, Knight and Jack censored into T**mas, K***ht and ****. It makes sense to have it because of multiplayer (and it only censors in multiplayer too), I don't get why Persona Q would have something like that.

The list of words censored in Dark Souls 2 itself is a fun read (warning: naughty language, obviously). I wonder what it's like to be the person who had to write these.

That sucks. It's always given me a chuckle that words like that are censored to avoid lawsuits & such in video-games, but it's 100% alright for YouTuber's to cuss to their hearts content knowing the majority of their audience is rather young. I'm looking at you PewDiePie and Yogscast.

I'm not a humbug by any means, but damn if it doesn't get tiring hearing the word "fuck" and "bitch" as replacements for everyday words by the majority of 'celebrities' on YouTube/Twitch. It just shows a significant lack of responsibility & an obviously lacking vocabulary.

I actually ran afoul of several people who were amazed by my XBL name sneaking past as it was "Lex Jewthor" (a loving nickname my friends came up with as I am a member of the Tribe. And I love comics).

@audiobusting: And here dies the dream of naming my next DSII character Pocket, or Waffle.

Larsen isn't a super uncommon name as far as I'm aware, crazy it's not supported. Directly below as I post I see the word gamespot, if Larsen can't make the cut surely gamespot wouldn't either. To the well trained eye that word is clearly GamesPot.

Hahahahaha, man; that list has some real gems in there.

As Dick Fuckington, I also have a terrible time using my own name in videogames.

The worst thing about this is that it's now highlighting potentially offensive terms in otherwise innocuous words. Sure an Ass or Arse here and there is all fine and good for a giggle. But Dark Souls looked at Knight and saw that?

Ruined. :(

Have you considered moving to Scunthorpe, a lovely town over here in the UK?

Thank goodness you don't live in Scunthorpe.

@audiobusting That list is the most entertaining thing I've read all morning.

Woof you, you angrypenguin!

I wonder if it could ever be possible for whatever automated programs are used to one day break up the words by syllables, probably not, but it's super obvious that you would break up Larsen by Lar-Sen, not L-Arse-N.

Have you (or anybody else for that matter) tried to contact Nintendo about it? I doubt you would get far, but it would be interesting to see what results or response one might get if you contacted them going 'hey, my last name is legit.'

Wait, is calling someone a jew offensive now? Damn, Orwell, you were right...

I used to have this problem in text chats on PS3. People would try to type my username or just shorten it to moses, and it would come out m****pippy or m****. I think the last time I was in a chat it was finally unblocked, but I still have no idea why it was blocked in the first place.

Specifically when you're using it as a pejorative, like as a synonym for "greedy," of course it is. Evoking Orwell at that is maybe a liiiiittle overreacting.

You think you have it bad, my name is Dick McShitfucker.

I specifically remember this same thing happening to me - although I feel like we decided it could be something to do with a default class using the word "Assault" because banning it when it appears in-game seemed such a bizarre thing to happen.

You know it's going to happen at some point.

It really baffles me when single player offline games don't let you use cusswords in text input options. Come to think of it, that always seems to happen to me with JRPGs. Also what is a Pokemon game really without a rival named Assface?

I remember when Starsiege Tribes filtered cussing, it was so sensitive that the word grapes got censored in-chat. Then again the game uses Shazbot, so that's awesome.

What the hell is an assbandit? Do you have like, an ass in front of your mouth instead of a bandana?

I find that offensive!

Flagged.

Not really.

Also lucky you don't live in Intercourse, PA.

I have the same problem with my last name.

Hambleton.

Ham.

Meat.

Penis.

"bisexuality"

WOW

EDIT: also "dog" for some reason <_<

That always baffled me as well. That seems like a likely reason, but you never know.

I've never had this problem but it reminded me of a friend in middle school. He had awful trouble in general because of his surname 'Ballcock', I don't remember if he ever actually was able to get a computer login.

I once had a customer who was named Wang Dong, imagine how he would feel.

There exists a city in Turkey called Batman. The mayor was batshit crazy and tried to sue the owners of the DC property and the movie directors for inappriopiate use of their city name. Nothing came out of it offcourse, except a funny headline. I guess you could say...this joker brought a bat to a gunfight.

My name isn't remotely offensive, (I guess my last name does have "ass" in it) but a lot of games don't like the "é" which is in my name. Less of a problem now than in the PS2 and older generations, but it still kinda sucked.

GODDAMN IT.

@1337w422102: What is there to damn about? I found it hilariously bizarre that the mayor of Batman tried to sue some movie directors on the other side of the globe during the première of The Dark Night.

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Movies/11/12/batman.turkey.movie/

Sorry, I must've quoted the wrong post! I meant "GODDAMN IT" to the pun.

It's not just Nintendo. The PS3 party chat has some seriously restrictive filters. The one that annoyed me the most was the word 'connection', which the chat censored into '*****ction'. I have no idea what the bad word is or what language it's in.

Wow, racist robots on a power trip? The future is a scary place.

In my supergroup's chat on Marvel Heroes one night, we discovered a good one. The phrase "better than a zig" was turned into "better tha****g" because of "nazi being spelled out by separate letters in the words. It took a few seconds for someone to finally parse what the hell had been blocked.

I think, and someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but most games/devs just grab a list from somewhere of generated slurs/bad words and go from there. There's always workarounds though.

Thats political correctness!

ba dum tss

@cloudymusic: I got lectured once on Twitter because I referred to Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat (a Jewish Marvel Comics character) as "a Jew". She is a Jew. She wears a Star of David around her neck. She's been canonically Jewish for ages. I'm Jewish, and I never knew that was offensive to some people.

You're a Larsen. I hope you know that.

EDIT: Overzealous and unfortunate censoring needs to stop, though. It's OD.

I remember PSO having an issue with you trying to type the name of one of its special weapons Frozen Shooter, because you can't spell "shooter" without "hooter."

I'd rather live there than at Cockburn Town. Yep, that's totally a real place.

@gruebacca: It's a foul word in french.