I may be lacking some context, but what do game designers who are young men uniquely have to do with this? | |
So if that is the Scrabble definition of "lesbo", I'm wondering if "nigga" would also be playable in the junior version... | |
I have difficulty comprehending how a word, by itself and without context, can be offensive, short of being outright obscene. Then again, I've been burned by vocabulary choice often enough in the past to have developed a Pavlovian sort of aversion to using words which the mysterious social voodoo deems offensive, and it does seem reasonable to expect Ubisoft to play by those rules as well. | |
crazy mix | |
I'm torn on this one. On the one hand, I'm outright sick of folks getting all uppity and aggro about words, books and ideas they don't personally agree with, expecting the rest of the world to bend to their short-sighted, closed-minded idealism. On the other hand, seriously, how hard would it have been for the dev team to chuck "lesbo" into the right category and avoid all this folderol to begin with? | |
While I agree in spirit, I'm not sure "lesbo" is the word to use as a call to arms against short-sighted, close-minded idealists. It certainly would have raised my eyebrows if it had popped up on my screen, and I certainly don't think it's one for the kiddies. I'm guessing the developers got lazy and only checked the the obvious curses before dumping the dictionary into the game's memory. What's truly shocking is that "lesbo" is considered an actual word. | |
Shouldn't the gay and lesbian community be getting up in arms about the people who wrote Chambers Official Scrabble Dictionary and not the people who designed a videogame based on it? | |
I would imagine it's because the book doesn't have a "junior" mode, purported to be safe for minors. Besides, people don't read anymore. | |
No junior mode? How will kids ever learn to spell?! | |
The same way we did. | |
I believe the developers' response is intended to mean that they didn't do any of the flagging of words at all. It would make sense, given the number of Scrabble-based video games, that a digital version of the official dictionary is given to licensees to just 'drop in' once the engine is built. If that dictionary is supposed to be pre-filtered to flag offensive words, which is what I believe they were implying, I doubt that they'd assign someone to double-check all the words in the dictionary (other than spot-checking the obvious ones, just to make sure the flagging is working). So yeah, I'm inclined to go with a data source error, technically leaving Chambers to blame for not 'properly' flagging the word as offensive, which was probably just an oversight by some menial data entry guy. Which in reality means little, because despite the problem being an honest mistake, it's now a Cause. For The Children. | |
Lesbo is not offensive. Clicking on a link with that in the title usually leads to great joy. :) | |
Hmm, I was hoping it was a typo and it was actually 'Lesbos' (as in Isle of) but no. I think the poster who questioned whether or not "nigga" should be included (or the reaction if it was) is pretty apropos. Is 'felching' a word in the Official Scrabble Dictionary? I mean, if we're shooting for offensive... | |
I dont blame Scrabble, it seemed like an honest mistake, but I also have to agree about the "nigga" comment so some blame should definitly fall on the dictionary. | |
By order of Archmage Traven the practice of Necromancy is now illegal! | |
Having Grown up in the North, i'd say i can understand why they are attacking this as hard as they are, I dare anyone to go into a primary school or high, and find out some of the most used insults and 'Lesbo' tops for most to girls, They have Really really trying to weed out terms like this from schools now for 15 odd years. | |
Easy, just go through all 277,000 words in the scrabble dictionary and comb through the definitions to make sure you agree with the official demarkations as to which words are offensive. | |
277,000 is a lot of words to check through. I think they just got the info from the official dictionary and just trusted Chambers to have sorted it out already. Also, if that came up, I'd probably laugh. We play rude-word scrabble in our house and that there is solid gold. Now I just have to put it on a 'double word' square... | |
Whoa there, a thread bump from 2007? The past is here! It is quite ridiculous how the spokesman's raging on about how the game was designed by 'ill educated' young men, therefore having "lesbo" in the game is no surprise. ... What? | |
Necothread is not cool | |
Junior Scrabble 2007, now let me repeat this; Junior Scrabble 2007. If you still haven't figured it out it's an atricle from 3 years ago. ;) | |
Hey, I don't often look at post dates because it doesn't occur that anyone would be rude enough to necro a three year old thread. I understand my error and will correct it. EDIT: Besides, it's bloody rare to see such an old thread in which no one was banned. | |
I dind't mean to be rude, thats why I added the
;) As for the banned thing you're absolutely right. | |
Stop commenting on how ridiculous the situation is, it's from like 3 years ago! Stop disturbing the passage of time. | |
It doesn't matter if it's offensive. It's still a word. Nigger, kike, limey, retard, faggot, spic, and honkey are all derogatory slang words, but they are still words none-the-less. It does not matter if people find the offensive or not when you have a game based on the English language. I find seafood offensive to my nose, but you don't see me screaming if someone orders Mahi-mahi at a restaurant (I hate the smell of cooked fish). People have to remember the freedom of speech, but we do not have a freedom from being offended. Life, liberty, and the PURSUIT of happiness. It's not guaranteed. On another note, if people didn't make such a fuss about stupid shit like this we'd actually be more apt to listen to them when a real issue arrives. It's like a baby that just learned how to talk, these people find a voice that others can hear, then proceed to babble nonsensically about whatever pops into their head. People need to stop bitching. P.S. I know I used some colorful language up there, but it was merely to get my point across and don't want anyone to get all pissy over it just because I typed it. I mean no offense to anyone, but if you take offense to it that's on you. | |
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Scrabble Attacked for Lesbian Slang
Ubisoft's portable Scrabble game gets attacked for gay terminology.
Zachary McAdam, an Ulster, Ireland, man, is calling for a Nintendo DS Scrabble game published by Ubisoft to be recalled after discovering that the word "lesbo" is counted in its anagram section. McAdam, an IT project manager from Holywood, was playing Junior Scrabble 2007 with his 7-year-old daughter Ellen, but halted when the word appeared on screen.
He said, "We were stuck trying to find the last five-letter anagram so I hit the give-up option and the term 'lesbo' appeared on the screen. I nearly fell off my chair. The term 'lesbo' is a slang name intentionally meant to cause offense. I looked it up on the website dictionary.com just to make sure I wasn't overreacting, and it described the word as a noun, slang, disparaging and offensive."
Junior Scrabble 2007 is based on the word list provided by the Chambers Official Scrabble Dictionary. The Chambers definition for "lesbo" reads: "Derogatory slang short form of lesbian. Although lesbo did not become current until 1940s: previously used by heterosexuals as derisive insults to gay women, though it seems that gay women are now using the words to describe themselves in positive terms."
Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association spokesman PA MagLochlainn said, "I would never use the word. The correct term is lesbian. I am not in the least bit surprised it is included because the young men who design these games are not taught by schools that these words can be used as a form of homophobic bullying."
Ubisoft released a statement apologizing to Mr. McAdam's and any others who were offended by the term:
Source: Belfast Telegraph
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