Cityville, USA — In a groundbreaking initiative that’s being hailed as both heroic and a complete disregard for privacy, Activision, the company behind the popular video game franchise Call of Duty, has announced that they will record all in-game chat conversations in the latest installment, Modern Warfare 2. The goal? To eliminate racism, sexism, and any -isms that might exist in the virtual battleground.
“Finally, we can save society by listening in on 13-year-olds shouting about how they’re going to do unspeakable things to each other’s mothers,” says Max Overreach, head of Activision’s new Moral Oversight Division.
Dubbed the “Snitch-While-You-Twitch” program, all in-game conversations will be funneled directly to a team of monitors who are presumably well-adjusted adults willing to listen to hours of trash talk, potty-mouth, and profanity-laden diatribes, all in the name of social justice.
“We believe it’s our duty—no pun intended—to make sure that everyone’s first experience with hate speech is not on our platform,” adds Overreach.
Critics are calling the move a blatant infringement on privacy rights and an Orwellian attempt to control the narrative and dictate what is deemed as acceptable speech. Activision argues that these are small prices to pay for a society cleansed of verbal impurities. “Besides, anyone who disagrees is probably a bad person anyway,” says Overreach, conveniently dodging the complex ethical implications.
Data collected from the initiative will also be repurposed to serve targeted ads to players, a feature that Activision assures is purely coincidental.
As gamers around the world adjust to the new Panopticon-esque reality, some can’t help but wonder: if a player rages in a match and no one is around to hear it, do they make a sound? Activision says yes, and that sound will be promptly reviewed, stored, and possibly used against them in the future.
The endgame of the initiative remains unclear, but one thing is for certain: if you’re playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, someone is always watching, listening, and judging—just like a real war.
