Having been out for two full months already, Left 4 Dead is slowly seeing an influx of third party dedicated servers to compliment those hosted by Valve/Steam. While it’s great to see gamers step up and support the community with both their time and money, one of the more popular complaints amongst regulars is that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to locate un-modded (”pure”) servers. This difficulty is largely due to the lack of a functional server browser built into the game’s interface. PC users of the game can access a bare-bones browser through manual console commands (specifically, “openserverbrowser”), however there are no applicable filters for server-side mods or altered cvars. Note to Valve: the #1 way to piss off PC gamers is to strip useful features from a multi-platform release because they don’t work well on consoles.

Indeed, some mods and settings are useful and even downright necessary when they provide fixes for game-breaking exploits. The AI boss infected bug, in which unscrupulous players could swap between spectator mode and the infected team in order to spawn entire armies of hunters (fixed 1/14/09), was prevented by the modding community weeks before the problem was officially remedied with a game update. Other server mods exist to automatically boot players who grief via friendly fire, or to prevent them from suiciding as a survivor (using the /kill command, thus gimping their entire team) while a votekick is taking place.

Douchebag safeguards. Griefer punishers. Exploit prevention. These are the kinds of mods we need (and for which we are grateful).

What we do not need are profanity filters.

If you’re scratching your head as to why profanity filters exist in a game rated MA and featuring extreme violence, consider yourself in good company. It boggles my mind that server admins wish to censor language in a game intended only for and sold only to adults, and that someone has actually taken the time to cater to these insane wishes by creating mods that both filter out adult language and even kick/ban users who say naughty words. It’s perfectly fine if your characters in game are programmed to yell canned obscenities at regular intervals, but if you say “shit” over your microphone or even type it, well, you’ve clearly crossed the line. I can attest to the fact that these servers are out there after being kicked from one after telling my trigger-happy teammate to watch his goddamn fire.

Let’s be clear about one thing. I take no issue with admins running their servers however they see fit–after all, it is their money and therefore their right to do so. It is likewise my right to criticize and cast judgment on their shenanigans. This is an award-winning case of stupid in the extraordinary.

Perhaps I just don’t understand the purpose of profanity filters. I always thought they existed to prevent children, unspoiled virgins, and bible-thumping grandmothers from being exposed to filthy language, which I can only assume causes them to spontaneously combust or join an Islamic terrorist sect. What truly frightens me is that there are individuals with their priorities so far out of whack that they believe we should shield these sensitive populations from swear words but have no objections to exposing them to a cavalcade of exploding skulls and dismemberment.

Sadly, this mis-calibration of priorities extends far beyond the online gaming community. The Dark Knight and its MPAA rating are perfect evidence of this. Those producers must have sucked a record number of executive cigars to get this film (awesome as it may be) released with a PG-13 rating, easily the most violent movie ever in this category. Why wasn’t it rated R? Because it contains no profanity or nudity. Assessment of violence is completely subjective, but the ratings rules for profanity, nudity, and sexual language are absolute:

“A motion picture’s single use of one of the harsher sexually-derived words, though only as an expletive, initially requires at least a PG-13 rating. More than one such expletive requires an R rating, as must even one of those words used in a sexual context.”

So America would rather its children see someone senselessly murdered by being impaled through the eyeball with a pencil than let them hear the word “fuck” more than once every 90 minutes? That seems just a tad bit insane to this author.

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