01.20.07
Great. Scot.
I touched a bit on being verbally assaulted while playing XBLA Texas Hold ‘Em. However, I think it’s probably the best time to go into a little bit more detail about what happened simply because it exemplifies the worst (and best) elements of the Xbox Live model. Plus, well, I at least think the story’s funny.
First off, I should probably say that I’ve always been conscious of my accent. Of all of the people in my family, I managed to be the only one who has the strong Pittsburgh accent. For me, words like “yinz” and “The Stillers” have always been part of my vocabulary, and if you catch me on a bad day I tend to blur my long “I” phonemes into “ah”s with exceptional regularity. For me, humanity went through the Arn Age before they hit the Bronze Age. I shop at the Gian Iggle. That sort of thing. Pittsburgh has a pretty distinct regional accent but it’s largely unknown outside of the area, overshadowed by the more well-known Massachussetts and New York accents.
Still, regional accents only matter within a specific region. Within the Northeast US, I’m almost instantly pegged as being from the ‘Burgh. Take one step over the Atlantic, though, and all that people hear is “American”. Regardless of what I’m saying, I’m instantly blamed for every single thing wrong with this country. I would, of course, like to (totally non-sarcastically) apologize for not being able to vote in either of the two previous elections due to not knowing where the hell I was going to be at any given moment. If I had voted, of course, it would not have made a single bit of difference because no matter where I could have voted, I was always in a state that was decisively called with no uncertainty. Still, yes, I will accept full personal responsibility for a) Iraq, b) Enron, c) the Korean War, and d) Vietnam. Jerks.
Now I told you about that because of the three Scotsmen that I had the fortune to be matched up with. I was completely speechless as soon as I logged in because they did not shut up. Seriously. I had about forty seconds of stunned silence on my end while the constant stream of unintelligible gibberish flowed directly into my right ear. Now if they had not been speaking all at once, I might have been able to pick out the basic gist of their conversation. They were; and to be honest, the sound quality for the voice communication is not all that great, so even neutral language gets somewhat fuzzy. But this went beyond “fuzzy” and into the sublimely ridiculous.
The stereotype of the Scotsmen is that they manage to use the word f^%#* every other word in everyday conversation. If you’ve seen “Crank” or “The Transporter”, you get the idea (though “Crank” was one of the better films I’d seen last year). I have it on good authority that this is not necessarily the case in reality. But listening to these three, you couldn’t tell. Matter of fact, that particular word was one of the only things I could understand. That and “‘Ey, Fury, why you quiet?” I didn’t say anything until after about ten minutes of hearing them chase off everyone else.
They did eventually coax me to speak. “‘Ey, f%#$er, say something, f#$%ing $#@@%@.” So I said, in as calm a voice as I could muster, “Your conversation has rendered me speechless in admiration.” Wow, was that the wrong thing to say. Instantly, “‘Ey, f$%#ing American, ‘e’s a f%#$ing American, f%#$ off, America…” and so on. Yeah, that was probably telegraphed ten minutes ahead of time but at the same time I wasn’t going to quit just because they were morons. Actually, the fact that they were too busy yakking made it easier for me to win the majority of the hands.
So, when I managed to win a big hand, they kicked me from the table.
Now, that’s probably the worst part about Live-enabled games. That and people who think that the mike is their own personal karaoke machine; ran into a couple of those both in poker and in Rainbow Six. By and large, though, I’m very grateful for two elements added to the Live system since the last time I’d owned an Xbox. The first is the player feedback system. With all the copious not-playing-poker-time I’d had after being kicked, I could put all three of the drunken Scots on a “negative feedback” list, which basically means that I won’t be auto-matched with players like them again. Silent, anonymous, and easy. The other feature is the microphone mute feature, which I used to silence a couple other singers.
Ultimately, I’m complaining for nothing. Yeah.
*: For those of you just joining the blog, I don’t use “The F-Word” out of a belief that it’s overused.