Have you ever been in a game of Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4 and just been blown away by the behavior and the lack of vocabulary by most of the other people? Now I know that flaming and tormenting is going to happen in any online community.  It is just the way that the medium appears to have evolved.  However, this doesn't mean that I want to play a game with someone who swears every other word or just completely derises his teammates. The ethnic slurs and other forms of abuse run really rampant.  Now I know that Microsoft has put items into place that allow you to report a player and not play with them anymore, but what does that do for the next person that has to play with that person?

     The worst thing I have ever been party to on Live is the complete beratement of a 10 year-old kid.  He was playing Call of Duty 2 online right after it came out, and he was on my team.  He was just learning and most of us were in the same boat or just having fun helping him out on the multiplayer aspects.  This one guy though, just didn't understand and begun hurling obscenities at the kid. The rest of us tried to make the kid feel better after the guy left the game. It was disturbing, because he went from being completely in awe of the game and just playing with other people, to swearing off multiplayer games because he didn't want to put up with that.  Who can blame him.

     Since it is a pay service, I would think that they would do a better job of policing their community.  There are many stories out there of children seeing innapropriate items through the Live Vision camera and the verbal beratement just as bad. I'm not a high and mighty sort, or a bible-thumper by any means, but there is a sense of decorum and decency that doesn't appear to exist. I personally sit at a Silver Live account, just to avoid a lot of the online multiplayer games.  I have no problem with the swearing personally, but it just gets old.

     What most of these people don't seem to understand is that their actions affect others, and can cause the community to get smaller.  Less people on live means smaller online games. I would like to see Microsoft really start to crack down on these abusive users and set more clear guidelines and punishments for breaking these guidelines.  Since they are providing the online service, they need to do a better job.  Anyone else have Live horror stories?