Playstation Home needs to sweeten up

Photo: Getty Images

Playstation Home, Sony's new 3-D Virtual world component for PlayStation 3, is barely out of the starting gates and already it's plagued with problems. Michael Marsh, a straight 18-year-old gamer, attempted to create a gay/straight alliance but found that words like "gay," "lesbian," and "bisexual" were all being filtered.

"I can understand if they're filtering out profanity, but if feel like it's discrimination," Marsh said. "By blocking a word like 'gay,' which is a preferred term by the gay community, you're encouraging it as a bad word." Other words found to be blocked: "Jew," "Christ," and even "Hello," which was apparently censored because it contains the word "hell."

The filtering isn't the only glitch: women and other minority players have reported sexual and racist comments and some gamers -- seemingly those with nothing else to complain about -- are up in arms over the high prices of virtual items in Home like Diesel clothing.

Sony Computer Entertainment America spokesperson Patrick Seybold told the San Francisco Chronicle that the program, while open to the public, is still in beta testing stages and is a work in progress. "The key message is that it's a beta and it's evolving on a daily basis," he said. "We've said early on that user behavior and feedback will shape where we go with Home." He also added that when the program is out of beta testing and officially launched all of the aforementioned words should be unfiltered.

Paying high prices for designer clothing is nothing new -- especially lately -- but how are we supposed to root out other gays to have virtual hook ups with if we can't even type in g-a-y?

Previously > Neil Patrick Harris and Will Arnett go gaming

Comments

[warcraft gold]

This is funny but at least they knew the glitches as early as now.