Category: Xbox

Context. Or, no you don’t get to apply your Internet niche knowledge to me doing my job. :>

[EDIT: I made tweaks to the below entry as I inadvertanly diminished the symbol’s importance outside of its use by the Nazis. My point on the post is not really specific to the swastika, I could have written as much about the word "Fag" being a cigarette in the UK. However one should strive to be accurate so I made some adjustments.]

 

Tonight I got asked one of those questions that only my job can apparently engender, namely “Hey, I’m not a genocidal hater of Jews but I really love the design of the swastika because its actually used by numerous religions, can I use it as my Call Of Duty: Black Ops logo? SWASTIKAS ARE AWESOME.No really, someone asked me this as a serious question on twitter.  So I of course replied, “no, of course you can’t, we’ll ban you.”

 

 

UH OH!  OUT COMES THE INTERNET PUNDITS! <g>

You know the type I mean.  They’ve read an article that’s contrarian to some position widely held, or they’ve found some obscure fact that contradicts common interpretation.  Some of them claim to have known it as innate fact, others claim it to be widespread common knowledge taught to every single person in elementary school. Of course, usually neither is true at all. Most of them are just contrarians.  They would never dare to wear a swastika openly, but they love to argue about how the world has “misunderstood” this symbol. Or they view any opportunity for human interaction, no matter the appropriateness, to push their point. You know, like you do. 

Under some religions, the specific design of the Nazi swastika is certainly not unique to the German Nazi Party.  In some cases, it can be interpreted to mean unity depending on how it is oriented. But somehow, (I know, calm yourself) the prosecution of an entire world war in the 20th century co-opted that symbol for western civilizations into a symbol of evil and hatred. Let’s be clear: no educated human on the planet looks at the swastika symbol on a video game service in “the year we make contact” and says “oh, that symbol has nothing at all in any way to do with global genocide of an entire race and, even if it did, one should totally and reasonably ignore that because it’s a symbol that was stolen or coop-ted from religions.” (If you want to know more about this topic, the wikipedia entry for it is fairly comprehensive.)

Well, no educated human on the planet that is, unless we’re talking about the Internet. Because according to the Internet, certain orientations of the swastika symbol was stamped on all money, food, foreheads, temples, and just about everywhere any reasonable person could find it.  And the Nazi’s effectively won world war two if anyone promotes banning the Nazi orientation of the symbol. I exaggerate of course, but the tone of some of the people’s points made it seem as if it was somehow political correctness gone too far to note that use of the swastika on our service is not allowed. It was bizarre.

Indeed, my twitter stream was filled with people stating that Xbox LIVE should equally ban the star of David, the Christian cross, and yes I am not kidding, the infinity symbol because under various niche interpretations of those symbols, they are as evil as the swastika symbol and I should apply ethical relativism to all symbols on Xbox LIVE to respect all viewpoints because of the United States First Amendment.

Even better? The argument that because the single player of the game is rated mature, the online experience should allow for all manner of horrible genocidal viewpoints. I know the symbols might show up in games, but that’s content that you know that you are getting, because it is rated content.  It’s there as part of the experience, not making a statement.  Using it as your emblem is different.

No really. 

I hate to do this Internet,  I really really do, but let me lay out some level headed reality.

The Xbox LIVE profile and in game content you create is accessible by everyone.  You do not have the context inside of it to explain your long winded contrarian view that your pithy text that violates the Terms of Use or Code of Conduct is actually intended to change people’s minds about a commonly held understanding.

It’s not political correctness, it’s fundamental respect. If you think the swastika symbol should be re-evaluated by societies all over the Earth, I think that’s great.  Your Xbox LIVE profile or in game logo, which doesn’t have the context to explain your goal, is probably not the right place to do that.  And by the way, that doesn’t just go for the Swastika, it applies to many other symbols as well that my team does indeed take action on when we see it.

Context.

Yes we can have the discussion in other venues about the double meaning of various terms, something my team does everyday.  But for many topics, its kind of a no-brainer.

*Context*

TL;DR: If you see offensive symbols in Call of Duty, Black Ops, report them using the in game option and they will be taken care of.  If you want to argue that swastikas are actually AWESOME, go to another forum.  On Xbox LIVE they are not allowed. :>

Today, April 15th 2010*, we bid goodbye to our friend; our brother.

Today we took a rather deep decision.  In order to enable some awesome new stuff that I cannot possibly talk about, we needed to turn off support for original Xbox consoles and titles on Xbox LIVE. It wasn’t easy, and was taken with the utmost consideration for our customers to enable new functionality. But this post isn’t really about that specific point. I didn’t think this post would be hard to write but… Instead, wait…look over your shoulder!  WORMHOLE!

November 15th, 2002.  Rochelle and I arrived belatedly in Seattle.  I’d been officially hired by the Microsoft Security Response Center.  We drove from Dallas to Seattle at my insistence. There are a lot of reasons for that but the primary one was that I loved so much making that drive.  You crossed the plains of Kansas then through Colorado and the Rockies across the continental divide and then into the severely underrated Utah and Idaho lands.

But in this case I was tense.  I’d already been hired by the MSRC and my start date was November 22, but Rochelle and I had to get up to Seattle in order to start the process of relocating along with all the work that comes with moving from one Microsoft Realm to the other.

Let me try to explain that.  When you move from one Microsoft business unit to another, you might need to move network information or other attributes. This required a whole bunch of “e-paperwork” and other stuff while you tried to figure out the real life stuff. In a really funny example of that the person who set up my Seattle account info set me up as “Stepto Toulouse” that’s how well he knew me, or what I was called.

I remember the moment Rochelle and I arrived in Seattle very well.  Cresting the Cascades in my Jeep Wrangler after a treacherous drive through Snoqualmie pass, we entered the foothills east of Issaquah.  While driving, the mist of the November snow storms wisped over the low hills in a spectacular show of pacific northwest beauty.

See?” I said to Rochelle, “Seattle is saying hi!”

It’s really hard to describe the beauty of that type of moment.  But at the same time I was nervous as we were about to check into Microsoft Corporate Housing and my Xbox was in the back of the jeep.  Two moments were about to be defined as one.

It wasn’t hard to get situated.  My start date meant I would ramp up super fast.  All the while, Rochelle would have to look for a house.

But…

See I had my Xbox with me, and the temp housing in the apartment complex they put us in had broadband.

Observant gamers will notice that every October, my Xbox LIVE tenure triggers before everyone else. My friend e is the very first gamertag and his tenure triggers in late August, so he’s one step above me.

But Xbox Gold customers from our launch, trigger in November. I was lucky enough to be one of the first MS employees to be part of the pre-release version of Xbox LIVE.  The sole reason I had brought my Xbox console to Seattle during that most crucial of life changeovers was to make sure that no matter what, I could log into Xbox LIVE the actual day it moved from Beta to actual launch.

And so it was that on one simple day in the midst of an incredible life change while trying to sell a house, buy a house, and fundamentally alter the very nature of the work I had done at that point for Microsoft…We got back from house hunting.  I hugged Rochelle and poured a drink. I took the time to stop, sign in, and make sure that the very day we launched Xbox LIVE I was there, and played some Crimson Skies.

Collapse the wormhole.

April 15th, 2010*.

Rochelle is asleep upstairs. I spent most of today putting Xbox 1 LIVE support to bed with amazing people who love what they do. We toasted that bootstrap of success for what we are today and tonight all of us are reflecting on what’s next.

It’s great.

It’s alive.

It’s LIVE.

* THE YEAR WE MAKE CONTACT

Where geeks abide…

From an internal thread at Microsoft, properly redacted. Read from the bottom up:

From: [Microsoft Employee 3]
Sent: Wednesday, October 07, 2009 3:47 PM
To: [An Internal Xbox Discussion List]
Subject: RE: Elite at Company Store… what’s in the box?

Open it & see …

pic2

[REDACTED]

From: [Microsoft Employee 2]
Sent: Wednesday, October 07, 2009 3:47 PM
To: [An Internal Xbox Discussion List]
Subject: RE: Elite at Company Store… what’s in the box?

pic1

You don’t want to know…

[REDACTED]

From: [Microsoft Employee 1]
Sent: Wednesday, October 07, 2009 3:42 PM
To: [An Internal Xbox Discussion Alias]
Subject:  Elite at Company Store… what’s in the box?

What comes bundled with this console?  Controllers, cables, games?

Thanks

     [REDACTED]

I love where I work.

Where geeks abide…

From an internal thread at Microsoft, properly redacted. Read from the bottom up:

From: [Microsoft Employee 3]
Sent: Wednesday, October 07, 2009 3:47 PM
To: [An Internal Xbox Discussion List]
Subject: RE: Elite at Company Store… what’s in the box?

Open it & see …

pic2

[REDACTED]

From: [Microsoft Employee 2]
Sent: Wednesday, October 07, 2009 3:47 PM
To: [An Internal Xbox Discussion List]
Subject: RE: Elite at Company Store… what’s in the box?

pic1

You don’t want to know…

[REDACTED]

From: [Microsoft Employee 1]
Sent: Wednesday, October 07, 2009 3:42 PM
To: [An Internal Xbox Discussion Alias]
Subject:  Elite at Company Store… what’s in the box?

What comes bundled with this console?  Controllers, cables, games?

Thanks

     [REDACTED]

I love where I work.