[Faustie]

Most I can say is that if it is about its usage IC, you should not make a rule prohibiting its use but rather have hard-coded filters that limit where it can be used. Limit it to IC chat and of course microphone. Code something that puts a filter in place for forms of communication that shouldn't have some of these <extreme> words in them (Broadcast, advert, etcetera) and have it also look for different variations. Make a rule prohibiting you from bypassing a language filter.

This by Nev is something that could potentially provide a solution to a fair amount of this and help remove IC/OOC ambiguity and the more extreme/pointless racism without any in-game story. Sorry I missed this, thread degraded a bit quickly. I'd be happy to discuss the implementation of this and how that could allow more RP.

[Judge Rage]

Surely the community backlash (AS MUCH AS YOU GUYS WANT TO ADMINISTRATE WE PAY THE BILLS) is suggesting this may not be the best decision made?

Also I'm still failing to see the legal argument for this which I'm attempting to deconstruct cause there is literally nothing on the books Limelight Gaming Limited  could be held liable for.

Also, not quite sure if you guys know what Limited Company means (you should do yous run one) but it means there ain't much financially or legally the officers themselves personally can be held liable for, and this is one of those situations.

Community backlash is always concerning, but if you try and see it from our point of view we've become a bit numb to it? Can make it fairly difficult to steer any kind of direction that won't upset someone. So many developments/map changes/directions have had backlash every time and the development team at least has become numb to it. Not too sure about admins but I imagine there's a lot there too. Things would probably work better if people were more chill 99% of the time and reserved the backlash for the occasions it's warranted. If this is one of those occasions, great, happy to listen to those making genuine points (such as yourself) and of course things can and may change, but only if everyone involved acts chill (as opposed to ranting about leftist agendas or proclaiming a new map is the doom of LL). Easy to rant, not so easy to deal with all the bullshit and reach a decent decision.

Please don't give so much weight to the legal argument - it's more about the IC/OOC thing. Yes, the legal part is there but the reason we clarified is precisely because we have to play it safe. There's a lot of potentially relevant laws, precedent and public opinion are always changing, and we're not lawyers.  We're aware of the meaning of limited company - not overly worried about personal risk (outside of witch hunts or ridiculous legal precedent), but there may well be some risk to LL itself which would be a shame. If we could afford decent legal advice we may well take a different decision - but we can't.

The points that BD and a couple of others have made do have weight. We could modify the new rule to account for that so people are less worried about all RP being ruined. Probably start with just a small discussion as some people are open to talk about things whereas others just kind of scream loudly. Always open to feedback though.

I fully appreciate what you're saying in the first paragraph - it's all too easy to rant on the internet and you're right in that ranting and shouting at the changes isn't a correct way to address them.

My concern with the legal argument was simply that from my knowledge (and the several hours of googling that have preceeded to back myself up) the legal point is literally moot.

My chief concern is more, from someone who's been playing serious roleplay for many years now, the just general restrictions it places. The way I see it, we've been becoming more lax and free over the past few years and it's great, and then to go to this almost seems like you guys want to usher in an era of handholding and restrictions once again - it's simply not the direction I think we want to be going, and I'm sure many others in the community with my experience would back me up. My point more or less is that it interferes with character development.

edit: Away to my bed now - always up for further discussion re. RP concerns and legality being moot! Have a good one

[Faustie]

Surely the community backlash (AS MUCH AS YOU GUYS WANT TO ADMINISTRATE WE PAY THE BILLS) is suggesting this may not be the best decision made?

Also I'm still failing to see the legal argument for this which I'm attempting to deconstruct cause there is literally nothing on the books Limelight Gaming Limited  could be held liable for.

Also, not quite sure if you guys know what Limited Company means (you should do yous run one) but it means there ain't much financially or legally the officers themselves personally can be held liable for, and this is one of those situations.

Community backlash is always concerning, but if you try and see it from our point of view we've become a bit numb to it? Can make it fairly difficult to steer any kind of direction that won't upset someone. So many developments/map changes/directions have had backlash every time and the development team at least has become numb to it. Not too sure about admins but I imagine there's a lot there too. Things would probably work better if people were more chill 99% of the time and reserved the backlash for the occasions it's warranted. If this is one of those occasions, great, happy to listen to those making genuine points (such as yourself) and of course things can and may change, but only if everyone involved acts chill (as opposed to ranting about leftist agendas or proclaiming a new map is the doom of LL). Easy to rant, not so easy to deal with all the bullshit and reach a decent decision.

Please don't give so much weight to the legal argument - it's more about the IC/OOC thing. Yes, the legal part is there but the reason we clarified is precisely because we have to play it safe. There's a lot of potentially relevant laws, precedent and public opinion are always changing, and we're not lawyers.  We're aware of the meaning of limited company - not overly worried about personal risk (outside of witch hunts or ridiculous legal precedent), but there may well be some risk to LL itself which would be a shame. If we could afford decent legal advice we may well take a different decision - but we can't.

The points that BD and a couple of others have made do have weight. We could modify the new rule to account for that so people are less worried about all RP being ruined. Probably start with just a small discussion as some people are open to talk about things whereas others just kind of scream loudly. Always open to feedback though.

I fully appreciate what you're saying in the first paragraph - it's all too easy to rant on the internet and you're right in that ranting and shouting at the changes isn't a correct way to address them.

My concern with the legal argument was simply that from my knowledge (and the several hours of googling that have preceeded to back myself up) the legal point is literally moot.

My chief concern is more, from someone who's been playing serious roleplay for many years now, the just general restrictions it places. The way I see it, we've been becoming more lax and free over the past few years and it's great, and then to go to this almost seems like you guys want to usher in an era of handholding and restrictions once again - it's simply not the direction I think we want to be going, and I'm sure many others in the community with my experience would back me up. My point more or less is that it interferes with character development.

edit: Away to my bed now - always up for further discussion re. RP concerns and legality being moot! Have a good one

Thanks for accepting that. It can get a bit frustrating at times and makes it much, much more difficult to actually resolve anything. The vast majority of the team is open to changing implementations and discussing further - but only when it's done maturely. It's draining otherwise.

You're right that the point may be moot, but it would be best to have legal advice to confirm. Were/when that's affordable, we can make changes there.

I'm definitely glad we've had free RP - for the last couple of years I've been arguing in the staff lounge that we have far too many rules and that the vast majority should be removed and replaced with a few hard-coded exceptions or by adding in-game consequences (i.e. I still think fearRP should go and be replaced by death consequences). We're definitely not trying to restrict interesting RP, that'd be stupid. I do question how much banning racism actually interferes with character development - from my experience when I used to play the answer is not at all or barely. While I don't play now, that was backed up during staff discussions and I haven't really had any other point of view presented. There's a million ways you can RP without being racist or discriminatory.

I do accept that the new rule may be adding a new grey zone, though the IC/OOC one is removed. If we could tailor it only to extreme discrimination - or discrimination without any backing in RP or story - I think that would be a great solution, but then we'd just have people like BlackDog (sorry BlackDog <3) saying "where's the line"? 

It's worth noting that the grey zone was still there, just in a different place before the rule. Part of the reason it's implemented was because a previously botched staff/player interaction led to some OOC racism being allowed IC. It can be confusing to determine the difference between OOC/IC racism. Nev's idea of a filter would definitely help though. If extreme discrimination were still banned and the filter in place, I could see a solution where genuine roleplay/story-telling is opened up again as part of character development.

[pufitee]

so can i not be a Muslim? aka put on an accent or is that racism

[Jeff Ford]

Well I could guess the toxicity of this thread by the lack of spelling in the title.

Yay!

[Brin.]

You're absolutely right in that legal risks are low for us, but they exist, and we've seen a competitor get into some serious trouble for not taking any legal risks seriously. None of us are laywers and we can't afford to burn a lot of money on legal advice, so we're erring on the side of caution. I highly doubt that many people here are lawyers either.

However, it's worth noting that that's just one part - arguably the less important part - of the explanation that was just made for clarity. The main reason why this rule change was made is that both players/staff have had difficulty managing the blurred lines between IC/OOC, and this targets that. In regards to current IC actions, admin discretion will absolutely apply and most things would be a matter of precedent.

BlackDog, I think you're reaching a bit. It's not discrimination to say someone is of a certain race, and we're not going to lose all RP over this rule. It existed for a long time back when I was regularly playing and there was no noticeable change in RP before and after the rule was removed in the old community. If anything, the quality of RP steadily degraded, partly as the bottom-of-the-barrel would run around with continual racist RP (license plates and descriptions made racist, continual RP, etc. Not fun days).

Why only suddenly care about the legal risks?

[Toxic]

Return of the admin police.

[Hungames]

OH NO!!! The big scary man called me a n-word on a garry's mod roleplay server!!!!

[greg]

will i get banned if i play music with the n word in it

[goigle]

This is just an excuse for the 'executives' of LL to push a pro-left agenda that serves nothing but to allow themselves to sleep better at night knowing that no 12yr olds are saying the n-word on their platform.

With all due respect, the notion that this is some form of leftist agenda is laughable. The internal discussion, without leaking and referring to beyond the business side, was focused on aggressive RP groups and their excuses for attacking / killing people and how much depth it really added IC versus how much was lost from banning racism.

Hungames, Nick, Dan and Sourlemon can confirm I'm not a leftist or pushing my agenda.

Here's my two cents.

Racism has worked well to develop a character IC before. I haven't really seen sexism or other forms of discrimination before the rule change.

The issue comes with dedicated IC racist groups (especially aggressive RP focused ones, which are the only ones I have seen). Those groups tend to be centered around low quality roleplay with little background RP or purpose other than 'racism.' They can interrupt someone's quiet RP (mind you, someone who might not even know they have a black player model) and kill them or cause chaos on the server but it's OK because racism RP.

Personally, I don't see the loss of that as much of a loss at all. Same for racism in broadcast / advert.

Now, racist undertones or as a supporting characteristic to a character can be excellent and really add a unique feel to a situation.
Same for sexism, honestly. An old character can be stuck in his ways and prefer a job be handled by a man or make casual racist remarks to people. That's part of a good, fleshed out character.

[goigle]

so can i not be a Muslim? aka put on an accent or is that racism

That's a silly question - your accent would be IC and any accusation of you making a racist accent is discussion of an OOC action which would have already been covered by the previous rule. Why start a discussion and not take it seriously? Do you expect people to take it seriously?

[pufitee]

so can i not be a Muslim? aka put on an accent or is that racism

That's a silly question - your accent would be IC and any accusation of you making a racist accent is discussion of an OOC action which would have already been covered by the previous rule. Why start a discussion and not take it seriously? Do you expect people to take it seriously?

hey cowboy dont judge my discussion skils

[Dan]

Is nigga racist?

If no then can I just claim I said nigga instead of n*gger

If yes then how am I supposed to RP as a blood member or an African-American gang?
How am I supposed to RP as a southerner who happens to be racist?
How am I supposed to RP as a DJ and play explicit music?

This is absolutely redicilous y’all. If it is such a big legal issue, why was it not addressed 3 fucking years ago? 

Give us some examples how how difficult it can be to differentiate between oof and IC racism. 
If I go up to someone and call someone a fucking n*gger, IC, leave that alone.
If I say n*gger in ooc or look, punish me.
It’s not that difficult folks.

[Faustie]

Is nigga racist? Context
If no then can I just claim I said nigga instead of n*gger Wouldn't recommend it

If yes then how am I supposed to RP as a blood member or an African-American gang? RPing as a certain race is not discrimination.
How am I supposed to RP as a southerner who happens to be racist? You're right, this would be lost. If there was genuine RP and character development here and not just an excuse to throw around slurs or provide justification for what would otherwise be RDM it would've made sense.
How am I supposed to RP as a DJ and play explicit music? Explicit music is not normally discriminatory

This is absolutely redicilous y’all. If it is such a big legal issue, why was it not addressed 3 fucking years ago?
Times change; understandings change; informed of generally less mature use of IC racism and more IC/OOC issues found; more toxicity. Take your pick.

Give us some examples how how difficult it can be to differentiate between oof and IC racism. Numerous cases of people being overtly racist IC with no character development or valid roleplay reason. Not much different from roleplay/RDM only the impact of OOC racism disguised as IC or constant IC racism with no roleplay or story background is much more negatively impactful.
If I go up to someone and call someone a fucking n*gger, IC, leave that alone. Would this be part of a well-developed character and roleplay or just looking for an excuse to say slurs? Can be hard to tell.
If I say n*gger in ooc or look, punish me. 
It’s not that difficult folks. Not when you don't have to make the decisions.

Hope that answers some questions. As said several times, roleplaying as a certain race or group or playing explicit music is not discrimination, though I can understand if the definitions have become very blurred. This can be clarified.

Discrimination could have a part in roleplay as part of well-developed characters to progress the story, but just as with certain aggressive RP, requires maturity and good roleplay to pull off well. Given that many of the posts here are just asking if they can say racist slurs, I'm not sure that's the case. There are certainly some people making good comments about freedom to develop characters and story, but it's pretty overshadowed by people just wanting an excuse to say the n-word or start shit. Will let the mod/admin team give more input on that as they understand the current state much better than I do.

A lot of this rule is coming from a case of people being unable to provide any character development behind discrimination and just using IC as an excuse; random racism with no character development or effort in roleplay, and groups centred around it. That borders far more on OOC and Nev's idea of a filter could help to restrict slurs to solely IC chat and tighten this a bit if this were to be reversed or loosened.

IC doesn't just mean using the IC chat. In Character means you have to actually be playing and developing a character. If that's occurring and makes sense, then discrimination in character is no different to it being part of a book or movie's character/theme. That would be fine if not abused. Throwing slurs or racist themes into character descriptions, license plates, clan names and ranks, adverts, or just using them in in-game chat with no context or good development isn't IC at all. The character has to be present.

I'll speak to mods/admins/possibly teachers and they can gauge what the current state of most discriminatory RP is like: part of a well-developed character story and roleplay, or an excuse to use slurs and avoid IC development to take actions? If their response is positive, then we can loosen this rule and clarify what is and isn't allowed, and truly restrict any slurs to IC only. If it's mid-way, perhaps admins could authorise RP case by case. If negative and they indicate it's mainly slurs and little IC, then there's not even any real loss to having this rule.

[Montyfatcat]

Whilst racism was barely used in my experience, it did lead to some good RPs based around it. I understand part of why it was removed, namely the old syndrome of "12-y/os-who-think-they're-edgy-itis", but this does limit some good RP.