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I have been playing online games for a very long time. In fact, come to think of it, I think I have been playing online games since before there was an online worth mentioning. When I was much younger I had an Atari 800xl. I considered it the pinnacle of human evolution. I could pop in a cartridge and play Pengo, record home made programs onto the cassette drive, and with just a few lines of code turn my little television into a strobe light. As I was entering high school I got my hands on a 300 baud modem and started logging onto local Bulletin Board Systems. I'd stay up late wandering through the early MUD's and building a trade empire in a galaxy rendered entirely with words.
Since then a lot of things have advanced. Not only are the worlds rendered in beautiful detail, but they also feature an array of things to do that would have boggled my tiny fourteen year old mind. And while I don't usually consider myself one of those guys who pines for the good old days there is one thing that I truly miss about the old BBS games. As strange as it sounds the one thing that technology hasn't improved, and in fact seems to have almost destroyed, is creative abuse.
Perhaps I should provide a little background. Recently I have been playing a game called Kings of Chaos. In this game you create an army and set out to attack other people and steal their gold, which in turn allows you to built a stronger army. Then, with your stronger army you can launch an even more powerful attack against someone with even more money, and then use that money to... Well, you get the idea. It isn't really a very complex game. Attack, spend, rinse, repeat.
However, some people in the game get a little irritated when you attack them. In the good old days when this happened in games of this sort it could potentially start a war of wits between you and your new found adversary. They would fire off a creative insult and the gauntlet would be thrown. From that point on the messages between the two of you would be public, and the verbal smack-down would be judged by your peers. But it was all in good fun, and ninety nine percent of the time nobody's feelings were hurt, it was just a fun little diversion, a way to vent, and a way to show off your ability to fend for yourself, intellectually.
At some point along the way this all changed. Recently I received a message from someone in Kings of Chaos that said:
"oi mate tell brittlover to leave my mate chaos_of_kermit alone or next time you have millions of gold i will attack with no mercy so you better tell him to lave chaos_of_kermit alone"
As far as I was concerned the gauntlet had been thrown. I simply responded that if his friend didn't like being attacked then perhaps he should run out and pick up a copy of "Barbie Horse Adventures" for X-Box, as I'm pretty sure nobody would attack him in that game.
Here's where it gets depressing. You see, in the old days I would have received a response like the following:
"I called the store to see if I could get a copy for my friend and apparently they are completely sold out, oddly enough, to someone matching your description."
I mean, it's not even the greatest comeback in the world, but it's miles above and beyond the response I actually got, which was this:
"you like barbie and you call yourself a orc leader you barbie **** lover f*** off you d*** head"
Sad, isn't it? A perfectly good insult wasted on someone who doesn't even have second grade english skills. It has gotten me wondering, though. I realize that there are a lot of people out there to whom english isn't their first language, and in their cases grammar like that can be excused. I certainly wouldn't expect anyone in Germany to cheer with delight after seeing me write a sentence in German. But I simply refuse to believe that every single person who plays video games doesn't speak english.
This got me thinking, are online games actually lowering the literacy rate in North America? Or is the internet evolving to create an entirely new language, one that is universal and encompasses all languages? Maybe the internet is actually killing english entirely, and soon those few of us who still speak it will find ourselves trying to find ways to use it in day to day life just to justify knowing it, like th author who translated Harry Potter into latin.
I would be curious to see if the ease with which things like punctuation and spelling are abandoned online is starting to translate into real world issues for your learners. I found a site online that has a nice little overview of the sorts of things that a child is expected to learn in grade two.
On the page it states th following as things that a child should know by the end of the year.
By the end of the year, they should be able to:
> use capital letters at the beginning of sentences;
> use periods to end sentences;
> approximate the use of quotation marks;
> use capital letters and exclamation marks for emphasis;
> use question marks; and
> use common contractions.
Now, lets examine the most recent message from my friend over at Kings of Chaos, shall we?
"oh really that is why when you tried to spy on me and when you attacked me (so did brittlover) i defended you attack (and brittlover) and caught you aren't made for ths game mate"
If a man is truly judged by the strength of his enemies, then I really need to find some better enemies. If I were a super hero and this guy was my arch nemesis not only could I not join the "Justice League", but I'd get turned down for membership into "Power Pack".
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