Should Developers Let You Mute Swear Words in Video Games?
Every family has a different approach to swearing. Should games help?
Our pediatrician had excellent advice about swearing: keep swearing or stop swearing entirely. We went with the former, and that’s how we ended up with things like a swear jar—for us, not the kids. Our children do not swear, but accept it’s a thing that grownups say sometimes. They give us grief over swearing but largely leave it alone.
But every house is different. Every family is different. Every kid is different.
Given our own approach, you would not be surprised to learn I was tickled by an article published by Video Game Chronicle’s Chris Scullion called “Developers: Please give me the option to remove swear words from your games,” in which the father of a seven-year-old argued “in the era of excellent accessibility options, parents should be able to play certain games in front of their children without reaching for the volume.”
Spicy! I hadn’t considered this one before.
In the piece, Scullion talks about his time playing South of Midnight, an admittedly M-rated video game, where the characters regularly drop F-bombs. In Scullion’s home, they don’t swear, which also meant that his daughter didn’t pick up on the F-bombs.
For reference, here’s a line of dialogue from the game that Scullion cited:
“Ah! What the fuck? Holy shit! What just happened? How did I get back to the shore?! Oh, no, no, no! That doesn’t sound good… shit! It took out the bridge.”
In response, Scullion wondered: in a world where video games are giving players more control over their experiences, what if they could filter out swears for them, too?
The reaction online was, predictably, a little polarizing, especially from non-parents, though the comments section itself praised the idea. It’s not especially outlandish, either; a decent number of games include options like this already. You can, for example, tune the violence and swearing down in Gears of War 4. Assassin’s Creed Shadows has a “sensitive content” filter to remove blood and bodily dismemberment.
Curious, I asked Scullion to answer a few questions I had about his pitch for game developers to include the ability to filter swears out. You can read our chat below!
What has been the reaction to your request? I’m assuming people online have been Very Normal about it.
Scullion: Your assumptions are correct—this was very much a “protect the tweets and start blocking like PaRappa” situation! In hindsight, I wish I’d picked better examples in the article, because the games I used as examples were South of Midnight and Avowed, and while those are hardly Mortal Kombat they’ve got enough violence in there that it allowed the narrative to turn into “oh, so extreme violence is okay but swearing isn’t, you’re a bad parent.” I wish I’d chosen examples like, say, Starfield or Spider-Man 2, which have fairly “normal” movie-grade violence but also throw in occasional swear words that it would be nice to have the option to bleep.
Instead, by using those games I basically gave them an “in” to focus on the “you’re a bad parent for playing violent games in front of your kid” angle instead of the “we like swearing and you should deal with it” angle I’m sure they secretly wanted to go with!
In the piece, you talk about not swearing around your kid. How did your house arrive at that policy? I only ask because in our house, we do swear around our kids and we have, as a result, a swear jar. Every house is different, every kid is different. This isn’t passing any judgment on how you’ve approached it, I just want to understand how you got there.
Scullion: I’ve got say, I’m very jealous, because—being Scottish—when I’m not around my daughter Serena I swear a hell of a lot, so life would be a lot easier if we went with your policy instead! To be honest, I’m not really sure how we got to this point: there was no conscious decision that it would be outlawed in the house or anything like that, we just generally tried not swearing around her and we’ve somehow managed it for seven years now.
I’m sure it won’t last, because this is starting to feel like the point where she’ll start hearing it all at school anyway, and we’ll gradually introduce movies, TV shows, music, games etc. with swearing in them anyway. I worry that the article makes me look like a prude who’s anti-swearing, but as someone who once got a bunch of Twitter followers for my Scottish Pokémon dub which is very heavy on the bad language, I promise I’m not!
I suppose it was just a case of wanting her to keep her innocence for as long as possible, and deciding that when the time comes where it’s impossible to monitor it any more, just accepting it as a natural progression.
“I should really stress that I’m not anti-swearing and I certainly don’t judge families who do decide it’s okay in their household. If anything, I envy them!”
In your piece, you note that your kid didn’t pick upon the swears they heard in the game. What *do* they pick up on when you play video games? Are there instances where, say, the level of violence made everyone uncomfortable?
Scullion: To be honest, she doesn’t pick up on a lot because—and this is something a lot of the more ‘outspoken’ folk on social media didn’t get—she doesn’t sit with me on the sofa and watch as I play the games. She’ll be sitting on the floor—often even with her back to the screen—drawing pictures or playing with her toys. On occasion I’ll play something that catches her attention—she’s a big fan of Kpop Demon Hunters so she loved watching me play when that content arrived in Fortnite—but for the most part if she’s not playing she’s not really interested.
Any time I’m playing something (usually for the purposes of review) and it becomes clear it’s not suitable for her (like when the swearing started in Avowed about five minutes in), the game usually goes off and I’ll play it at night when she’s in bed, so we’ve been fortunate in that she’s yet to see anything in a game that’s made her feel scared or uncomfortable.
When we do play games together and she’s actively engaging with it, that’s when I make sure it’s fully suitable for her. She’s a big fan of Splatoon (just the single-player stuff), Mario Kart 8, Mario Kart World, Lego City Undercover, Forza Horizon 5 and Disney Infinity.
I had a similar situation to yours with Final Fantasy XVI. The main character kept swearing while I was playing, but instead of my kids repeating the lines, they kept telling me the video game meant I had to put something in the swear jar! I ended up putting on headphones to stop my children from ruthlessly mocking me. But the point is similar, no?
Scullion: It is. Like you say, each house is different, and that’s further proof that I wish we’d gone down the swear jar route from the beginning. I do use headphones on rare occasions—when I’ve got a really tight embargo to hit, for example, and really can’t wait until she goes to bed—but generally I prefer to be ‘present’ in the room so I can hear her, talk to her while I’m playing and stuff like that so I’m not a huge fan of headphones. Again, though, everyone’s different so it’s all good. I should really stress that I’m not anti-swearing and I certainly don’t judge families who do decide it’s okay in their household. If anything, I envy them!
Do you remember when you first heard your first swear? Do you remember when you used your first swear?
Scullion: I actually don’t remember but I was raised in a working class Scottish town so it would undoubtedly have been at a very, very young age. My parents swore a lot but were strict against me doing it—“not until you’re bringing a wage home!”—I think partly because the school I went to was quite rough and they wanted to instil at least some sort of (non-violent) discipline in me to make sure I grew up polite and respectful of adults. I’m 43 now and can turn the air blue like the best of them, but I still can’t bring myself to swear in front of my parents!
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Also:
Just this morning, my five-year-old was in stitches because she accidentally bumped her middle finger and got to flip me off while showing what happened.
Swearing is really satisfying. That said, I feel like everyone has that friend who swears every other word and makes you reconsider the whole project entirely.
Once, my friend who swears too much was swearing too much in front of my oldest, and she was tired of hearing it. She swore at him in response and shut up.
How exactly does the swear jar for adults work when swearing at home is allowed? I'm interested in trying something similar at home but not quite following.