Xbox co-creator Seamus Blackley has responded to a video saying that online toxicity in video games needs to be stopped.
Blackley shared a video from streamer Grenade Queen, who was playing an online match of Halo Infinite only to receive abuse for being female. Blackley responded by saying that “This wasn’t the future for Xbox Live we envisioned. As a community and with the help of Microsoft this needs to be highlighted and stopped. It will take teamwork between players, devs, and console manufacturers to change this and it’s time. It’s past time.
You can see Blackley’s comment and the clip in question below (content warning: strong language)
This wasn’t the future for @xbox live we envisioned. As a community and with the help of @Microsoft this needs to be highlighted and stopped. It will take teamwork between players, devs, and console manufacturers to change this and it’s time. It’s past time. https://t.co/hVPHDvESVP
— Seamus Blackley (@SeamusBlackley) December 20, 2021
“I know this isn’t new. I know you’re angry because nothing has been done for a long time. You’re right. It only motivates me more. It’s possible to clean these environments up. Let’s do it,” Blackley added.
After Blackley’s post Grenade Queen shared a response from one of the male players who apologised for what they said during a match. This included statements like “you notice how Master Chief was never a woman?” and “just fucking leave”.
Blackley was one of the co-creators of the original Xbox console, and as he told IGN in 2018, he came up with the console on a flight.
“If we want to really screw Sony, we just need to define a standard,” Blackley stated. “No, it needs to be a hardware standard. Well, no, it could be an actual device. We can make it an actual console, and we’ll be better because we can use all the tools on the PC that are much better than the tools being used for PlayStation, and you can use all the methodologies, the architecture for PC, the GPUs are so much more advanced, based on real research and use case scenarios, and oh my god, we can kill them. So by the time I landed, I’m like, ‘We need to make a console.’”
In other news, Xbox head Phil Spencer has talked about the future of the potential metaverse, and how it should be player-first.
The post Xbox co-creator says toxicity “wasn’t the future for Xbox Live we envisioned” appeared first on NME.
