Comments made by Valve’s Chet Faliszek in a recent interview with computerandvideogames.com have not gone down well with British online gamers, at least if the response to his comments is anything to go by. In the interview, Faliszek bemoans the “lack of communication” given by British players when online with strangers on the PC or Xbox Live.
“Don’t be scared of a microphone,” Faliszek urged. “You guys are notorious non-talkers on both 360 and PC. Americans are just chattering away, working as a team. If you want to work together as a team, you’ve got to talk! You can go into a random 360 game on US servers and it’s crazy talk. It’s fun. I think a lot of people knock that community but again and again I’m surprised by how fun that is. I’ve played expert campaigns where by the end of it we’re best buddies… Realism mode (in “Left 4 Dead 2”) will prod you – you have to talk. If you don’t talk you’re not going to make it. Instead of being harder, Realism’s actually more challenging as a team because you have to communicate… We’ll see if maybe that stimulates that British sternness.”
Faliszek’s comments have been ridiculed by British gamers, the majority of the responses being that eighty percent of the American “chatter” is unhelpful nonsense – and usually highly offensive as well. “Some games I don’t even bother plugging the mic in,” one Brit gamer noted in a post that summed up the general mood. “It’s not that I am shy, or uncommunicative… By and large, it’s because of the large amounts of cretins online who hurl homophobic, racist, bigoted remarks around liberally. Unfortunately, even by the law of averages, inevitably these are mostly American… Get me in a game with friends, and I’ll chat away. Put me in a game with a bunch of abusive yank pre-pubescents… not so much.”
