Quarrel Word List Weirdly Restricted by Microsoft

Greg Tito

PR for Dungeons & Dragons
Sep 29, 2005
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Quarrel Word List Weirdly Restricted by Microsoft



Why can't you use the words "train" or "help" to take territory from your friends?

Reports have come in from playing the new XBLA version of Denki's Quarrel concerning some curious word choices. Some players said simple words like "train" or "help" are restricted from use, while others report weird words like "dof" are just fine. One of the developers from Denki tried to explain that the game uses the Scrabble dictionary for its word list, but that certain words are also blacklisted by Microsoft for use over XBLA.

"Quarrel uses the Collins official Scrabble dictionary comprising over 110,000 words up to eight letters in length, including a huge collection of words deemed 'offensive' by Collins, such as 'arse', 'shit', 'wank' and 'fuck'," said Gary Penn, but he said those are only restricted when playing multiplayer.

"You can make any offensive word you can find in singleplayer mode - unless you have the Xbox 'Family Setting' turned on."

The other restrictions are where some of the strangeness comes in. "Microsoft has an additional filter in place for all Xbox Live games, which we have to support," Penn went on. "But while we have to use that filter, we don't know which words are permitted. From playing, we do know that it includes such oddities as 'help', 'start', 'skid', 'poop', 'bung', 'hung', 'dice' and 'god'. Microsoft clearly has its reasons for censoring such words within Live games."

When I first heard those words were restricted, I started wracking my brain for any sexual slang that contained either of those words. And despite my dirty mouth, I couldn't think of one. To Urbandictionary.com [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=train]! ... Oh, dear lord. Really? Really?

Source: Edge [http://www.edge-online.com/news/xbla-quarrel-reveals-mad-microsoft-word-filter]

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therandombear

Elite Member
Sep 28, 2009
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Lawl, we learn something new each day Greg. ;)

Also, I think it's stupid to censor words...in a game where you need to put together words for points.
When we play Scrabble at home all words in the dictionary are allowed, even the "dirty/naughty" ones. :p
 

Wolfram23

New member
Mar 23, 2004
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Your god won't help your dice when my poop skid bungs the dice at the start.

Hmm yeah I can see why they banned them.
 

MorganL4

Person
May 1, 2008
1,364
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Did you HAVE to put the urbandictonary link in there???? Did you?

I mean I DID NOT need to know that. I could have happily lived my life NOT KNOWING that.....But you did, and now I do.

a big, NOT Thank You.
 

Thaliur

New member
Jan 3, 2008
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I like how thousands of people probably still wouldn't know the offensive meaning of "train" had it not been banned from XBL...

Kinda reminds me of "the pink hen greets the new day" from the Discworld books...