You know that tab you flip by every week on your Xbox Dashboard? The one where they spotlight a different gamer once a week? You’ve seen it and possibly thought, “Hey, it would be kind of cool to be featured.” Hold on there, hot shot. Not so fast. According to a few of the spotlighted gamers it is not cool, not cool at all. Recently our good friend Wombat from Cheap Ass Gamer was featured on the show and during a Podcast with Xboxist revealed that it was not very much fun to be featured.
He said that he started to receive some pretty terrible recorded audio and plenty of hate through written words. Wombat reported that a good chunk of those who sent him messages “berated him on his weight, ethnicity, and Spotlight worthiness — some comments bordered on extremely offensive (homophobic and racial insults) and even threatening. Imagine one of those f*bomb filled multiplayer gaming sessions with 12 year old boys, but multiplied a thousand-fold with no mute button in sight.” Ouch, bad news for those who are remotely well known, but it can’t happen to everyone.
Slow down again. a member of CAG got in touch with five other “winners.” One had had to change his Gamertag after he was in the spotlight and one, who was a female, had an even more unpleasant experience. “I did receive a lot of negative comments after my spotlight. A lot of them were because I am a girl. Also there were a lot of inappropriate sexual comments,” she said, also noting that people took advantage of their Xbox LIVE Vision camera to send “naked crotch shots.” Seriously, guys?
So if you’re ever offered a chance to be spotlighted for the entire Xbox LIVE community to see, just remember what the Xbox LIVE community is actually like.
