University of Advancing Technology's Official Technology Blog

Playing online video games is like running through a minefield of curse words. Watch Your Language is a tool kit trying to make the gaming experience more family friendly.

This Student Innovation Project (SIP), created by duo Rocky Vargas and Michael Shepherd, monitors what players are saying and flags inappropriate words. Rocky explains, “Our innovation claim is that gameplay is intensified by turning to foul language gamers use into a mechanic for punishment.”

There isn’t anything for gaming that uses speech recognition this way. If Watch Your Language detects vulgar words, alarms sound and the monitor will display the word. This mechanic is meant to monitor in real-time and can be universally used because there is a coded element that can be written for any word.

Because of the code, this technology can expand into more than just the gaming industry. Software and other technologies written in code can apply Watch Your Language if it’s compatible with a microphone.

Rocky wrote the original code to detect specific words and activated the streaming portion of this SIP. Michael polished the code and hooked it all up.

Do you want to drive the future of games? Check out UAT’s Game Programming degree.