Last night, I was playing Halo 3 online with a friend. After losing one game pretty badly, the other team started trash talking us in the “lobby”: swearing, telling us we sucked, saying they had had sex with our mothers, etc.

When this kind of behavior occurs—and it does occur pretty commonly—I figure it’s my duty to give them negative player reviews. Not only does this potentially signal to others that these guys are jerks, but the game assures me that I will be able to “avoid” these players in future encounters. That’s good. I want to reduce my likelihood of playing with jerks.

If the offending players move beyond simple trash talking and into racial slurs or other hate speech, I also file a complaint. This is roughly as straightforward as giving a poor review, but also has the benefit of bringing them to the attention of the administrators (whom I want to believe when they say that those complaints matter).

The guys I played last night weren’t really that bad, but they just wouldn’t shut up, and I hadn’t exited the lobby before assigning reviews, so they were getting on my nerves. I considered filing a complaint, but then I stopped when I saw something listed on their gamertags: their gamer zone.

Every account on Xbox Live must choose a gamer zone to indicate the user’s style of play. Mine is “recreation.” My opponents last night were “underground.” As Microsoft makes clear on its own site, “Many underground gamers would benefit from therapy, but they usually choose to face their demons on Xbox Live.” This page specifically notes that “colorful language” will be forgiven among other underground gamers. It also notes that racial slurs and threats are still forbidden (though says nothing of other forms of hate speech; a quarter of accounts could probably be shut down if you outlawed ‘fag’).

Of course, I couldn’t file a complaint then. The guys were dicks, but they didn’t cross the line. And more importantly (to me, anyway), they practically wear name tags advertising that they are dicks. You don’t begrudge a tiger for enjoying the taste of human flesh; it is their way. And hell, they wear the stripes that clearly signal that they are tigers and they want to stalk and eat you.

Which brings me to my point: Microsoft, please stop matching me with underground gamers. I put “recreation” on there for a reason. I’ll deal with “pro” players if I must, but what use is this gamer zone thing if you don’t filter matchmaking results with it in a title your own subsidiary published?

I have often thought that age-based filtering would be useful, but as commenters at Kotaku point out, there are a number of problems with such a system. Plus, while I find the twelve-year-old male voice kind of jarring over a cheap headset, not all pre-teens are asses, and certainly a fair share of the college students I play are asses. Gamer zone is a reasonable filtering mechanism that people are unlikely to lie about, though. I repeat: Why isn’t it being used?