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Voice Communication & Gaming Etiquette
Goldberg's Pants writes "The BBC have an interesting article on XBox Live, regarding the voice communication used in the game. Some interesting insight into the culture, and politics of the players."
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Rule 2: No player's digital representation may have an ass for a face or have the face of Ben Affleck.
... is that guy who gets wired out on caffinated beverages at the LAN party, and starts shouting at the top of his lungs for even the simplest things.
On the other hand, talkin' smack is a great part of multiplayer games, especially FPSes like Quake*, etc.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
A more reputable online news service, Penny Arcade, has their own take on voice communication in gaming.
The Strip: "So, Com?" - Enjoy!
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
The points the article raises are valid. However we've had voice comm enabled in PC games for a long time and have all this is old news. The biggest reason I'm reluctant to give up my Half-Life based games is not just because they are really cool, but the built in voice chat is far superior to any external voice chat program I've seen (Roger Wilco or BattleCom).
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
it is quite funny when you play couter strike and most of the comments that come out of voice comm are you suck you nub. but that is mainly in pubs only. voice comm is key in team play, much like it is in real life. but in counter strike you can ignore, which is also a very key feature.
Don't bitch at me if I happen to frag them for camping, though ...
noobs and people are insulting each other and this is supposed to be surprising? look at any game and it happens there...why should they think it would be any different just because people can actually talk in the game...
Its more fun to actually "talk" to friends while playing, and at times I have used GameVoice (pretty good) and Roger Wilco (also, pretty good), but right now prefer MCI's The Neighborhood plan to speak with friends while playing online games. Circuit City (as well as other retailers) sell inexpensive headsets that work really well (I use the Jensen model, 19.99 very nice).
Still, the voice communication software is better than typing, especially with RTS games or FPS games.
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
I think voice chat will prove very successful with gaming. Not just for yelling insults, but for complex strategy games where teamwork is required to win. For instance multiplayer games like Castle Wolfenstien and CS can really use this type of technology. Now if only the game consoles can play against computers too.....
Have always been apart of competition. Whether its on the football field, basketball court or even the battlefield, their will be some people who are more vocal than others. And yes, some will have a complete disregard for the other person's feelings.
100% Insightful
Some games are filled with Trappist monks who barely utter a word to each other, aside from the odd grunt or heavy breathing when the microphone is too close to someone's mouth
: )
Some people have turned trash talking into an art form, almost all of which cannot be repeated here
seems like a few slashdotters have an Xbox
Unless I'm playing an invite-only game with friends, I keep my headset unplugged. I have no desire to listen to a bunch of foul-mouthed kids yelling obscenities at each other.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
You can be kicked off a game for a variety of reasons, from sheer whim to acting as a punishment to cheaters.
"Kick him, kick him, kick him," is the tribal chant of those gamers tired of another's childish antics.
There's no "cheating" on Xbox live, which is why they banned modded boxes from the service.
You get 'kicked' when you win. The same thing happens on all the free services like xbtunnel. The online gaming community is chock full of kids with l337 names talking about 'm4d sk1llz0rz', but as soon as they start to lose, they either kick you, or if they cant, they quit.
It's pretty much why I dont bother with online gaming anymore, except for stuff where I'm playing peer to peer with a (real life) friend, or my kid brother, or something like that.
Too many idiots in the world, and it's just no fun. MSFT should have looked at human nature before they sank so much into Xbox live, because it's going to fail. I know 3 people who've bought it, and none played more than two weeks, and none plan on renewing the subscription, pretty much for the same reasons I've said.
It's really annoying to be accused of 'cheating' because you fragged someone in Unreal.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I suspect that reputation systems like http://www.gamertagdatabase.com/ will go a long way to keeping the service clean (at least as clean as eBay :) ), but that depends on them being integrated with the gamer matching system.
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
Doesn't it have something in there about them not allowing cuss words and that they can terminate your service if you do?
That is one way to keep the pointless cursing down, but I kind of doubt the gamers will follow it.
"Kick him, kick him, kick him!"
I'd like to see this with CounterStrike! No, I don't play the game, I think it's retarded and dull, but can you imagine the interesting voice communication?
CS'er 1: Oh-em-gee! Oh-em-gee! Oh-em-gee!
CS'er 2: Dubbleyou-Tee-Ef???
CS'er 1: Jay-zero-zero wallhacksor! Yur mother is a fag!
CS'er 2: En-zero-zero-bee! Es-Tee-Ef-You! Jay-zero-zero just sucksors!
Hate me!
It's a shame that this seems to be blatant advertising for Xbox Live - 8 counts in the article. Online gaming and voice communication has been around for quite a while now!
Wow. The gramar in that article was so bad I almost went blind reading it. I don't think I've ever seen such an abuse of bad paragraphing before!
Requisite PA Reference
That is all
-JungleBoy
"You never know when some crazed rodent with cold feet might be running loose in your pants."
-Calvin
Also, near the end of the round when half the CTs are watching you, and you see someone 200 ft away, at least zoom in before you have you snap to his head, fire, then snap back to where you were going. I mean, give us some credit.
/me is sick of all of the CS hackers out there.
MSNBC had an article covering something similar to this a while ago. Good read, somewhat insiteful, and includes a link that shows reviews on the best and worst X-Box players.
Now I get to hear that 13 year old screaming in his pre-pubescent voice "take that faggot! I owned joo!" while I play against him. They should include, by default, a voice modulator that drops them a few octaves so they at least SOUND like they are males.
Actually, I see this as the beginning of the end for gamers, like me, who used to be fairly swift at both running around in FPS games while launching verbal taunts with the keyboard simultaneously. Nothing felt sweeter than to blow someone to pieces, send them a notice saying you did it, and keep strafing simultaneously.
With voice communications, there's no additional bonus for multi-tasking. Any idiot can curse when they die...only the swift can pun with the best using a keyboard and a mouse. And as an added bonus, swearing up a blue storm on the keyboard happens much more rarely.
What I'd really like to see would be a voice-transcription add-on so that you could give your teams commands and see them appear, as text, on the screen, rather than hear them live. That'd would be sweet.
Oh, how I love being the commander in a public game of Natural Selection (linkie linkie). It usually goes something like:
Okay team, build those two infanty portals!
Nice, now build this armory!
NO, DON'T ALL HUMP IT AT ONCE! THE SKULK RUSH IS COMING! THE SKULK RUSH IS -- OH DEAR GOD, NO! NOOOOOOOOOOO!
On second thought... maybe I don't enjoy it as much as I thought. =P
Although ther article seems to rable on with some nifty bits of data, there's very little analysis. Still it's fun to see how people can bend this new tool to their uses.
Is it any revelation that many easily accessable net games watch their chat channels turn into forums for trash-talk, profanity, or non-game purposes (like pointed questions about age/sex/location, net-dating, cyber-sex, political forums, etc.)? If the author isn't aware of this, it seems that the X-Box is his first foray into the world of online chat. Games chat channels only tend to have a bit more, umm... reference in determining how you will be derided.
Yes it's cool that now it's voice, and I'm sure that many others will be suprised and entrigued by the ongoings which previously was known to a smaller audience. Still, if anyone is suprised that younger gamers have foul mouths, or that veteran vs newbie tensions arise, I'd be flabbergasted.
you obviously are cheating, and you're such a n00b. you are such a camper, and a shockwhore. The ViRuS clan dominates you fools, as usual. stop spamming like girls, do you even know how to play this game? you suck.
(why 15 year olds should not play online)
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Don't bitch at me if I happen to frag them for camping, though ...
In the same way that you don't need to stop walking while chewing bubble gum, you don't need to stop and talk when using voice comms.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
Seriously, how does this qualify as a "new gaming development? Since when is it groundbreaking for a bunch of gamers to chant "kick him kick him!" towards some attention-deprived kid running off the oh-so proverbial potty mouth?
Oh wait, they must have been referring to the tendency of veterans to kill the 'noobs'(gee, whatever that means...my mom uses AOL for christ's sake and she figured out the 'noobie' slang about 5 years ago)...
What's going to be funny that this article doesnt touch on is the response from some parents association when they hear their poor young Stewie exchanging uncencsored trash-talk with the rest of the world on their innocent xmas present!
(The mute feature rules!)
This article is not news. Voice communications in the most popular multi-player game engine ever, Half-Life, has been around for years now. This article seems like a blatant XBox info-tisement. I wonder how many advertising dollars MSFT has put into BBC Online's coffers ?
Biodiesel : domestic, renewable, clean, and in the fuel tank of my bone stock 2002 New Beetle TDI
Put away that ipecac syrup and induce vomiting with this choice quote from the article:
"I have had the privilege of having been graced by an angel through Live," wrote Ico on one of the Xbox Live forums.
"It was the golden gate to my soulmate," he added.
Sorry if this ruined anyones upholstery.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
In the same way, who would have ever thought two years ago that you could use a tv box as a phone? We don't need TVs that are also phones. The same task can be done with a computer.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
I used to run a Q2 server. People would log in, spend hours chatting, then get pissed off at me when I shot them.
"Less talking. More fragging," was my customary response.
That sounds like bitching to me. It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum ... and I'm all out of gum. :)
(But yeah, I know what you're saying - my point was simply that the added communication might distract some players from the game at hand, and they might get pissy at the people who aren't so easily distracted.)
I have to laugh, oh yeah voice in gaming is so awesome. All I ever hear, on heat.net (before it died), on XBL, or on Half life is either
1. Some poor white trash asking talking about "420"
2. Some little kid, cursing accusing everyone of cheating.
3. Someone of questionable ethnicity using EO on Capcom vs SNK2 on XBL.
I've come to the following conclusions:
No one normal plays video games online.
It doesn't matter if it's the eurotrash players from third world countries who sold their sister for their computer and live in a mud hut dialing up all day, or if it's the 11 year old kid that keeps asking me for my aimbot (http://go.to/c4e)
people who play computer games never have anything good to say. The most fun I have is when I turn VOICE off on XBL and people cant communicate with me. I don't want to hear their whining newb screams before they pull on me.
A friend of mine, known as Jfragment on Xbox Live, started the GamerTag Database. It's a site where you can comment on the etiquette of other XbL players, and rate them accordingly.
:-)
The site has gotten a surprising amount of attention, considering that it's all done in Jay's spare time It's been featured in Penny Arcade, Forbes, and MSNBC.
So, if some 13-year-old from Prague has been talking trash, you can log in and kinda 'mod him down'
Even Maraton(which is at -least- 10 years old now) had voice communication support- there was a 'mic' key you hit to transmit. Since every Mac had a builtin speaker and came with a microphone...of course, it was kinda silly if everyone was in a computer lab(it was fun to use sound to try and figure out where the other guy was hiding) but if you were spread out across a campus, it was sorta neat.
:-) yelled. The frustration of wiping out all your friends but then walking smack into an Exploding Bob cannot be described :-)
What's so new/exciting about the Xbox stuff? Big enough to appear on someone's radar screen?
I miss marathon. The multiplayer levels were awesome- simple, but elegant, never tried to do too much. And who could forget "Frog blast the vent core!", or whatever it was the Exploding Bobs(what a great name
"WaAAaaaA!"
We use our Nextel cell phones for game chatting, since they usually have unlimited minutes on the weekends. Add a head set to it and you are good to go. The other nice thing with Nextels is the ability to do big conference calls. (more than three people) There is no lag and are very clear.
My rant about the gaming industry.
Now that is funny, the same thing can be said for the site owners, the comic, their "humor," and their "hard core gamer" readers.
Want proof? Read here.
I doubt most of their fans passed the first grade.
One night my friends and I were really, really bored. We were sitting around playing Mech Assault when it was let known that the host's roommate had a huge collection of pr0n movies on his laptop... After lugging the aging laptop nearer to the Xbox and turning up the tinny speakers, we had a fine old time. We got booted a few times, but it was probably the most productive thing we did that night.
As usual, the mass media is incapable of reporting on anything that requires more than 30 second soundbites, sweeping generalizations, and inane observations.
Marathon (a DOOM-like game for Macintosh) from Bungie had this feature durring network play: hold down the Tilde (~) key and you could yell into your microphone at whoever else was playing. I never got the chance however, as my lowly 33mHz Performa 400 at the time really had no one to network with
Now that Bungie is MS's game development crew, this doesn't suprise me. Let's just hope MS doesnt try to patent it, and if they do, someone please throw the VoIP prior art at them.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
They had this for Tribes 2 for the PC. It was pretty good. But preprogrammed, talk keys were much faster (press t to open talk menu then a combination of letter to spout out what you wanted to say to your team). Voice was only good if you wanted to point something unique to your teammates.
This of course can be controlled, team voice or global voice. It'd be useless if everyone, including the enemy, can hear your 'awesome' plan of attack.
Wolfenstein, it'd be okay. It'd be more useful in simulation shooters, like your tom clancy series or americas army. These games don't let you respawn within seconds of your death. When you die its over till the next round, making it a much slower paced game, allowing time to chat.
Wolfenstein, you only need the basic forms of communique, pre-binded chat is sufficient for such a fast paced game. Maybe extend upon it by chatting to individual or groups of teammates, so it won't get garbled in the msgs.
Voice is very useful for a shooter sim. You can't imagine how long seconds feel when you're telling your teammates, "the enemies are approaching NEE, behind the shed". It resulted chats to " e@nee" or "el" (enemy on the left).
who the hell has time for that?
when I'm in the middle of a fragfest in Ut2003 because I've pissed off 3 newbies and they are ganging up on me the LAST Thing I have time for is talking..
Nothing says "IN YOUR FACE" better than a good rocket, doublejump rocket salvo.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Check this strip out, it's the real Gabe...
Did I get modded down to zero because this post wasn't funny (well, me complaining about other people swearing is pretty funny), or because some mod has a stick up his ass about my posts in the Iraq war thread?
I can see my post getting modded down if it was off topic, which it wasn't. But I call shennanigans on this.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
A User Friendly fan, eh? At least Gabe's art is 10 times better (at least) than Illiad's.
I've played on Xbox Live since it went Beta. The options of available games during Beta lended itself to trash talking at worst. Most of the players were pretty civil, and I rarely had a game where someone had to be booted. There would be the occassional biker on Moto GP that would race backwards to piss people off, but for the most part I liked the voice communication aspect of Xbox Live. Then came November 15th. Unreal, Ghost Recon, and Mech Assualt went Live. Immediately I noticed the difference in player communication between games. Courtesy seemed to be non-existant in Unreal and Mech Assault. However, I found it rare to run into someone who was rude or childish on Ghost Recon. My theory is that this game involves more strategy, thought, and patience to play. In most scenarios, you don't see instant action, and you can often wander a map for 3 minutes before seeing anyone. Communication is key to victory so people spend more time calling out strategy or locations of the enemy than they do chatting or trash talking. This also seems to be the same in pretty much any gaming environment, whether it be console or PC.
..controlled fire, fucknut.
Assault Rifle. RIFLE. What part of that don't you understand? Or do you believe the CS team's inexpertise with regards to weapons, and believe it's a 'spray and pray' gun?
Man, I'm glad I quit CS when I did. Not only do I have a life now, but I no longer have to put up with 'Waah, I r teh sux, u r teh cheatz!!!'
I have watched this get modded up and modded down constantly since it was posted...i would have thought that the heated war debate would have dried up the pool of mod points a bit
Hey, I think I played on your server :) Then again, it probably happened on more than one, as I played it for 8 hours a day for the first six months.
My favorite response to the in-game chat was in this strip.
The quality of the voice chat you get in these games is directly related to the kind of people you play. After a few nights of playing xbox live, you'll start to see the same gamertags and you'll learn who the "good people" are, where "good people" = skilled AND nice. Playing these people with voice enabled can be amazingly fun. For example, if you want to ratchet the fun level up on Ghost Recon, play with a bunch of people who cover and call out targets to each other.
Communities of "good people" have sprung up around particular types of games such as Not It! in MechAssault, which is a favorite of mine. This makes finding fun opponents much easier.
I personally don't mind the noobs because you can turn them into "good people" if you lead by example. There is a small group of idiots that can ruin any game, but at least in some circles the community has come up with ways of dealing with them, such as "regulating" Not It! offenders in MechAssault.
French: Refuses to speak english, if so, it's really crappy english
Korean: Loves any blizzard game, feasts on PK (playerKill)
Finlandians(sp?): likes to tweak their config.cfg (in counter-strike) to cheat
Germans: They are everywhere and should get their own servers for everyone's best
I spent the entire weekend playing CS with nothing but a USP and AWP on T-team on cs_assault. By the end of Sunday I was banned from 10 servers and repeatedly kicked from another 5.
(Btw... AWP acutally takes skill)
THese are some of the comments I heard
"You FUCKING N00b - stop camping there"
"OMG what hax!"
"Dude... your score is 20-5 and you say you're not hacking?"
"EVERYONE ENTER vote 232 to kick 0x1337 off..."
"FUCK YOU FAGGOT"
"I'd like to shave that AWP up your mom's ass"
=) Don't ya just feel all the love from the CS community?
Its hillarious how everyone is pissed about a sniper rifle... DOn't they know any Anti-AWP tactics?
Sound like it's a crappy version of the various IRC Networks?
And there are actually people who want to see the PS2 and GameCube supporting this crap?
World War II Online has built-in text for a variety of channels based on squad, mission, objective, channel, individual player-to-player, etc. But many players do opt for the voice comms as the reaction time is crucial, especially for stopping truckloads of infantry or coordinating air groups or AA.
Two interesting side effects happen in this game that don't happen in most MMORPGs or FPSs, due to the large organization/military nature of the game. The first unique thing is that conferences, classes, training exercises are held on voice comm systems. The second is that the battle voice comms get picked up as part of 'movies' players make from action in the game, and thus becomes a sort of art form.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
Remember this?
I have a goatse tag I use occasionally!
I'm a camping terrorist on bomb maps!
I tell crappy "In soviet russia" jokes based on what people type in chat. (In soviet russia the BOMB sets up you!)
I sing songs over the in game voice while flooding the lyrics in chat! (CS karaoke anyone?)
I duplicate people's nicks or sometimes dupe it with "is_a_fag" attatched at the end of it.
I use the weakest gun in the game kill lots of people with it.
Yes I am a counter-strike troll!
Wait until the US Army unveils their new secret weapon in a few hours...
Freedom: "I won't!"
Now why (yeah yeah, with Marathon being a notable exeption) isn't this implemented in pc games? Trust me, enough people have broadband to make it worthwhile, but it has to be out-of-the-box. ;/
Look at UT2k3; bombingrun is a gametype which needs voice. But because it's not ou-of-the-box, it's hardly used...which sucks.
Or what about NWN? It would enrich the game, but it's not put in. It sucks. And yes, I am jealous of that aspect of xbox live. I wanna play Ghost Recon with voice
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Pre-configured hardware, talk all you want for a flat monthly rate. All MS has to do is put out an "MS Telephony" disc for X-Box. I know the quality is not the same, yet. But, they are a big company. They could give the others a run for their money.
Long live the Speaker Bracelet
Rolo D. Monkey
Anyone with modpoints...
If you look at the post I am responding to, it's my own. It was somehow modded as "redundant"
I thought redundant meant that a comment close to or equal to mine was posted prior to mine, and from all accounts on this story no such comment was made.
Since this story is on Game Voice culture, I thought I would chirp in that yes, trolls do exist here, and the tactics described in my parent post could be backed up by any number of gamers that play either counterstrike or the MS Xbox live thingy.
One more thing to say on the aspect of in game voice communication trolling, then i'll end this. I talk differently than normal when I play. Sometimes I can be heard telling my teammates, "YOU WORTHLESS BUNCH OFF MAGGOTS! I'VE SEEN BETTER RUSHING FROM COLLEGE BOYS" in a voice that resembles the drill Sargent from Discovery Channels "Mail Call" tv show.
It makes people laugh in the very least.
but... but... your comic sucks!
Woah!
Now my comment has disapearred! Neato!
More trash talk is good, it motivates the best to step up and prove it. I love MechASSult. everyone there tries to talk smack about how good they are. I can see that by the score. Can you mix it up in the verbal arena? Show me what you got. Make it worth my while intellectually. Challenge my skills on the mic. I ran my mouth for damn near an hour on the XBL MechASSult server. I don't care about the game, I got off crazy snaps on all the infidels. GOOD NIGHT NOW. SkinnyScut + Joe Momma Get It?
Heh. If you ever remember playing on "Sigil's Haus" - well, that's me. Sigil, that is.
Science is built up of facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection
of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.
-- Jules Henri Poincar'e
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