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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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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
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"?
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!
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.
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?
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.
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'
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.
OK, in lew of my blunder I went the extra mile and found:
1) A working link.
2) And a bonus interview with the creator.
Please forgive my unl33tlinkingness.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
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.
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.
However, how many people do you know do that?
r den hose/snowblower/car/house/computer. Because there's no need to, people like things the way they're used to them, and because it would get ridiculous. Emacs notwithstanding, most people like things to be separate because it makes them more accessible, easier to manage, more flexible, and more reliable. Just think of how much more it takes to get one of those TVs with a built-in VCR fixed than it does to get just a regular VCR fixed and you'll see why modular (separate) is better.
How many people do you know that want to wait for their computer to boot to make a phone call? How many do you know that want to have a phone call interrupted because little Johnny just crashed the computer? Sure, things can be combined. Why not make every appliance and piece of furniture into one thing? A big stove/fridge/phone/sink/couch/television/radio/ga
--
Promoting critical thinking since 1994.
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 ___________________________________
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.