Slashdot Mirror
MUD Co-Creator Bartle On Voice Chat in MMOGs
Fusty writes "In 1979, Richard Bartle co-created a MUD, the first system for players to share adventures online. Aside from veteran game coding skills, Bartle has strong opinions about game design. He recently examined the idea of voice chat in massively-multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). His opinion? Not Yet You Fools! - on Game Girl Advance."
I guess the world isnt ready to hear:
"n0 way I k1ll3d u d00d! u c4mp1ng f4g!"
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
From the article:
.strong opinions... the idea of voice chat in massively-multiplayer online role-playing games..
Okay, here's the scenario:
Strong opinions: All Slashdotters have them
Voice vhat : Vow! That'd be cool over here...
Massively-multiplayer : The very definition of Slashdot.
Online role-playing: Yeah, we have the MS shills, the Apple astro-turfers, the GNU devotees, the FSF freaks, the trolls, the GNAA folks...
Let's get this chap to write Slashcode I say!
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Not only would voice destroy the ROLE PLAYING element (as he nicely puts it: "Hey, this elf babe is from England!". Hello reality."), but they present a number of technical problems. Just how would you log these chats for abuse? What about bandwidth and processing power? Even MUD servers never seem to have enough bandwidth, in graphical MMO's lag is always a huge problem, but instead of fixing those problems they go and intruduce a whole new dimension based on the presumption that it's going to "attract newbies". Well guess what? It's going to turn away long.time players.
Voice chat is especially useful on consoles, because most do not have a keyboard to type with.
I don't see anything wrong with it. You can set aside some game servers for voice, and some for non-voice, depending on demand.
To each his own!
The unofficial
Perhaps I'm the only one, but when I'm playing a MMORPG, I don't want to role play. Sure, it's in the name, but I'm _playing a game_. Why should I have to pretend to be an stupid ogre? I just want to get my levels/money/items/etc and have fun doing it. Many people already use external programs like Roger Wilco, Battlecom, or Ventrillo to voice chat within guilds, so why shouldn't the newbies be able to also?
bananas like monkeys.
/callvote flood 1
I think slashdot should have voice chat. Imagine hearing people yell fr1st p0st.
I can just see it now, "I'm humping you, see my character going back and forth, oh yeah, finger yourself babe, I want to hear you moan, oh yeah, oh YEAAAAAAAH, OH SWEET JESUS THANK MICROSOFT FOR GIVING ME THE CHANCE TO GET LAID!"
-If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
He's not realizing the fact that many people that would use voice chat in MMO's would only do so between friends and established guild members people can stand to talk to. I've played Asheron's Call with voice chat in the early days with 3 or 4 players and I can tell you we worked like a well oiled machine while in combat. You hurting just scream MEDIC! hehe..
But seriously I can also understand the other side who thinks it's a problem. If they allowed everyone to hear everyone in the bazzar that may be cool only in a perfect world where little johnny has his gag in place. Otherwise you'll have some of the most annoying things going on. I would give such a system 10 minutes before someone started playing the soundtrack to a pr0n or worse. And the bad part there is in that type of situation how do you find out who's doing it?
Private chat channels YES.
General chat NO!
quote:
Why do people play the same game for hour after hour, night after night, for week after week, month after month? It's not because they like the game; it's because they like who they are
really ? That's news to me. Sure, I agree on the
immersion concept that really makes the
difference between good games and mediocre ones,
but voice communication will only improve that
anyway, how many games has this guy designed since 1979?
They have one article in which they besides actual content they admit they have trouble paying their bandwith. Hmmm. I'm not sure but putting on of their articles in front of slashdot may mean Doom to those Advanced Gaming Girls. [unless they put link for paypal donations in article for helping them to keep up their site.]
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
The main problem I have with the article is that it ignores the basic principle of choice . As in some first person shooters, I imagine MMORPGs would come with the option to disable voice ... so you can choose not to broadcast/receive real-time voice communication.
This option would keep most parties happy: the newbies who are drawn to the promise of trash-talking, the tight-knit group of friends who like to chat while they explore and conquer, and the veterans who would rather not have voice interfere with their virtual world immersion.
While Marx (maybe Lennin? I get the modern Socialists mixed up) complained about the tyranny of choices, I think most contemporary people find choices to be a good thing.
I think Richard Bartle has lost touch with what role playing's origins. If we apply his logic to pen and paper games we see how flawed his argument really is. Afterall how many of us sat around the table throwing dice passing written notes back and forth explaining what our chacters were doing/saying? I think "voice communication" was as acceptable then as it remains now. I think people are becomming a little TOO immersed in the digital world and forgeting that there are analog analogies to some of these problems. Think people. I doubt that most people in these games are concernied about character development anyway... its all about the amount of "stuff" you can gather. Those geeks that are into playing out their bvirtual cahracters arent going to be disuaded by the fact that voice has been introduced into the game. I wasn't when I role played my Theif in 1988...
He, and everyone else who is against voicechat in games, just don't get what voice really means. Their argument always goes: 'it will break your suspension of disbelief'.
:) ).
/while you're listening to his lecture/!
It won't, and I have proof: everyone who has ever played a tabletop roleplaying game knows what I'm talking about. If a voice is enough to destroy your suspension of disbelief, it wasn't very strong to begin with.
Not only that, but voice filters can (and will) make you sound like a troll (
The only halfway valid argument he makes is the 'difficulty' of having to deal with two streams of communication, text and voice. And the only people who can't cope with that aren't too bright; we've all had school here where you read and write down what the teacher has written on the blackboard
Fact is that voice is just the best/fastest comm system available. The only problem it does have, which mister whiskers didn't even address, is that sometimes people don't speak the common carrier language well enough...in which case they might have to type, thereby communicating slower than others.
Which means they'll either learn better english (or mandarin, whatever) or go adventuring with people who speak the same language.
And as for abuse; even a basic personal kick/ban system will take care of that.
In short: the guy might know his MUD's, but I think he should have stayed there.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
I do wonder if he's ever played a tabletop, or freeform, roleplaying game? If he did, did he and the other players sit there passing notes instead of speaking so they didn't have to suspend any disbelief for voices?
Roleplaying has a history far longer than MMORPGs, and it's mainly a vocal one. I consider it much easier to manage to get into a character if you speak what they say, and the fact you're typing on a keyboard isn't there to get in the way. I'd say that was a far greater intrusion of reality than someone sounding 'wrong', I don't normally communicate face-to-face with people by typing.
Some players do change their voice, put on accents and so forth, but most just use their normal voices, and it still works if the player can roleplay. If they can't roleplay then it doesn't matter if they're speaking or typing- what's said will still not feel right.
I have played some MMORPGs, admittedly though not to any great extent each. I generally found the worlds to be repetative and also many people just didn't act in the world at all, much metagaming. I remember trying Ultima Online for a bit, spending a few hours digging and lugging stuff so I could make a few low-quality daggers, then going off to the bank to deposit the new-found fortune I'd made.
The bank was absolutely packed, the machine slowed to a crawl. It looked like everyone in the town had come to the bank, and bought their horses, pet dragons, etc. with them.
Whilst some were idly wandering against the tide of lag, many were standing there shouting prescripted offers of items and so forth.
I'd say it takes less suspension of disbelief to imagine the gruff Scots voice coming out of the headphones to be the Elven swordswoman than it does to imagine r0X0r the Ranger going "So, what shall I do today to help serve the Good? I know, I'll take my horse ScreamingDeff and my enchanted rust turtle ScreamingDeffII and go and shout '****Enchanted Axxes to SELL!***** Offers?' in the bank for a few hours.
I know many of the games have come a way since then, but I still think MMORPGs have a loooong way to go before they could consider voices to be a major problem.
404 Not Found: No such file or resource as '.sig'
Where's the 'confusing' moderate option when you need it?
Morph the voices.. English kid turns into female elf, tough barbarian etc. depending on who he's playing the game as.
Galstaff, you have entered the door to the North. You are now by yourself, standing in a dark room. The pungent stench of mildew eminates from the wet dungeon walls ... "Where are the cheetos??"
The Red Pill
And now I know why I hated players using voice communication while playing Counter-Strike. It blows me away from the game back to the real world. And I get tired of it :)
May Peace Prevail On Earth
I find it very hard to take anything seriously published on gga after reading this
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Here are some reasons why:
1. People will speak all kinds of languages.
2. People will scream.
3. There will not be any 1337speak (that way we can't decide who's a newbie or not)
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
"Who the HELL wants to hear actors talk?" H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927
Is this article just the online equivalent?
-- the only thing we have to fear is really scary things
Well, I hate to say it, but I agree with the man. I never cared much for voice chat in games, much less voices in games. Anyone like the voices in FFX? I know I don't. Because it ruins the imagination. The experience. Well, lets extend this concept to voice recognition in games. Same thing. Ruins the entire virtual aspect of MMORPG. I think I'll eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich now...
I know, I can't even make sense of it.
(This may be parsed incorrectly)
This is the best I can parse: again:take-return-not-is! all::[...]::. Blood! Darkness! Begins with me
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
...for someone to turn on their stereo while playing his favorite MMORPG, only to find the RIAA busting the entire player population of Everquest for listening to pirated music.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
The last thing I needed is some lamer in Everquest shouting 'OMFG YOU KILL STEALER'. These games have poor role playing environments as it is, don't make them worse.
I'm just wondering what brought some women to the point where they felt they needed their own voice in video gaming. Was it because of sexism in ads? (I can remember an ad which had a bikini-clad babe lathered in soap draped over a sports car... to sell a videogame!) Is it the violent nature of some game genres? The lack of strong female representation as a whole? Does addressing sexual content like trance vibrator's fulfill this gaping intellectual chasm?
Girls, to my limited knowledge gleaned from being the father of three daughters (2 of whom game on the PS2 and PC), enjoy games that test problem solving spatial skills like Tetris, Pac Man and The Sims among many others. These are the same games guys play. Sex has nothing to do with it.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
The point of such games isn't to be a damn ogre or to be a elf or a troll. Multiplayer gaming is all about interaction.
People don't role play in MMORPGs now. They just don't. They interact with other people. PEOPLE, not characters.
Think of the team element. Anyone who's really into these games is all about the team aspect. People form guilds or what not, and after the first few months of playing, if you're not in a team, you're probably not playing it anymore. In order to beat the harder characters, complete the harder quests, you need multiple people working together. This means communication. And communication during battle or whatever has always been hampered by the difficulties of communication. Adding voice makes that sort of thing *worlds* easier.
Now, I admit that it's one thing to yell "kill that freakin' dragon already, I'm out of spells here!" to teammates during a battle, and it's another thing to hear some chatting preteens in the marketplace or wherever the general chat thing is, but that's what the concept of separate communication channels is for.
Frankly, I don't this guy has ever actually played a team based game. He's into the role playing aspect, and that's fine and dandy, but face facts: not that many people actually role play. Not that many people ever *did* role play, even when it was dice and paper. It has always been, and always will be, a minority of people that enjoy RPGs for the "RP" part of it.
For the rest of the world, it's about the same thing everything else is. People. Making friends. Working with others. Communicating. Voice is important to that sort of thing. Fuck the RP nonsense, the only reason that is in there at all is that you have to have a pretext for playing the damn game in the first place.
Role playing, as role playing, should be beneath any normal adult. We technogeeks don't qualify as "normal", and that's why you get asshats like this guy complaining about losing what he likes about the game. Sorry guy, but you're in the minority on this one.
Voice chat for an mmog is a decent idea, provided that: A) Everyone you're going to be grouping/associating with has access to it B) You're not playing in a roleplaying environment. (Hey, that elf chick is really an old dude from Alabama!)
That'll solve the lag issues for the most part (if Unreal doesn't lag under the strain I doubt these games will).
I'm not convinced this'll have that big an impact on Role Playing. I used voice in Role Playing all the time playing D & D in a room with friends, how's this any different? Besides, Newbies will gladly give up the some role playing to avoid typing (every watch someone who can't touch type playing one of these games, it's painful...). Moreover, I think a lot of people (especially casual gamers) use these games as overblown chat rooms, and the role playing aspect just doesn't matter as much to them as staying in touch with online friends in an easy manner.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Voice comms in a game like CS is almost an absolute must.
Team-work is essential, and it's so fast paced that communicating via the keyboard is not an option. The only type of non-voice communication I used was moving the mouse to produce quick visual gestures to tell my team-mate things like "you go first", "duck, so I can climb over there", and stuff like that.
No way are you going to type those. Getting your hand off the mouse for any length of time is not a good idea (unless you're a camper).
Counter-Strike is not a role-playing game.
I see the point of the article when it comes to role-playing games. Even then, when playing EQ I rarely met people actually roleplaying. When camping for long periods, everyone in the parties would chat about real life stuff. People would exchange email addresses and stuff like that.
When I play games like EQ/UO/EaB and run into someone else, I say "hi." If they respond with "Hail", my first reaction is an internal groan "it's one of THEM."
The hardcore RP aspect is just not for me. I play to either build my chars or interact and make friends with real people. I think the vast majority of people do the same.
The EqTn project team debated that long ago (if you figure out what EqTn means, email adclay1@ou.edu - without the 1) Voice can be incorporated easily if planned for correctly. Things such as low player density (less noise), an expectation for high end systems, voice dictation, TTS, been there done that. IBM and a few other companies have some really nice systems, sure it isn't truely human, but then again, alot of characters in the game aren't either. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect your players to have full duplex sounds. Games should be geared towards the hardcore, but usuable by the casual. And I think voice will eliminate more problems than it causes, l337 rejection, and chat-room bartering/plotting is eliminated. Finally a world were you can easily control communication... I won't get too much further, but I will drop a big hint. By the time EqTn is done, IPV6 will be partially rolled out (seriously, it's gonna be awhile before it's "done"). But standard gaming systems will be even more ridiculus than they are now, and us slashdotters will have replaced our puters at least once. So power isn't something I'm worried about. But has the author ever considered actually altering text? I mean breaking (or attempting to improve) someone's english based on their intelligence. Player: "No you idiot!!! Press the green button!" (game logic performs an intellegence check, since there are a 1000 buttons, and the character has no idea what the thing is...fail by 4...add a stutter and some random colors to the mix!) Avatar: "Duhhh......press the red...no....blue...nooo...ummmm....green?" How do you like them apples? Or how about *player* languages? Easy to implement with a speech processor. Two english speaking people, can't understand a word of each other cuz one's an elf and the other is an imp. Yet another character can make a living as a translator... The technology will only improve, and with libraries that can convert between real languages accompanied by fast internet, those people across the pond can play too--in the same game. Sent back from the future to save us all - Project EqTn. (I really get off on that acronym.)
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
Flamebait? Talk about censorship. Parent brings up a good point and does not deserve negative moderation.
Mod up the parent!
Mod down the moderator!
As everyone knows, the roleplaying element is the most important part of CS. Voice just reminds me that I'm getting mopped up by 14 year old kids, not the "l33t krew" they purport themselves to be!
I think voice in MMORPGs could work IF it's done properly.
It shouldn't be mandatory of course, the most likely way to implement it would be a voluntary chatgroup or group option. In PlanetSide (I know it's a FPS, but it has similar elements) the voice chat actually enhances the immersion, you feel more like you're actually in a squad. However voice is much more necessary and useful in a FPS as you can't always take time to type.
In console MMORPGs it could be a great way to avoid having to buy a keyboard add-on, but would detract from the RPG element severely. However it might work well since headset accessories are already prevalent for online console games.
In a computer MMORPG there would need to be more reason to use it. A series of voice filters would be very cool - I'd use voice chat if a filter made me really sound like a guttural troll or a high-pitched halfling. You could even make it part of character creation and attune it to your voice (in a perfect world). Unfortunately I don't think there's enough demand for it yet, the cons currently outweigh the pros in most cases.
Till then I'll just keep muttering back to myself as I type =D
"Not all who wander are lost" -- JRR Tolkien
...and all the smack talk and fake haxxor "I 0wn3d yer ass!" talk. Because the co-operative FPS sub-genre, to a great extent anyway, strives for realism. If you have an entire team who can talk to each other, they can actually plan strategy while moving to position. You can't type while doing that.
:) role in the role-based FPS games would get the ability to spy on the other team's frequency, or at least jam. And the opposing force's CO can have his squad change to a different broadcast code that the engineer cannot immediately decipher. The possibilities!
:)
And to bring the feature even more realism, the game developers could make the voice chat team-only. And when you open a channel, anyone--including the enemy, would hear the click of static being squelched, possibly giving away your position if you were behind enemy lines. Of course the serious clans would enforce radio silence during certain ops where stealth is of the utmost importance.
This would mean the Engineer (or Hacker
(I thought of posting this comment on the article's website, but I did not want my friends to know that I read Game Girl Advance.
I think that the "not-the-heck-yet" response is the correct one. Now, I only play text-based muds, and those only occasionally, and am confident that those will never, ever have voice. Yes, you could write an extended Telnet that included voice (sort of like what was done with Pueblo), but I think it would only prove to ruin the experience.
Graphical MMORPGs on the other hand could benefit from voice. When you are interacting in a graphical world, actually speaking to each other just makes sense, more sense than chatting through text. I do not think the bandwidth is here yet for thousands upon thousands of people to be talking away in games, but it will be someday, probably soon.
I do not think that voices will ruin the roleplaying experience, for the simple reasons that a) they can develop voice filters to make you sound like a troll, or a dwarf, or whatever, b) that you can speak in an altered voice all by yourself (the best solution, IMHO) and c) hearing people's natural voices in table-top RPGs never ruined it for anyone before, as at least one other person has mentioned.
Logging voice to prevent abuse could be a problem, but perhaps not in a couple of years. It may be that they will then have enough computer power and HD space to record all voice exchange. Hell, logging all voice conversations on the client side shouldn't be a problem now if you have a good enough system.
Dr Bartle is currently working with RedBedlam on Roma Victor at the moment so I guess this means we won't be getting voice chat in RV. Just as well - RV is a historically authentic MMORPG (set in ancient Roman times) and you just know that with voice chat, the atmosphere would inevitably be ruined.
So even if some games want it, other games won't. Horses for courses.
I could see voice chat working in something like there.com but not Roma Victor
Off-topic rant
Using voice chat would definitely take the fun out of MUDing. I mean, just imagine, having a full in-depth conversation with someone on how to get a certain level 60 weapon or shield, and there would be no way for a Immortal(s) of that MUD to moderate what has been said. Oh yeah, and trying to understand various accents would suck.
Bottom line is that some ideas sound great, but just don't work in practice. The technological constraints are such that you end up with something worse than not using that idea at all.
Richard Bartle is an expert on these issues, by the sheer amount of time and effort he has spent on developing MUD. I'd be very cautious about simply dismissing the guy's thoughts. Sure, his idea of commercializing the MUD engine didn't work out. IMHO, though, that gives him more practical experience in what works and what doesn't. He's been on both sides.
Voices in MUDs are bandwidth-intensive and OOC (Out Of Character) unless you've speech synthesis. And, while Festival is a decent system, I don't think it's quite at the point where it can support the quality you'd want.
Speech synthesis requires only that the text be transmitted. Transmitting voice-over-IP, at any kind of quality, requires digitizing the speech and transmitting the result. Even if you assume 10K/sec/voice, I've seen MUSHes with 40-50 people in the same room RPing. That's 500K/second, just for the sound, with one hell of a mixing desk on the other end to merge those streams.
I don't know about you, but I'm not sure there are enough MUDders out there with that kind of bandwidth. Not many home owners have their own T1 line, and DSL at that kind of bandwidth is often sold to businesses only.
So you drop some of the voices, perhaps. And then what's the point of having the VoIP link? If what you get is inferior to plain text (which loses nothing), then who is going to use VoIP for anything other than a novelty?
The final problem is the lack of multicasting. If you've 50 people in a room, the server is going to have to multicast to transmit the volume of data to each user. However, "Internet Providers" don't generally offer multicasting. Unless you're rich. Not for technical reasons, but because they don't know how to bill it, so opt for only providing it for really expensive lines.
Why do you need multicast? Let's look at the numbers. 50 users x 500K/sec/user = 25 M/sec of data, if you unicast it. If you look at the times that there have been unicast transmissions - say of the Leonid meteors - the server rapidly collapses from the load. If multicast were deployed, you could have as many recipients as you liked, and there wouldn't be an issue. But because ISPs are cheapskates and the admins offering public services often aren't as clueful as they could be, the system fails very rapidly, offering nobody anything.
REAL broadband (ie: gigabit to the home) plus multicasting plus good speech synthesis would make audio MUDding a real, practical, possibility. As things stand, the idea is going to be tried (as with Abermud), it will fail, and when the technology does emerge people will remember only the prior failure, not the future possibility.
Some things you just have to wait for. If you want to cut the waiting time, then pressure your ISP to enable multicasting. If you're using DSL, then pressure your ISP to make SDSL available to home users for a reasonable price. But if you do nothing, expect nothing. ISPs are happy to provide you with the smallest scraps of service that you'll tolerate, and that'll never be enough to do quality VoIP MUDding.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Exactly! I was thinking this all throughout the article -- role playing has been going on a *long time* with voice chat and there's been no problem. Also, anyone who's OOC in voice-chat would also be OOC in keyboard-chat. It really just makes the medium faster and convey more information, not necissarily better or worse.
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
...okay, so I'm playing PSO as a hot (English) elf chick.
That's for two reasons: one, hot English elf chick is a more insanely unbalanced magic user than the other races (a disadvantage when playing alone, but in teams, a big advantage if the team cover each other), and two, when running around ingame both trashing things with huge fireballs and trying to keep our team alive, I get to stare at hot English elf chick's arse. Bonus.
Now, I don't use voice masking, because firstly it's kind of annoying (were I trying to voicemask as hot English elf chick, I'd sound like a chipmunk for sure, which is annoying, because to be fair I do have an English accent), and secondly, I'm not really making an effort to roleplay in character.
It's extremely entertaining as a team game, but I'm not the English elf chick, I'm just controlling her. Somehow, the game just doesn't seem immersive enough for proper roleplay; maybe the author has a point, or maybe it's that the game needs to be way deeper for that.
No, what bothers me is that despite my not using voice mask, hot English elf chick still gets hit on. Still gets Sephiroth E001 playing kiss-chase with me in the lobby, and after I start a game, joining and trying to give me hacked Amore Roses. And Cloud E017. And Sephiroth E127. Not to mention the two other hot elf chicks, and Aerith E024, and...
It's the English accent, isn't it?
If you really don't want to hear voices speech to text would still be welcome.
Some of us can't type that fast or may be busy using the mouse/keyboard for something else. It shouldn't be hard to implement.
Anyway I doubt you'd ever have to pipe 50 simultaneous voices to the home, it would just be a racket, nobody can listen to 50 people at once.
And... elves and dwarves usually run around with text bubbles over their heads?
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
Well, another anime anyway.
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
Um, the last time I remember, online RPGs are simply an extension of "offline" RPGs like D&D. And as I recall, people playing D&D don't write down what they want to say on little pieces of paper and show them to everybody. They talk to each other.
In my experience of playing D&D, people are way more into the roleplaying element when they're talking out-loud. My (brief) experience of MMORPGs is that people break character all the time.
Sure, not every case is the same, and everyone breaks character eventually all the time, but seriously, how will voice destroy the role playing element when voice comes from roleplaying's very foundation?
tommer
Random rants about technology: http://technorants.blogspot.com
The gaming culture is still very hostile/patronizing to women and girls. This isn't because all male gamers are immature, sexist pigs who run around EQ yelling "A/S/L?" and offering magic items in exchange for a quick cyber. Basically, the gaming culture started out as a very male-dominated one (as was I.T. at the time) and the remnants of this still linger as sexist advertising and attitudes.
So... if somebody thinks GGA is a good idea, more power to them. If it's an oasis of female-positive gaming journalism in a desert of sexist mags like PC Gamer and testosterone-pumped rocket-launcher-happy FPS sites, that's great! If it's just another website with a slightly different outlook, that's great too. I find many of their articles very interesting, for instance the one on gender construction in gaming, which I'm re-reading right now. Would PlanetQuake run the same article? Probably not.
Freedom: "I won't!"
Voice chat really only works well with small groups of friends, or with small groups of players in fast paced games where you dont get much chance to type. Thats why Roger Wilco and such work so well. MMORPGs dont really fit.
I've tried running a voice server for my old EQ guild. At first, a few people would log on and chat about the weather and whatnot, but after a few weeks nearly everyone stopped using it. Except during the few high-intensity raiding situations, it was just another way to chitchat. Even during raids only a few people used it, with too many it was just too crazy. I think most people just decided it wasnt worth the bother to use voice.
Personally, I think if I started talking to my computer regularly, they'd finally put me away. "It talks back! Really!"
I think there was one idea presented that, if taken a bit further, would really enhance role playing. Since voice is filtered through the machine, you would now have the ability to implement languages into the game. So to go beyone making a troll's voice gruff, what if you just made it unintelligible alltogether (at least to non-trolls)? Language could be a skill you can learn, and if you don't have a particular language the system garbles the voice of anyone speaking it. Going to a new area that was populated mainly by a different race could be a truly adventerous experience if you couldn't speak to many of the inhabitants. Trying to get your point across or finding a translator could be an adventure in itself.
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
"voice chat is bad for MMORPG's" is wrong
he's based this belief on 2 assumptions:
* people only play RPG's to immerse/roleplay
* voice communication detracts from immersion
i would argue that voice com is only a form of communication (just like text chat), and wether it detracts from immersion or ADDS to it purely comes down to how the individual uses it
another problem is the assumption that "most" players play MMORPG's for immersion/roleplay
i think that assumption is far from proved
i'd argue that there are more players who play for purposes of socialization, addiction, and competition
in closing i'll say that i'm no nubbie, and i love voice com
You know who Simon Marsh is!
I guess Bartle forgets that before MUDs there existed this thing called D&D. Last time I played, we weren't typing on a keyboard to each other, but ACTUALLY talking!!
You know, most people on MMORPGs don't do RP, so I don't think is that much an issue. If someone wishes to do so, he must get a group of people to do RP together. And since people have played D&D talking to each other since gygax, voice shouldn't break anything that isn't broken already.
If you cannot suspend your disbelief over a simple voice, you shouldn't be trying to RP.
That doesn't mean there will not be any problems with voice, but will be adressed at the time.
We don't speak in my DnD games. we just pass notes, because speaking wouldn't allow us to roleplay...
this is exactly why actors always just mime plays, because we could never believe they were the characters there playing if they spoke.
When this happens, so many filter willl be in place. You will jut be able to choose who you here, that way you can hear people who play the game the way you do.
Now, he says voice can be a good thing, but that it's just not ready. Well Smarty McPants, how will it get perfected if it is never developed?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Bandwidth is what's needed... It's also what's most
:)
expensive.
What type of game would be best set up in a community
for only locals on the local nets? Where (in a lot of areas) there is unused bandwidth available.
So what if we don't have a way to CHEAPLY connect these Local Netgame communities YET...
For the time being, we just need to develop them.
Not web pages, not community websites or e-mail lists...
A community game. Built from the ground up to utilize the bandwidth available on local lines... To connect a community.
Someone needs to set up a server somewhere in a sympathetic town and get started on this.
A lot of work will need to go into fine tuning the sound integration for bandwidth issues and user experience.
Creating a game that promotes a healthy community as a natural by-product,
would be intriguing.
He got it partially right that we should change my voice to fit my charicter. However he missed the hard part. I'f I'm playing a southern bell, not only does my voice need to change from midwest male to southern female, but the words change. Nobody in the south would use the word pop when they want a carbonated drink, they use soda, while in my area nobody uses the word soda, we use pop. Do you bucket or pail? Vacuume cleaner or Hover? Xerox or copier? Those are just a few examples I can think of, a linguist can tell you plenty more, and likely come up with a lot of other things that need to change that have nothing to do with sound.
I have tried, unsuccessfully, to find any kind of voice filtering SW that would accompligh this - I have googled and yahooed and there seems to be naught. Does anyone know where to find it? The only thing I found was this http://www.audio4fun.com/ and I don't see a "troll" or "ork" preset.