Choosing Your Voice For Online Gaming

jayintune writes "An article from an editor at 2old2play.com looks at the diverse 'voices' that people use online for the different genres of games, and how they differ from each other. It is a nice guide of etiquette for people moving from one genre to another. What you might say in WoW often differs from what you would hear in CS: Source." From the article: "Many online racing gamers take things very seriously. You may find your XBL reputation drops like a squirrel shot with a horse tranquilizer if you speak as though you're playing an FPS. Racing gamers do such things as apologize, notify a racer when they're coming up for a pass (and usually give a direction), complement you on your racing prowess when you pull off a slight win over them, and typically end a game with "nice game guys." "

Comments

Re:I play pretty much everything.

[Tyger]

I think the difference is a racing game vs a racing simulator. Contrast Mario Kart/F-Zero with very game like mechanics to Gran Turismo/PGR with with more realistic racing simulator environments.

The style of play is also different. In Mario Kart, eliminating other players is a way to win, and in a competitive environment, you'r expected to use whatever you can to your advantage. In more simulator type games, hitting another player generally hurts you both, so it's in your and their best interest not to hit someone. (This assumes more than 1 on 1. In 1 on 1, more aggressive play can help.)

Re:depends on the server you play on

[Grey Ninja]

I used to play a lot of America's Army. When BF2 came out, I pretty much stopped cold. Something that drives me absolutely mad about both games is that some servers decide to put in language filters. I've been banned from a few AA servers because the admins wanted me to stop swearing. Something so simple as "I fucked up, sorry", or "FUCK!" when I die will trigger some asshole admin to tell me to watch my language. My normal response is to tell them to "fuck off", which usually results in an insta-ban.

It's probably an American thing. I honestly hope that there's no other country that features a mob of people who believe that it's perfectly acceptable to play a game where you shoot people, so long as you don't swear in the slightest.

I remember that there was one guy who was going to ban me. But we started talking about that kind of thing, and we actually started to get along, as he agreed with me. He eventually agreed that I was right, and he wouldn't ban me, as I was just playing the game, punctuated with some swearing. It eventually got to the point where I had a whole list of servers hosted by like-minded clans. That it's ridiculous to play a game where the whole point of the game is to kill people with different ideology... but sugar-coat it by saying that you can't swear.

Funny.

[Wilson_6500]

I've never actually used voice chat in an (Internet-play) video game. I mean, I've _heard_ it, but I don't talk. I also don't type. I'm not there to chat. Even in team games, I just type (if I bother with communication at all on the pubs). Practically this entire article was meaningless to me.

I've found that communication doesn't usually matter in public (read: non-clan) multiplayer games. You can be dead quiet in ET, CS, any deathmatch, SWBF2--any FPS, really, and things usually go fine. Talking leads to idiots replying; idiots replying leads to anger; anger leads to elevated blood pressure, which is something I don't need from a video game.

Re:depends on the server you play on

[ptlis]

It seems to me that you're looking at the issue from only a single perspective - I used to be the admin for a fairly popular DoD server a few years back; we had a minimal swearing policy - the occasional 'oh fuck' and such over the comms was generally given the blind eye but we were not as leniant in the text chat as that involves a little more thought to type. The reason for this is that we found that by keeping the language in check we achieved two goals - firstly the annoying 14 year olds were quickly weeded out and secondly it was a more family friendly environment - we had several teenage kids and their parents who would play together. In all the games that i've played online before and after this i've never encountered such a situation where two generations of a family can play together and frankly I miss it - it was the most friendly gaming environment i've been a part of and was so without being at the expense of competition (father versus son battles were always hard fought).