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

depends on the server you play on

[abandonment]

it entirely depends on what server you play on - we started our own CS servers specifically for this reason and once you start enforcing a style of behavior, it will be contagious.

I found the same thing with battlefield 2 (which is my current addiction of choice) - if I find a server that has semi-polite players, I'll come back regularly and make it one of the few servers that I do play on.

Servers that are full of shit-talking idiots are usually also plagued by hackers and other issues, which destroys the game for everyone involved.

Just because it's CS, doesn't mean that everyone is a half-coherent idiot.

I play pretty much everything.

[Grey Ninja]

I have my friends over for some Burnout, Mario Kart, or F-Zero, believe you me, I am NOT going to be telling them that I'm coming up behind them for a pass. I am going to be doing my absolute best to slam them into oncoming traffic, or at least give them a good knock on my way by. I've lost races over that, sure. But that's half the fun of playing competitively. Trying to screw the other guy over, and getting into a good grudge match is half the fun.

I haven't read TFA, but I would assume that they are talking about really realistic racing games, such as a Formula-1 game. Now, my general gaming tastes are for very competitive multi-player games, and I would imagine that if it was such a case where I brush against another car at 200MPH, and we both die... I might be more inclined to cooperate with the other drivers. But that's exactly why I don't play those games. I would feel more gratified playing single player if you can't actually interact with the other drivers and actively go out of your way to screw them over.

Re:I play pretty much everything.

[Osty]

I have my friends over for some Burnout, Mario Kart, or F-Zero, believe you me, I am NOT going to be telling them that I'm coming up behind them for a pass. I am going to be doing my absolute best to slam them into oncoming traffic, or at least give them a good knock on my way by.

I haven't read TFA, but I would assume that they are talking about really realistic racing games, such as a Formula-1 game.

Well, the article talks about Project: Gotham Racing 3 on the Xbox 360. It's certainly not a "simulation" racer at the level of Gran Turismo, Forza Motorsports, or FIA GT-R, but it's much less arcadey than Burnout or Mario Kart. The whole goal in PGR3 is to race "with style", which generally implies cleanliness (hitting walls stop your Kudos build-up, for example). Thus it's considered bad to use other people as brakes online, or to intentionally spin them out. Maybe it's going a little overboard to broadcast each pass you want to take, but that is the general "feel". Personally, I'll apologize if I accidentally knock you out (a little rubbin' is fine, but if you spin out or hit a wall because of something I accidentally did, I'll throw a quick, "Sorry d00d"). If I'm so much faster than you that the only way I'm not going to pass is if you're an ass and keep blocking, I'll throw out a, "I'm coming up on your left/right" as a bit of a warning. Then if you do block (once is fine, more than once is not), you're fair game for a hit.

I would feel more gratified playing single player if you can't actually interact with the other drivers and actively go out of your way to screw them over.

You're not really the target audience of a multiplayer simulation racing game, then. The people who like those games (myself included) tend to be racing enthusiasts. We watch ALMS or SCCA Speed World Challenge races on TV. We may even race in amateur leagues like the SCCA, or at least get out for some lapping at the local track ocassionally. As real racing has rules, we want our online racing to have rules, too. Unfortunately there's no way to black flag a player, or penalize him with a stop-and-go, so you're really getting into a gentleman's agreement to race cleanly or suffer the feedback. I know, you're thinking, "Bad feedback, ooo! I'm scared!" When that's all you can do, however, you do what you can. And the more bad feedback you get, the more likely you're only going to be matched with other bad feedback players. Maybe that's good for you, as if you enjoy slamming into people you'd probably much rather play with other people who feel the same. ("you" being the all-inclusive generic "you" and not you in particular, though your stated preferences make you fit this category)

Racing is a different world

[caffeination]

Anyone who's played a lot of split-screen or LAN games with friends knows this. With my friends, I used to play a lot of FPS and racers. Something primal about hunting each other down makes everyone tense, and I think maybe the attitude that surfaces as a result is some kind of self-defense. Racing games are much more focused on technique - in an FPS, not being able to fire straight doesn't preclude participation, but poor racing technique makes a race a very lonely ordeal. That, and there's something poetic about a beautiful racing line. Even at +200km/h, it's almost soothing. For the sake of fun competition, the faster driver (usually the owner of the game) used to stop and wait every so often so as "proper racing" could continue. That being said, long before any of us got into FPS, a lot of our races used to eventually degenerate into ramming and spinning matches.
Bizarrely, there was always this divide that during races we used to just talk about the race in hand, whereas in deathmatches, conversation consisted mostly of shouts, moans and orders. It makes sense: an FPS is much more twitchy, and takes up a lot of your brain's system resources. Also, it's an environment we happen to have specific hardcoded instructions for - war.

The real surprise is that the good behaviour survives the transition to internet gaming, where I was given to believing that there was no honour whatsoever.

Eh. Stoopid Reputation

[TubeSteak]

On XBL many gamers have been hit with a little "culture shock" playing Project Gotham Racing 3 (PGR3) because they've been talking to folks as if it's an FPS. Here is a good example of an FPS voice that doesn't work so well in PGR3:

Player 1 has just caused Player 2 to go into a tailspin and move from place car two to place car eight instantaneously.

Wrong response...

Player 1: "Wow, I pwned you like a n00b. How does 8th place feel?"
Player 2: ...silence...

Correct response...

Player 1: "Oh man, sorry about that. I thought I had the inside corner nailed, but I tipped a wall."
Player 2: "No problem man, it happens."

The only reason you'd have to kiss ass is so you don't get neg repped.

Otherwise, I don't see a reason why you shouldn't shout "ZOMG U Ar3 t3h Pwn3d!"

I guess it's a difference in what you're expecting from the game. Some people will ask if you're a "hack", because they'll play differently if they know you're gunning for them.

Anyways, TFA is hilarious. "Player 1: BOOM! Man if you had half the mad skills I have then I'd have used a bigger weapon. Pwned like a n00bzors bitch." That makes me laff.

Audio Voicing vs. Literary/Textual Voicing

[billstewart]

When I saw the article title, I was expecting it to be about audio voicing - using voice chat systems, or picking what text-to-speech voice to use, or (for game designers) picking what kind of voices to have the characters speaking in.

Instead it's really more about voicing in a literary sense - picking what to say based on the social context - and to some extent about textual expression such as '1337-sp33k. That's ok, but for me it didn't seem to go that deep - MMORPGs are catching up with the MUD world in that aspect, or maybe have gone beyond it, and then there's a big fuzzy boundary between MUDs and LiveJournal/ilk.

I don't play the particular games used in the examples, but it's sort of obvious even to a socially inept introvert that there are some games where you should say things like "Eat Hot Flaming Death, Suckah! Bwahhahahah!" while fragging strangers or friends and other games where you don't do that, such as the racing-game example the author gave about apologizing for getting in another racer's way. There _are_ more interesting cases - more cooperative multiplayer games where you and other people are ganging up on the {bad guys / treasure / other groups of players}, and it might make sense for your character to be chatty or quiet or bossy or like Obi-Wan or Jay or Silent Bob. Do you tell the other player things that ought to be obvious, like the fact that the monster's running towards him from his left, distracting him with your blather when he's trying to figure out what to do about it, or do you only tell him when the monster's somewhere he probably can't see, or do you wait until afterwards to tell him he should have known better than to pick up a duck in a dungeon? Is it helpful to tell the other player "You bash the Balrog, and I'll climb the tree" or shout "Run Away! Run Away!" at every appropriate opportunity? (Normally, no it's not, that's why you're choosing a literary voice for your character, who might have other opinions or different wisdom/charisma/intelligence levels than your own.)