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Voice Chat Can Really Kill the Mood
Raver32 writes with Wired article about the strange juxtaposition of real life identities intruding on virtual world bliss. Voice chat is becoming a very common component of online games, from MMOGs to FPS titles. Many even bundle a voice chat service into the game client now. That's useful, tactically, but socially it can be downright frustrating, confusing, or awkward. "Recently I logged into World of Warcraft and I wound up questing alongside a mage and two dwarf warriors. I was the lowest-level newbie in the group, and the mage was the de-facto leader. He coached me on the details of each new quest, took the point position in dangerous fights and suggested tactics. He seemed like your classic virtual-world group leader: Confident, bold and streetsmart. But after a few hours he said he was getting tired of using text chat — and asked me to switch over to Ventrilo, an app that lets gamers chat using microphones and voice. I downloaded Ventrilo, logged in, dialed him up and ... realized he was an 11-year-old boy."
Go! Seriously, though. "Kill The mood"? "Virtual world bliss"? "Confident, bold and streetsmart"? "Dwarf warriors"? This is too easy.
yup...
roleplaying is tough when the voice is totally wrong.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I suspect this is the future, however.
You will be chatting with another engineer, then take a call and realize they are 10 years younger than you.
GPL Deconstructed
Imagine the surprise the customers of the are in for!
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
If he's competently leading the party, does it matter if he's an 11 year old boy or a 70 year old woman? Either way you're getting things done.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I play Guild Wars. Recently we (the hubby) and I picked up Vent since it is what our Alliance and Guild uses for communication on long/complicated missions. I generally know how old folks are in my guild/team but it was definitly enlightening to hear accents from the UK to the deep South of the US. On some levels it was cool but it does have a different flavor from going at it with text. Somehow you lose some of the ambience. Not sure how else to explain it.
--Cally
I hate voice chat, not because I care if the player on the other end is 11, or the female elf is played by a man, but because I'm not good at distinguishing new voices. It's much easier to see who's talking in the text chat where there name appears next to whatever they say, then try to remember if that voice is the fighter or the cleric.
MMO's aren't for roleplaying or atmosphere. They're for wasting money and time with the only pay-off being carpal tunnel syndrome. Maybe I'm just chained to the past though when we actually acted out characters in our tabletop sessions and even going so far as to indulge in a LARP more often than not. Even back then, I couldn't stand all of those level-grinding kiddies that played D&D or Rifts while sacrificing story and mood.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
We hates the squeakers, Precious, we hates them!
P.P.S. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
Wouldn't the logical expansion of the role playing game be to implement voice changing technology? That would make the game completely immersive and allow anyone to assume an identity completely different from themselves and project the image that they want to into the game not their own selves, which is probably a big draw of the game in the first place. This would really take MMORPGs to another level where the online self is completely separate from the "real life" person. Honestly (in some sense) it's unfortunate for that 11 year old in the game that he was judged later on based on his voice and not just skills in the game. Nobody said you needed to have certain skills and a baritone voice to be a successful leader.
...realized he was an 11-year-old boy. Thats silly. Everyone knows that anyone claiming to be between the ages of 10 and 14 is an FBI agent.What does something like age have to do with anything in a virtual place?
Same for me with Guild Wars. I really enjoy being in the world but sometimes using a chat program really takes away from the environment, music, and the entirety of the gameplay. Text is the best way I think to go in MMO's
But FPS there is that team aspect that needs to be seen. I guess thats a different matter...
Ventrilo, always Ventrilo! What about some newer clients like GSC? (http://www.getgsc.com)
I downloaded Ventrilo, logged in, dialed him up and ... realized he was an 11-year-old boy."
Maybe this is more about adjusting your expectations of what a kid is capable of than something wrong with the system itself.
We need something for gaming like those voice alteration devices for the phone. You know, the ones that frightened little old ladies use to sound like burly bikers? It could be done in software as a plug-in for voice chat. You could select your character's voice through a menu.
The thing is, that 11 year old is getting valuable leadership and teaching experience. If he is competent to lead the party, and a simple software tweak would let you suspend disbelief, it's a good thing.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Hate to say this but I've met just as many whiney 22 year olds playing games than 11 year olds. He obviously knew what he was doing, you even admit to that, why judge someone because of their age?
Some of the best players of video games in the world are under 18.
I am a 27 year old male that plays a female rogue bloodelf. I was first invited into a guild because they must've thought I was a chick only later to find out that I was a dood when I first spoke in vent during a Gruul run. It was soooo funny because I always just thought the gm was just being a nice guy all those times he told me he'd definately save me a spot!
Sounds like the poster has a little too much Machismo. If your opinion of somone's abilities changes that much just because of their age, gender or accent, then perhaps the problem is with you, not the game.
Moral of this story: Watch out for the hostess, she may have a twinkie...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"I AM THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS!" really doesn't work with a beginning-to-crack-prepubescent-boy voice, does it?
So basically your an old guy gamer who just realized an 11-year-old boy was better than you? I get owned by my nephews in racing games... accept it... get over it.
or just not read it at all?
FTA: I still enjoyed questing with him -- he was a terrific World of Warcraft player.
This has nothing to do with judging someone on their age or appearance, its about immersing yourself in the game and having a voice that just doesn't fit. As someone above mentioned, how popular would your favourite TV show be if the lead characters voice was done by Urkel?
I mean they do it to protect witnesses? The informant on Michael Vick sounds like he's 7' tall and drinks crude oil for breakfast, at least on ESPN. The old xbox live used to have some cheesy voice mods, but they've got to have better tech by now. That being said I don't really ahve any interst in using voice chat. I can type it at least as fast as I can say it, and am not interested in hearing what others really sound like.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Any game whose developers considered the flood of racial epithets, pathetic enraged profanity, and inane babble that inevitably results from voice chat vital is a game that I don't play. If I can't shut 'em off and still be effective, it's a deal-breaker. I don't want to hear your shit.
...but is it art?
Congrats. You have just been shown that just because someone is young doesn't mean they aren't capable.
Living With a Nerd
Glad to know im not the only one who finds voice a mood killa. Peoples insipid gossip and just talking for the hell of it. Some people just like to talk and talk about NOTHING. I assume these are the same people who start dialing their phone before they start their car. Who has that much idle chatter stored up in their brain? If its text, its pretty easy to filter, but voice? Forget about it.
The usefull information and orders are intermixed with information about some guys hernia operation or fluffy kitty. Not to mention the pre pubescent people SCREAMING into the mic for attention, girls flirting with everyone, etc. Nothing makes me cringe more than hearing nasily wow players flirting with girls over vent. I especially hated that when I played wow. It completely ruins the fantasy mood but was required for endgame raiding. I dont want to be slaying dragons with the pimple faced kid from the simpsons. Id much rather picture peoples characters than the "character" that their voice reminds me of.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Like TFA said, it's a widespread problem in virtual worlds, but it can become even worse when the world itself introduces voice support, without requiring 3rd party software. Then you get a presumption of voice availability, and not wishing to use voice can then get interpreted in various destructive ways.
This came to a head recently in Second Life, when they introduced voice chat functionality (actually still in beta). One of the most cogent discussions about it was made by a well-known SL commentator in her essay The End of Anonymity, Part II, which focussed mainly on the end of immersion in SL. Her conclusion, that it will force non-politically-correct roleplayers into "ghettos" and destroy mainstream immersion, does seem reasonable.
Avatars in SL can be anything you like, no limit, so not surprisingly roleplay is extremely popular. The main grid is expressly for adults only, and so of course there is much interest in gender roleplay, in both directions (the gender spread is almost exactly 50/50). Needless to say, the loss of immersion through voice immediately gave rise to a lot of concern among roleplayers. This still has to be played out on the main grid, but it's certain that the impact will be large.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Back in '95 or so, a coworker got me into a wargame run by a tabletop gaming store - called something like Conflict of Nations - weekly turns, the store owner collected the turns NLT say, Tuesday by 6pm, resolved the actions, and you went into the store the next day to get the results. When you signed up to play, you were put on a phone roster, so you could call the other "country leaders" to coordinate actions, make alliances/deals, etc. Once I called a number and realized the player was some 10 year old (I was 20) - that was it, I was done - just seemed a little too creepy. Now at 33 and a parent of a one year old, I can't say I'd want 20-30 year old gaming geeks calling my boy some years from now. For similar reasons, the FPS clan I'm in (sas-clan.net) has a strict 18 and over policy for members. Some of it is perceived maturity issues with the younger crowds, some of it is also CYA. Don't want little Johnny telling Mommy he learned the f-bomb on teamspeak playing Battlefield with his "clan friends".
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-715315209 8207965240
w arcraft.html
And:
http://www.break.com/index/mom-tells-kid-no-more-
Where would the internet be without gems such as those?
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
While I agree that roleplaying may suffer a bit when you have a night elf female voiced by a guy who sounds like he's from the south, I've found that having voice chat can make the games much more fun.
Back in my WoW days I enjoyed jumping on Teamspeak and chatting with people during our raids. Our guild was good enough that when we were clearing trash mobs (unless someone screwed up) we could freely chat and tell jokes and stuff. It also made hours of grinding for items much more fun when you could just chat with people. The range of real people behind the players also made for some interesting times. We had people that ranged from early teens to grandmothers/grandfathers, all across the world in a variety of different occupations. It made the game a lot more fun because you developed a certain bond with the other players that you couldn't do only over text chat.
Plus it was really fun listening to the guys/girls with the Australian accents!
Note to self: Stop putting jokes in my insightful comments so I can get something other than +1 Funny!
I have been in online games, where the people using mikes actually used them to communicate information pertinent to the team.
But I've also been in other games, where the voice was used to discuss movies, or worse yet by a weird whining 11 year old who kept asking why people were so stupid they had to type instead of just using voice.
The thing is, the information passed along by voice is often just as well delivered by keyboard, and can be almost as fast to deliver if you set up macros or just type quick. But when people are yakking, it's really distracting and it usually means you are on a losing team.
So I'd say that voice chat when it's bad can be horrible, but as its best is only marginally more useful - therefore I can leave it more than take it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I played Everquest pretty much from the beginning, and, even though I'm male, at some point I created a female Barbarian (Henna Barberra - ah fun with last names). She became my main, and when I would stand at EC and give SoWs for donations, players would always give me much more than normal. Some higher level players would just run up and give me nice items and not even want the SoW. Of course this led to plenty of A/S/L tells. I don't play female characters any longer - the free stuff isn't worth all the "Hey, baby"'s. It's probably somewhat better now that more females actually play, but during EQ's early days, female players were extremely rare.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
...With voice, gone are the days where you're having 5 or 6 simultaneous private conversations with various people at once. As sneaky and underhanded as its uses CAN be, the fact that you can be having a group conversation while IMing someone else privately in the group at the same time is incredibly (and legitimately) useful. Its MUCH harder to typechat while voicechatting at the same time...
Why psychology?
I only play UT2004, no other online games, but I can say that voice chat is generally a benefit and does add a lot to the atmosphere of the game even if you don't have a mic. It usually turns out that someone with a mic suggests tactics and alerts which most people generally respond to, so it makes the team more cohesive.
Of course you do get the odd annoying whiney little moron, but its pretty rare. From other reports it sounds like UT generally attracts a better class of player comapred to games like Wow. Maybe because its 3 or 4 years old now and doesn't need a monthly subscription, it keeps the more braindead/annoying/younger players away.
How did that old microsoft commerical go.
On the net there is no race or age, only minds.
VOIP software has killed that illusion for all of us.
Voice chat, a number of years back now, can now be blamed for brining testosterone gorillas into a video game arena where they can yell and scream expletives and homoerotic insults. Thank you voice chat for bringing the sweaty sporting event that I don't care about and it's attendees into my ears.
-tyfighter
..............I don't want to hear your shit. If the voice chat was merely littered with casual, light profanity like your post it would make things more bearable?I agree with the main premise with this. My friend sounds like a school girl, yet she's a brilliant, smart, and sexy 30 year old. Does it mean that it dimishes our perception on what we can hear versus what we see in action on line? YOU BECHA! If she's playing a MMOG with me, and she's kicking but, then quirps up with a 'tee hee' 1-900-hot-sexx voice sounding giggle, maybe... maybe... a little distracting, but dam she's sexy. All the pimply faced 12 year olds with their hard-on's asking for her phone #, 'do you have a boyfriend.' She replies, "frak-off kid, I'm old enough to be your mom."
Back to the 12 year old pimply faced kid, I've been playing a MMOG that has been using the built-in voice comms for 5 years now. Some of the more 'commanding' sounding players do get a lot of respect sounding like a 300lb gorilla. I have a pretty decent online voice too, but sounding husky/rustic does give you a Clint Eastwood impression - all is missing are the background Spaghetti Western music.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
"... and then, things really got interesting..."
Just because they act mature doesn't mean they aren't kids. There are many kids that play WoW so expect around 20% of them to be kids.
it is because you are playing on the alliance sir!
This issue is pretty common, and hinges on the fact that the recipient forms opinions about information they don't currently have access to. In this case, the voice, including pitch, inflection, cadence, etc. The typed text may seem direct, competent, perhaps terse or commanding. But, while pitch could be shifted rather easily, it wouldn't hide the "um, so, like, let's go, uh, do scholo."
I notice it a lot with radio personalities. I form an opinion of what they look like based on how they sound, and then am shocked when I find out what they look like. It's also happened with books I've read that were turned into movies. The characters don't look like I envisioned them, even though I only had a vague impression of what they looked like.
I...I'm attacking the darkness!
You know the REAL problem is when voice chat impedes on real life, not real life impeding on voice chat. My problem isn't that the morons on the other end of my Ventrilo server are 11 - it's when they scream and I've left my computer on while I'm..uh..with my girlfriend. Nothing will make you nerdier than having to get up and mute Ventrilo in the middle of that. I'm lucky I still get any.
Wrong. All it seems people use them for is just talking crap about each other. I maybe only get to play a couple hours a month anymore and really only want to play co-op missions for fun. It's entertainment. I always run into a few folks there for the same reason, but even more kids that are frankly punks out to diss everyone else and prove to the universe how cool they are.
That and clans. Everyone seems to be talking about this clan or that clan or do you want to join a clan...crap, I want to charge up the hill with people that know a thing or two about fire/movement tactics, and have some fun! I don't care about the inner politics of the gaming community.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
There are morons of every age. I've played with people who make the "ICH WILL UNREAL TOURNAMENT SPIELEN!!!" kid seem like a choirboy, and they were well over 11.
The worst is people who use shitty microphones and crappy in-game voice chat and don't realize that they're just bothering everyone. Especially in games where one cannot ignore these morons.
I understand that gaming is much bigger now than when I used to play online, but I guess I am just genuinely surprised that there seems to be so many people in these online worlds. When I hear all that 'gaming speak' about raids, and 'plus this' and 'casting spells' and all of it - I just snicker inside. I do find it interesting that so many people seem to REALLY get into it, enough to ruin their lives/marriage/jobs. It just seems so ridiculous. Maybe I am the odd one, because I just don't get it.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
You know what matters less? Your opinion about this story. You know what matters even less than that? My opinion about your opinion. So there we are, then. Glad that's settled.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Get off my server, ruining the mood are you kidding me. You should know he's not a mage in real life either.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sxh1xlp3J_Q
Dives knew how to use Vent.
"Henna Barberra" is genius! I can't not believe I didn't think of that.
Well done sir,wsell done.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Not sure how else to explain it.
I can help you with a few examples of what I don't think would work:
- Gandalf with a deep Texan accent
- King Arthur with an Indian accent
- your female avatar speaking with a guy's accent
Sure it could make great comedy, but it makes it difficult to lose yourself in medieval England or whatever the game context is meant to be. Games like this are about suspension of belief and escapism, so bring in real elements kinda ruins things.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Some one else mentioned voice actors as an issue but seriously-- games that let you talk to each other at international distances for free will be used for telephone calls if the taxes on telephone calls don't come down in many countries.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Won't this just lead to more technologies to help keep you in the "blissful world"? If everything else about your in-game player is fake, why use a real voice. I see this leading to technologies that allow people to hide their gender, nationality and age in their voice the same way they are in their visual appearance.
but not for the reason listed in the summary. The guy is just age biased. If the kid was a competent leader before you heard his voice, than he probably knows what he is doing. It is a pain to type everything in when you are telling people about how to handle a pull or a boss fight. Much easier/faster to just say it. Really, the guy comes off as a dick. Wisdom is still wisdom whether it comes from the very young or the very old.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Ender's Game. I can't remember if the starship captains were aware they were taking orders from young children.
It matters because bias is a psychological mechanism of self-preservation. People like to chalk up biases to "ignorance, anger, and hatred" but we all have them because they are typically correct for the situations in which we formed them. Our mind processes the information different based on the source.
If a stately man his 60s wearing a suit and an 18 year old with a Green Day shirt start talking about global economic policy, who do you tend to believe? Chances are fairly good that you believe the old fart, irrespective of the fact that he may be a janitor and the teenager could be some kind of economic prodigy. We have those biases because probabilistically, they are usually correct for a familiar situation.
As such, an 11 year old may be a VERY capable gamer, but we don't mentally endow them with the required wisdom and experience needed to be an effective leader. In "virtual reality" he is portrayed as an old mage with leadership ability. On some level, you anticipate the person to posses the attributes of the character they are playing, and when you perceive that they don't, you feel lied to.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
If the 11-year old boy knows his class and the game, I've got no problems with it. So long as he's not a dumbass, cause I know people of all ages who play WoW without the required mental "gear". Nothing like logging into Vent and hearing the old age and confusion in the voices of the people you're running with.
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
I initially thought of posting something about questing with a sexy female night elf and then finding out through voice chat that she is really a big hairy guy...
But they are all played by guys. The real surprise is when it turns out to be an actual female.
Uh... so what? I've gotten tips from many players who I find out later are like 12. Get over it, he sounds like a whiny college kid who expects to know everything.
Speech To Text: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_to_text
I'd put my 11YO's judgment up against many 40YOs I work with any day.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
You sound like an extrovert. Those of us who are introverts freaking HATE "jumping on teamspeak and chatting with people".
One is not better than the other. But extroverts seem to not recognize that introverts exist, or think they're dong them some kind of favor by forcing them into situations they do not want to take part in.
I'm not the commited introvert I used to be, and I don't mind using Vent or Skype these days with people I know. But back in the day, using voice chat would have been an absolute deal breaker for me in online games.
-- Dave
Making fun of dumb people since 2009
All you need is to purchase a big cylinder of helium, play some kind of dwarf and inhale some before speaking. And to creep someone out, you can just giggle, because giggling while on helium would really creep out anyone during gameplay...
Task Mangler
The 11 year olds are taking over! Watch out... They could even be posting on Slashdot!!
This sig left intentionally blank.
You just can't tell if someone could be a murderer if they publish a file system... Or something like that.
Serious issues about maturity
its the opposite effect on me. When i first did the voice chat thing , my voice had not cracked and made everything very ... strange. I still try to avoid it because I want to play with joe smashum the lvl 30 dwarf warrior , not billy joe who is doing 5 grade for the 3rd time this year, or jonny 12-year-old knowitall; it really does kill the game. If they are irl friends its a different story though.
My World of Warcraft guild uses Teamspeak for raids, and it's a valuable tool, both for the raid leader to give instructions, and for keeping everyone apprised of the tactical situation. It does reveal which players are not the same gender as their toon, but I never jump to conclusions about the player based on the online character, so it doesn't really matter. WoW is a game, not a dating site. What matters is your skill in playing your class, not your real-life situation. That being said, twelve-year old players tend to act like twelve-year olds, in the game as in real life. They usually give themselves away by being overly reckless in game and by not making proper preparations before trying to do something hard. We don't take members under 18, mostly for this reason.
I still have yet to perfect my female voice, my male one works just fine. I'm going to stay away from Ventrilo for now. It might kill the mood if a sexy female Night Elf busted out with a deep male voice, and I still get me free stuff because they think I'm a girl, YAY.
"To be is to do." --Socrates
"To do is to be." -- Aristotle
"Do-Be-Do-Be-Do..." --Sinatra
He has a level 31 Blood Elf hunter and to my amazement he is always getting into instances. He can't really read what is being said in party chat and he can't really communicate with them but he'll go an entire instance. I often wonder what the other people in the party must be thinking about him. I assume they think he doesn't speak English. If they check out hi character they have to be thinking WTF. He's got a cloth piece with spirit and healing and some odd leather pieces that don't belong on a hunter. Although, he is able to determine if something is leather or cloth now. He does lots of runs without a pet and at times without arrows so he has to use his sword, dagger, or whatever random weapon he happens to be using at the time. So, moral of the story is you just never know who you might be playing with online. It could be a 6 year old kid.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Seems to me that if you have that much time to fritter away on WoW, you must not be much older than 11 yourself.
/. .
Oh, wait, now I'm a pot calling the kettle black. I just frittered away 45 seconds on
Stupid guilty pleasures...
Well, I find I'm in between these two positions. While I am very introverted, I honestly don't mind being on Vent while out running around in WoW. It could be because it's guild only and we have a pretty mature group (20's-40's) and things tend to stick to gameplay. We have women in the guild and I've not heard them get hit on yet, though they do tend to be quieter.
I think the important thing is that being on Vent doesn't require you to actually talk. If you enjoy listening to what people say while you're doing your own thing, you can pretty easily do that. The only trouble I've found is forgetting that I muted the microphone when someone asks me a direct question.
And there's no doubt that for tight group interaction, voice is much faster for most people.
So I think there's room for introverts and extroverts while managing voice chat. I think it depends FAR more on the group make-up and overall maturity levels of those involved.
For joining our guild, having a good ventrilo voice- agreeable, good attitude etc. is just another prerequisite to raiding with us. Easier to tell if you are a jerk if we can hear it in your voice...
I'm predominantly a CounterStrike player. In most cases I find voice chat to be incredibly useful as opposed to typing. With one hand on the mouse and the other frantically flying over movement/weapon keys, it'd be pretty difficult to type even simple notifications to other teammates such as "A rush" or "Camper at long." I suppose I could bind those to some keys, but 1) I don't have enough keys to bind such communications to, and 2) it's just so much easier to use voice chat. Now, there are cases where you run across the prepubescent kid who won't stop whining about hackers and cheaters, the karaoke kid, the music spammer, or the drunken frat boys who talk about nonsense throughout the game, but that's what the Ignore function is for. An anonymous person's voice over the Internet isn't too awkward for me to listen to, even if it does get annoying occasionally.
And Penthouse forum, let me tell you, that was when things started to get hot......
'mmmmmmmmm.... forbidden donut'
It matters because it matters. Nobody says it matters -- but it matters.
That is the discrepancy you see between the 11 yr old in this example (real life) and the age/gender/religon/cultural neutral situation you describe (ideal).
Agreed.
I'm a serious introvert. Occasionally, with one or two other people, I'll speak (and have conversations) in Vent. Otherwise, I limit it to gameplay stuff, and listen to other people. Particularly in raids. If I'm with a lot of people I don't know well in raid, I break out into a sweat just thinking about speaking.
Listening, however, I find it strangely like people watching. I don't mind listening to mature people talk on their own tangents, occasionally with me piping in with a comment. And sometimes, when I group with other introverts, nobody talks (except very occasionally, and almost 90% gameplay stuff), but it isn't *uncomfortable*.
In-game voice is gravy, that's all. I'm glad that Blizzard decided not to implement it via proximity; the party/raid thing makes a lot of sense. As long as you get to choose who you are "in chat" with, and you have full control over whether or not you'll speak (text chat still available), I'm all for an additional tool inside of WoW. Yes, the barrier to fucktards is lower (some people are far ruder on voice). It'll be a minor adaption, that's all.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Tired of reading? Our new web 2.0 application "vocalizes" Slashdot for you, so that you don't have to.
Seriously, for any fantasy game, nothing wrecks the atmosphere quicker than an american accent.
The actors in Jackson's LOTR were all coached so they could speak with an english accent - I'm not making fun of americans here, I even went to the USA once, I was amazed because everyone sounded like "the people from TV".
But if I'm playing in an immersive fantasy world with elves, dwarves etc, the last thing I want to experience is the jarring unbroken voice of a whining 12yo american kid named "Likestospooge". Kind of ruins the atmosphere.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
What, is this 1990 all over again? I can understand being a bit weirded the first time you realize that most of the online gaming community:
/.
1.) Is Better than you.
2.) Has already beaten you to all the unique items and has proceeded to sell them for real money on Ebay.
3.) Is not in your Age group, Tax bracket, Generation Gap, Location or Species.
But I think the thing that the original poster has not realized is that he is the *odd man out*
An "*ageing hipster* who participates in Online RPG" translates into "weird OG" to most of the kids online which, for the uninitiated masses of my generation does not stand for "original gangster" but "*Old Guy*". We aren't in charge anymore. These kids grew using computers, and didn't learn how to role play with those weird dice you had to colour in with the crayons that came in the box with the first books.
The mean age of online gamers is 13. some may even be cats. you can never trust cats. They sneak online when their owners aren't home and download huge videos of tuna fishing. Thats where all the bandwidth they can't understand they have used is coming from.. their cats. Some cats even post to
Then they sit smugly on top of their monitors and laugh at them.
anyway, I digress.
-m
-Magdalene --"there are 10 types of people in the world, those who read binary, and those who don't"
I was having sex with this girl last night and she was always talking "give it to me, oh yeah, big brute, I love it, yeah, harder, bad boy"
So I stopped. Too much talking is like too little.
Oh wait, we're talking internet chat...
I hate it when I'm jerking off and someone wants to skype with me! It totally ruins the...
Wait, seriously? Another stunningly informative article brought to you by zonk.
I used to play multiplayer Quake, Quake GL, and Quake 2 a lot, and loved it. I have dabbled with games since 1998, but nothing really captured my time and imagination as the Quake era, where I would play almost every night after work for around 12-18 months straight.
WoW is the first game that's come close to that feeling. It's like 5 games in one: deathmatch FPS, co-operative teamplay like capture the flag & team fortress, solo RPG, co-operative RPG, and speculative trading (via the auction house, gathering, and crafting professions). After taking a year off, I rejoined in August 2006 and have played a fair amount (though not a lot by some standards -- I only have one level 70, a high-end-geared Warlock, and my alts are quite low).
Where WoW has really shined is in the social aspects of the game, particularly guilds.
The Warcraft guild I'm a part of consists of 14 through 60 year olds. Many family members play together (siblings, parents, and spouses).
The jobs are from all walks of life
- Blue collar workers: roofers, construction workers, factory workers
- Young thirty-something lawyers
- College students
- Some are just entering high school
- At least three are U.S. Military personnel, one of which was recently on leave from the guild because he's in Iraq, another is stationed in Germany but still plays, others are in the U.S.
- Several are in IT, ranging from Directors, managers, DBAs, programmers, project managers, and architects
- At least two (including myself) are highly paid technology consultants
- One is a financial fraud & digital forensics investigator for a major bank
- Some are homemakers or retired
- I would say that out of 40 regular players, around 7 are women (and yes, have female characters), including my real life girlfriend.
We play because it's a hobby. Sometimes we run 5-man dungeons and wind up chatting on Ventrilo afterwards about TV, life, music, etc. With 10 or 25-main raids, it's a bit more serious, though some goofing off happens.
Does it impact lives? Absolutely. Sometimes we fight. Often there is drama. Sometimes it's really freaking stupid. Other times it's just normal human b.s.
On Romance:
- Some guild members are unhappy in their marriage and seriously have saught companionship with others through the game. Not that they'll pack up and move to another city or country, but flirting, definitely.
- Some members are just 20-somethings that are naturally flirtatious.
- Some are just nice people to talk to and don't cross any lines.
- Couples that travel a lot for work spend time together through the game (I know I do).
On Marriage:
- At least one guildie is separated from his wife, who's on the guild, leading to tension when he makes friends with the other female guildies
- Another separated from her husband, who left the guild, but now she's dating someone else in the guild. They didn't meet through the game, though the game is one of their ways of spending time together
- Some player's spouses don't play the game, and this can cause problems if the player overdoes it, particularly if they have kids.
Is it ridiculous? Well, no more than a bowling league, or golf club, I don't think. Except it tends to be more diverse, and less physically active. Plus, MMORPGs are a good substitute for reality TV -- guild drama always rears its head from time to time.
-Stu
Richard Bartle, the father of MUDs (and by extension MMORPGs) tackled this issue four years ago: http://www.gamegirladvance.com/archives/2003/07/28 /not_yet_you_fools.html
Sorry :P
Recently, our leader was getting hit on because of her sweet, sexy voice. Turned out, it was a boy who hadn't gone through puberty yet. That was fun :)
I agree with the point you're trying to make, but eugenics is a bad example, and I'm going to give a little rant about it.
First, there's a difference between Nazi eugenics and selecting and/or breeding superior cultivars. Only one of them hurts people.
Second, eugenics fails to take social influences into consideration. Isn't it obvious that someone raised to believe in their own innate superiority will be, generally speaking, better than the average person. People are not plants. They are not limited by their inherent nature like superior varieties will, due to their genes, produce a superior crop. They can learn, grow, and put fourth effort. Plants just do in encoded in their DNA. Read The Mismeasure of Man sometime.
Third, eugenics is only a short term deal. Keeping with the agricultural reference, think about bananas. The genetics of the banana of commerce are identical because of its breeding, and a single disease could decimate the commercial banana population. Granted, they've got identical genes because of vegative propagation methods, but similar genes, the result a eugenics program would have, are still a liability for a species. Diversity is not beneficial for a species survival; its essential. Eugenics is nothing more than Darwin simplified, and it only works on paper.
Fourth, it doesn't matter what the results are, with eugenics, the ends do not justify the means.
There's a very straight forward solution to this problem: Stop roleplaying as a woman.
I'm gonna have to call this one and say that the author probably thought the mage was a girl. Just probably. Otherwise, why would he be so quick to download ventrillo?
Guess the old manifesto might have to be reworked a bit now that WoW gotten all big and stuff...
This is our world now... the world of the dwarf and the witch, the beauty of the elf.
We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals.
We explore... and you call us criminals.
We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals.
We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals.
You build atomic bombs,
we wage wars,
we murder, cheat, and lie to each other and try to make us believe it's for our own good,
yet we're the halflings.
Yes, I am a WoWer.
My crime is that of curiosity.
My crime is that of judging people by what they say^H^H^Hwrite and think, not what they look like.
My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.
I am a slasher, and this is my manifesto.
You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all,
we're all alike.
Break the sound barrier - bring the noise.
Well, it sorta does in an indirect way, at the very least.
Imagine that you're talking to a guy that looks like Rambo, but has a squeaky eunuch voice. (Well, at least an adult would have to be an eunuch to sound like that.) I'm guessing you'd be trying real hard to not burst into fits of laughter. I'm also guessing that it would make it a lot harder to take him seriously as a bad-ass tough guy, or at least you'd get funny ideas what he's really compensating for.
That's the thing. Regardless of 11 years or not, most voices just don't match that character. It may not necessarily be age or gender discrimination as such, but a character kind of is a _whole_. If the parts are mismatched, it starts to trip suspension of disbelief. Think "uncanny valley" if it makes the point easier to swallow. (Although I don't actually believe the uncanny valley hypothesis as such.)
Basically a big burly male orc with a 11 year old girl's voice, is just as weird as the same orc with hooves or floppy ears. It makes one think "wth is wrong with that guy?"
Thing thing is, as long as you don't know something about a character, you're free to imagine the details it in a way that makes sense for you. Having the wrong details shoved down your throat can trip suspension of disbelief in a major way.
And the more time you've had to imagine it in your own way, the more it will feel wrong when you get something that doesn't match. See how fans of some, say, novel or comic end up arguing to hell and back in which ways it was the wrong choice of actors.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I used the cracked version and several other cracked versions of voice-changing software for that very purpose. After testing them all out (using friends and vent) I loved the morphvox stuff, so I bought it. The paid version did things cleaner (I think cuz of the updates, which cracks would miss?) and I've used it ever since. Nobody even asks twice about 'my' voice and yes, using it to swap genders works well enough to give me and my SO freak out a little (she doesn't sound half as cute as a gruff guy O_O )
Changing the pitch etc. shouldn't be a problem, so if you integrate voice in the game and make the filter customizable together with the rest of your character, that would be really cool. Problem solved.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
...it's time to grow up??
I play a definitely gender-less game (BZFlag), and I like to chat a bit, instigating a happy friendly atmosphere. Saying "nice shot" when I get whacked out of the blue. Helping newbies. You know, to keep the game fun and things. (I do the same in most other games I'm skilled at and that have a chat system.)
Here's the rub, though: every now and again, I find myself in a perhaps-a-little-above-average chatty mood on a server with few players and consequently a leisurely pace. And in *all* of those cases people take it for granted that I'm a chick -- which seems to make them more inclined to chat with me. Being a fan of OOTS and its comical "V gender issue", I never admit to my gender but prefer to keep them guessing. On the main topic, though - why does it matter if it's an 11-year-old kid [...] on the other end of that mage? If he or she is courteous, skilled, and knowledgeable then s/he deserves respect regardless of any other factor. That's where online games, and indeed the internet in general, are great - they let you meet the person without prejudice [...]. I couldn't have said it better. Using an alias or avatar provides anonymity which evens the playing field and enables meritocracy. To me this seems common on online forums, but strangely different in online gaming.
"Good news, everyone!"
This guys was just aggravated that he was almost 40 getting helped by an 11 year old. But if you think about it during the summer a child can play all day, where as most adults would have a job, I hope. When I played wow, i played with people from all over the age spectrum, the only thing I found annoying about being on vent with younger kids was trying to watch my language, i tend to curse a lot. But i never had a problem with omg this is a kid helping me, who cares help is help take what you can get. I am sure this guys E-peen just shriveled when he heard that kids voice. OK rant done have fun.
Today's Tomorrow is Yesterday's Future! --- "Where Ever You Go, There You Are" -- Diablo 1
Spelling/grammar nazis welcome (English is not my first language and I am trying to improve my spelling/grammar)
Perhaps you should learn how to use the comma correctly before you criticize the spelling and grammar of other people.
Voice chat reintroduces bigotry into human interaction in on online games.
--meh--
I play WoW to escape the real world, I don't want to talk to people.
Get your Unix fortune now!
I play WoW. I am currently a raid leader & MT and previously GM of a large guild on Shadowsong. (Jade Phoenix)
I have met teens (12-18) that have been better behaved and more well spoken than many of the adults who also play the game (most of Cydonia complex for example). Our officer ranks, while primarily adults, also contain a few teens who have distinguished themselves and proven themselves capable and level headed individuals.
There are exceptions to this rule. One of our members Fordtow for example can spell or speak proper english to save his life....he grew up typing and speaking "text messaging" and it shows.
So out of a guild of roughly 380 people (470ish toons), we have a couple who we have to haul out the good old Booterang and knock some sense into them.
Other posts in this thread seem to poke fun that the only people who play MMO's fall into the stereo type of unwashed basement dwellers. I laugh at that and will say that roughly 1/3 of our guild are female (and yes that is a fact) and that is about the same across the other guilds from what I've seen. Moreover, most of the female players are also better people to play with.
So I guess the point I'm making, if that person ingame is being a well versed individual turns out to be an 11yr old kid, listen to them and you might just learn something new about the game.
Realization of your demotion at work to someone that not only makes a better leader, but has a lvl70 that can kick your noob butt is teh suck!1! ...but evidence of the future.
If everyone who is 40 thinks hanging out with 11 year olds is so great, then why are so many kids in daycare? If squeeky voices don't matter, then, where are they on radio?
The fact of the matter is, once you add voice chat to an experience, the tone of one's voice, the depth of one's experience, completely matters, and to pretend otherwise is just a way of being deliberately ignorant of the environment you are in. Going online is not just a game, its an escape, and part of that escape includes wanting to relax and part of that is an assumption of being with your peers.
It's not a question of prejudice. If you are relaxing, you want to be able to be yourself without the filter of making sure the cultural references you make are worthwhile. Being "open minded" and putting up with a bunch of different punks is a job, and sometimes, you just want to be with people like yourself. Online games should let players filter for age, gender, orientation or any number of criteria. If you want to play with the kids, go ahead and hook up your virtual swingset and have it, but sometimes, you just want to be with your own kind.
This is my sig.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
> "Recently I logged into World of Warcraft and I wound up questing alongside a mage and two ... realized he was an 11-year-old boy."
> dwarf warriors. I was the lowest-level newbie in the group, and the mage was the de-facto
> leader. He coached me on the details of each new quest, took the point position in dangerous
> fights and suggested tactics. He seemed like your classic virtual-world group leader: Confident,
> bold and streetsmart. But after a few hours he said he was getting tired of using text chat -- and
> asked me to switch over to Ventrilo, an app that lets gamers chat using microphones and voice.
> I downloaded Ventrilo, logged in, dialed him up and
And now, the punch line.
Wait for it...
Waaaaaaiiiiiit.....
Well, at least you weren't playing World of Cybersex With Obama Girl.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Way back in the Before Times I did a few year stint as a voice actor and mastered such things as the Scottish brogue and the Brittish stiff upper lip... So, much to the amusement of my guild, I use these skills on our vent server when we're not hardcore raiding.
It really is a lot of fun to be playing my Dwarven warrior and telling a team mate on vent while we're in a battleground "Don' do tha' ya ninny! They be baitin' ya to come an' give 'en 'nother free kill." in an almost perfect replica of a Dwarven NPC.
There are a few folks now who've gotten over their mic-fright and have started to give their characters a bit of an accent... Good times, good times.
It's only a matter of time before speech recognition/synthesis technology allows near-realtime chat with language filtering/whatever built in. I'd be surprised if within 10-15 years, that 11 year old boy didnt sound like a dwarf too. In the meantime, I think the internet continues to provide an interesting way to confront your prejudices.
The best lack all convictions, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. -Yeats, The Second Coming
My char on WoW is a female and when asked I admit to being a female playing a female. But once I'm on vent, people who don't know me often mistake the sound of my voice for being that of a young boy. The sad fact is that I'm a 36 year old woman.
LAWL!
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Come on, the cynical, wise-beyond-his-years street-smart child with a gift for playing the system and a heart of gold/soft-spot for lost lambs? That's sort of character is almost Jungian.
It's bigotry, IMO, to discriminate against kids playing.
..
I've run countless FPS servers, and whenever a squeaky comes on the voice chat, they're almost always harassed and teased (but usually by kids who were just in the very same position not long before that themselves).
I've ALWAYS stuck up for them, because as long as they're being respectful and good team players, they're usually GOOD. Better than this old man is
= Grow a brain...
This really reminds me of back when I was in CAP back when I was a younger teenager in Vermont. We went to visit the National Guard base up in Burlington and they showed us their training simulator for the fighter pilots (F-16's). Imagine an arcade game, you sit in this chair with the controls all around you and a screen in front of you that shows a badly rendered world, only the world you see is the area around the airport, mountains and all. There was only enough time for one of the cadets to take a turn but the rest of us stood around asking questions. One of us asked if they ever did dog-fights among the pilots and they said yes, there was another simulator that they could connecto this one for just such a purpose.
This brought the expected question from a cadet, "Can we duel each other? Can we duel one of the pilots?!" Everyone looked excited at the prospect but the officer who was guiding us around said, "Actually we stopped allowing visitors to take on the pilots if only because it was embarrassing for us to lose." The reason why, as seems obvious now, is the pilots are trained to do specific maneuvers and follow certain rules and proceedures. Kids can fly how it was meant to be done and push the aircraft to the digital limit, even risking death in extreme low-level flying to get the advantage, something no real pilot would do because in real life that would likely get you killed.
I guess this leads to the point of kids tend to be better at games and the like because it's more natural for them. They don't see the reality behind it, it's all just play. They see how the story should go, how they can push things, what the real boundaries are of the game and not how it would really have to be done. In a game you can go that extra distance because if you die, you just restart. Kids know this about the games and don't have the natural inhibitions gained from age and experience to be warry of such actions by default.
So you mean its just like going on a blind date. Never know what you going to get. Picky bastard ;)
http://www.blizzard.com/wow/screenshot.aspx?ImageI ndex=159&Set=64
Not sure if this has been mentioned, but one of the main things I wouldn't feel comfortable with if the guy was 11 (or any age up to 18) is I wouldn't socialise with this player outside of the game, so why do it inside?
Generally I like online games when you're playing with people of the same demographic, or close. Or people who have roughly the same interests. So playing with an 11 year old, or playing with a 50 year old woman is personally something I don't find comfortable doing. Infact it kind of makes you open your eyes to what you are actually doing - stamp collecting but online and anonymously.
its not a troll. Grow the fuck up will you.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
This comment received not one, but two Troll mods!? WTF?! People, get a damn grip. It's a rational comment, expressed rationally. You may disagree, but it's not a Troll. The comment is based on recent science that you may not be aware of.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I dug up some numbers years back - I should get more up to date ones, but at the time, computer & videogames were around a 10 billion dollar a year industry. Movies were too if you just counted box office, and didn't add in video rentals and sales, licensed toys and merchandise, etc. Radio, magazines, and books each weighed in at around 20 billion a year. Television was 40 billion a year. At the same time, telephone service was a $172 billion a year industry. Is all of that for entertainment purposes? Of course not. Many calls are for business purposes, medical emergencies, etc. etc. But estimate what percentage of phone calls you think are leisure related & multiply it by that 172 billion - unless you guess pretty low, it's still the world's number one entertainment medium. Games like WOW may not be the most ideal place for it to "fit in" in some ways. That just says to me that games where voice chat fits in perfectly with what people are wanting to do will, someday, possibly be much bigger than WOW. With seven million players, about 1 in 1000 humans on the earth plays WOW. How many of the earth's humans like "talking to other people" as one of their very most favorite things to do? Regarding the 11 year old group leader, by the way - this is part of the "future shock" inherent in moving from the physical labor era, where small kids couldn't do work with economic value as effectively as full-grown adults, to the intellectual labor era, where sometimes they can. This suggests that some of them would/should/could be taken more seriously, given more freedom or authority, etc. But of course we're not used to that, and social change takes a while to catch up with new underlying realities. America is still gradually adjusting its culture about sex decades after we invented birth control pills and blood tests for all known STDs.
Furcadia - A free online game with user created content, DragonSpeak scripting, & more.
I'm struck by the double-speak I see going-on in this thread:
comment) I enjoy playing the game, and this person is a competant leader.
response) You should use voice chat! Don't just play the game, socialize!
comment) I turned on voice chat. This is someone I don't want to socialize with.
response) What's wrong with you? Is he good at the game, that's all that matters!
Pick an argument and stick with it, please. For me, I can well see how an adult may want to game with a kid, even enjoy it, but not wish to spend time socializing with a kid. And vice-versa, I might add.
-Jeff
Please learn the difference between a dissenting opinion and a troll before you moderate.
the sound of leather striking skin with force.
I got more of a kick out of the actual video for the first one. What game are those kids supposed to be playing? Tom Clancy's Shoot the Floor Grating? My daughter handled a mouse better at age 8.