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."

Comments

Re:So?

[Dan D.]

That reminds me of a story a friend of mine told me (I'm going to get the text wrong because I don't know Latin):

The famous phrase attributed to Caesar of "I came. I saw. I conquered." was according to him supposed to sound like "VINNIE VEENIE VICHIE," but according to some new research he'd heard about, it may have actually sounded like "winnie, weenie, wichie"

Apparently that severely ruined it for him.