Voice Chat

Well I dont know any way of having a Voice history due to the fact that most VoIP software is streamed not recorded and replayed. One would asume that (like in poligt convorsations) people would bloody wait for each other to finish before speaking and if they arent, you mute them

Madox, Im not sure I understand why you wont play SL if people use voice. If you can hear them and type in a reply as you would normaly... I can understand the reason for not being happy with not being able to chat but quiting because you cant do something someone else can is kind of sad. I mean seriously man you are doing some neat stuff in SL and it would be sad to see you go over something like that.

Again my base opinion on all this is: Voice will be cool, Dont bash it cause you cant or dont want it, you dont HAVE to use it. It is the obvious next step in communications online and would be shameful not to move forward in one of the most inovative games ever.

Gwydeon - I'm sure it will be fine for a while but eventually text only users would be pushed into some kind of 2nd class.

Might take a year or more but if the VC bug catches on in a big way I think it will happen. Then you will get what other people commented on - groups of people all voice chatting and not bothering to pay attention to text people. People become annoyed when they have to resort to text. Events run entirely in voice chat - in trivia how can you tell if a voice chat person answered before another person answered in text or not?

Its human nature and I know if it wasn't for my particular situation at home I would eat up voice chat.

So I would only quit after it got this bad, which may take a year+ but in my opinion it would get this bad

And I'm not bashing it - it interesting so many want it, and I'll support it. Maybe I'll be wrong about human nature Never know till we try it I guess

Well I hope that the SL Community is better than the average and does not look down on somone for not being able to do something like this. But I'll pull a corolation you can relate to the other side of easily.

56k Vs BroadBand.

I like chris's idea, but its not nessicary to take it so far. Voice to text would be nice for history kinda things, and I can't help but think that to make an effective masking program thet rids one of accent, you would need to train it similarly to current voice to text programs. I don't think rendering voice to text and back again is needed, but outputting the text chan would be helpfull (and making a text-to-voice might be nice too, but also unnessicary.) ((also, think if you could throw like a bablefish in the middle, so auto-voip-translation... *sigh*))

Voice maksing helps - I'm a straight 23 year old guy, but about half the time in SL I'll wear a female av - I don't consider this behavior to be socially deviant or "upholding a fantasy," I just like how the female avatars look. But if I'm in a cute female av, and I'm voice chatting... well its just going to be weird. It will break the immersive nature of SL, and remind you that the avatar isn't buhbuhcuh fairchild, just some dude on the other end of the DSL connection.

I think the immersiveness of SL is easily overlooked. But we refer to "In-World" as if it were a real place. I used it enough last time I was visiting with my family that they ALSO started using the phrase "in-world" as if it applies to a real "place." This immersive quality lets us build strong relationships with other users, and in turn, lends to the "community."

I think a well done voice chat system (masking) could be very helpful to the immersive nature of SL. But I think a lesser one (some off the shelf VoIP) would be a neat feature, but not a valuble one.

Oh and the other thing - I don't think that free for all voice chat is good - I'd rather see it like a voice IM/voice IRC deal - So it can be more like a party-line phone than a crowded room. maybe implement it with the new "talk-to" behavior in the 1.1 preview, but the point being I don't want to have to listen to you.

bbc

Heh true I guess, Gwyd.
I don't really know what to say so I'll go back int oto the shadows.

I normally try not to get into debates because I suck so much at it, as you see

Right, well... continuing to read things, and I can chime in another .02 cents

1) Why not set it up with channels WITHIN SL? If you're chatting away, and then everyone decides to switch to voice for a while, you would join the Voice Channel #Fubar or whatever. As long as you're within that channel, you can hear/send anything to the people within.

2) Annoyances/abuse... one of the best features of SL is the self-regulating the populace does for itself. If someone is annoying, they are ostracized, muted, and kicked off the land. If someone is abusive, they get 2 dozen abuse reports filed, and removed from SL. So, say some 13 year old kid manages to weasel his way into SL, and starts cussing up a storm, throwing around racial epithets, and so forth. There are multiple ways to solve this problem within SL:

a) The mute button
b) File a report
c) use a script to bop him away
d) use a script to bop him away permanently.
e) use the land-banning feature in 1.1

And so on... because SL's community is more or less self-regulatory, we can fix the annoying problem in about, oh, 30 seconds of it happening. Besides, it takes more work to be annoying if you had to join the aforementioned chat channels.

3) Voice history... no, please no. That would be so much swapping in and out of .wav files, being played back, etc. etc. If you wanted to hear something repeated, and sorted through the history... you would miss the last thing said while you were hearing the previous statement. And so it would repeat until you were 4 minutes behind everyone else in the conversation voice-to-text is hard to do unless everyone pronounces correctly with no accents, and clear mics. I know I sure have a crappy mic, so it wouldn't work very well.

As for events that would be using voice... well, we would find out which events work with voice and which don't REAL quick. Trivia wouldn't work at all with voice unless it took a "quiz show" type format. No one in their right minds would read the questions and expect everyone to hear it. If they did, they wouldn't be hosting events for long. Town meetings are important, they need to be logged... therefore, mostly text.

Voice events would be like... singing contests, or maybe stand-up comedy. I don't know, but voice chat would allow people to throw even more creative events than currently exist. Don't exclude it just because you picture a nightmarish future of microphone zombies playing trivia

I read another interesting comment about classism and people not being able to be "equal" with voice.. that's silly. Everyone judges people on how they type... I do, anyways. I tend to automatically think of messages spoken with alot of abbreviations ("u" for "you", etc.) as informal and rushed. Years of chatting experience, I guess, as well as personal feelings for grammar If someone can't/won't/is unable to talk correctly, they can still stay with text. SL's residents aren't going to exclude you because you can't talk... just say you don't have a mic, and that clears up any embarrassing questions.

We're a friendly bunch, and I think it might be interesting to hear debates/chat with alot of laughing and jokes and whatnot, just like it is with text currently. I love making people laugh, and the ability to possibly actually HEAR them laughing lifts my spirits up a bit.

Boy, this is a long post. And now, a joke to relieve your eyes

A guy walks into the bar... he says ouch.

THANK YOU WISCONSIN! I'M HERE ALL WEEK! TRY THE VEAL!



Lordfly

I guess it depends on what you see AS Imersion. Personaly I like real people in a fantasy world. Rather than Fantasy people in a fantasy world... if you take my meaning.

It all comes down to personal preferance which takes me back to obvious points. If its not something you want to participate in, you dont have to, but don't try to stop its implemntation, thats greedy. Pure and simple there.

Personaly, as well, I also wouldn't say

"I think a well done voice chat system (masking) could be very helpful to the immersive nature of SL. But I think a lesser one (some off the shelf VoIP) would be a neat feature, but not a valuble one." -buhbuhcuh

So much as ".....It wouldnt be valuable to me, I would need voice modulation."

Its just not fair to call something valueless to everyone because a few wouldnt use it unless it was suited specificly to their needs.

Don't get me wrong - as I said before, I use voice chat. My point isn't whether it is valuble to me or not - if it is valubleto me, I can do it - teamspeak. I don't think it is valuble to the secondlife experience as a whole.

*Yet*

Despite the fact I use myself as an example, my opinion is not motivated by greed. I play as myself in this fantasy world - no role playing involved. If I'm in a girl av, its the same buhbuh as it would be if I were in a guy av. "Gender Roles and Self-Image in a Virtual World" would be an excellent disscusion to have, I know that a lot of people use virtual worlds because they are not satisfied with the real one. I mean really - this is "Second Life" and a lot of people are very happy with that separation. (I imagine more people than you think)

The prevailing argument for VC is "If you don't want to use it, you don't have to." coupled with the "If you dont want to, people won't think anything different of you." Heh, yeah right. There are a few people I have wanted to chat with in voice chat who refuse to use it. the reasons are all sensible, and acceptable, but no matter what the reason, the frist thing that pops into my mind is "Maybe they aren't who they claim to be."

Its funny, because before the voice chat, I had no reason to trust one person over another. The anominimity of secondlife meant that I made my friends regardless of who they really were, just who they claimed to be. (And sometimes, I feel SL can be more true to "who you really are" than RL) Now, if you don't talk - I have a reason not to belive you. I mean really, as someone pointed out, if you can afford a computer that can play this, a $20 mic should be no prob. If you sound a little dorky - no biggy, we are all geeks here... so why won't you talk - is there something you aren't telling me? No biggie - I'll just be careful to be gender nutral in my relationship with you from now on, and not quite sure if I should trust you.

Bam - look, I just created me a second class citizen. Someone who won't get as much respect from me as a Voicer. And I like to think I'm pretty good about that kinda stuff. They might be telling the truth, but "I'll belive it when I hear it."

I know I'm not the only one who thinks this - Back when Sturm made the first SL TS chan, he would invite people to come in and when they wouldn't turned to us and said "You know, I think all of these girls are guys".

Some are.

So to round off my rant - I want voice chat. but I think its not ready for SL yet, becasue you can't really lead a true "second life" if you are forced to reveal part of your first one. If I can use my voice as self expression, as I use my avatar, and my builds, and my chat - it needs to be able to express the self I identify with it - which may not be my RL self.

If that makes sense.

bbc

It makes a lot of sence and they are all very valid points to consider, maybe this part of the debate will lead to the voice modulation that would alow more people to participate as suggested.

However i have to point out (to my own arguments detriment) that if you ARE using voice modulation without some extreamly weird / related AV (IE: Using robot with a very normal looking AV) the same trust situation comes into effect. The fact remains that frankly you cant trust (completely) ANYONE you meet online. I could very easily create a back history that I could use to perpetuate a false identity to anyone who wanted 'proof' of who I said I was and they would have no reason to belive otherwise (other than the above fact heh).

My arguments are colored by the fact that I find Voice chat as a very useful tool and would realy like it implemented so I appologize for trying to find holes in the counter arguments, I just realy think it would be useful and would advance the game technologicly.

I agree, it will be very nice when it comes. I just want to make sure that its realized that ist not just a simple thing to implement well. (Like make a voice modulation proggy that doesn't make everyone sound like a robot, but you don't sound like yourself). I also like to argue for the sake of argument


bbc

Heh me too, frankly it keeps me busy between calls here at work, Im trying NOT to attack anyone for the sake of an argument here to keep myself entertained because frankly this msg board (for the most part) has been the most peacfull I have ever seen (probably due to the small town community feeling in SL).

Anyhow No offence ment or taken man, Good chatting regardless

I have used voice in Counter-Strike and it is very effective. CS is a team based game and the controls are very intensive. Voice works well to keep yourself alive. If your trying to use six keys just to walk around and shoot your gun, and you have to stop what your doing to type out a message, your likely to get yourself killed. SL has no pressing need to HAVE to chat with voice, its paced well enough to type and use the typed history to keep up with multiple AV chatting a lot.

The maturity level in SL is far greater than your average CS server, so abuse is probably not a big issue. But, in CS, people use voice to let everyone hear their favorite new Snoop Dogg song or whatever. They chat excessively, destroying the real communications required to meet the game objectives. One friend, a great guy, had a tiny voice and was constantly being asked about how old he was, commented on about sounding like a little kid or a homosexual. He left the game due to voice being implemented.

It would be easiler to talk to people to explain things or just chat, but BBC brings up a good point with people being labelled "second class" for whatever reason they have for not using voice. And, I also use male and female AV and my male voice would be rather disturbing coming from some of my female AV's.

One solution to the voice issue has already come up and may be the solution. Have it as an invite feature to enter a voice channel, similar to using current IM. I frequently chat with a group and talk to another on IM at the same time. I would not be offended if my voice chat request went unanswered and they just kept typing away, I would continue to type along with them.

Voice would be handy, and I am not completely opposed to it. I just think there are many things to consider with implementation. The cons outweight the pros at the moment. Its just a "fun" feature we could have, its not critical to gameplay.

I dont understand how having Voice in an IM changes anything about this "Second class" dynamic we are defining here.

And frankly if somone cant chat, that dosnt mean they cant HEAR chat and thus type their answers back.

As an exercise for the reader, take a chat history and try reading it aloud. I think this will convince you that you *don't* really want voice chat.

Especially in crowded contexts, such as a event. Without extremely smart distance attenuation, it would be an aural nightmare. I don't think that a simple r^2 would work and you would have to factor in local density, etc, etc. People can also read much faster than they speak.

Add all the other reasons cited above, and best of all, it's "lagariffic!".

(Oops, I guess I just learned I do like beating dead horses, he said sheepishly)

A wee bit too lazy to read all the posts...

But, in short:

I don't want voice chat. Ever. In any form. Kaput.
That will be all.

-Daemioth

Amen to that Dae!!

Some very valid arguments both for and against voice chat have been presented in this thread. I'm not going to argue for either side, though I would like to share some of my experiences using voice chat in another MMOG (okay, okay, in There).

Voice chat works best when it's used among a small-ish number of people, unless you are willing to sit and say nothing and listen to other people speak for a period of time. I LOVE being able to voice chat with friends, but I find that if you have more than, say five to seven people in a voice chat, it gets really annoying and hard to sort out.

When There first implemented voice chat, it drove me away from a few of the major gathering places where people were constantly yammering on loudly about inane topics or playing their music over the voice chat system. Range is a real issue when it comes to voice chat.

Voice chat also allows the most outgoing people to dominate a conversation. I remember one female player who used to have regular voice chat events at her house. She would literally set herself up on a "throne" and make witty comments while the rest of us threw in the occasional response as we were able. It was not much fun, to say the least. Text chat is much more egalitarian and allows more different personalities to throw their two cents' worth into the conversation.

Communication is such a complicated subject. Most of us in SL are used to the text format of communication because we've been doing it in some form or another for any number of years. Voice chatting with people you know only in an online situation can be tricky. A voice reveals a lot about the user connected to it, and sometimes the clues it gives are not accurate. For instance, while chatting on MSN and playing in SL with two different people (on separate occasions), both of them commented that I sounded patronizing and sort of nunplussed about certain things (one was building furniture for me, and the other was showing me the trebuchet he had made).

Now, I didn't MEAN to be patronizing or non-plussed, but you see, I have this sort of deadpan, ironic delivery to my speech, and often I come across as a cynical smart@ss (which I am, too, but I don't always mean to sound that way in a conversation ). If someone were talking to me IRL, they could rely on other clues to determine my state of mind, such as body language and facial expressions, but online, we are cut off from any other actual physical factors possessed by the other players.

I've seen females with breathier or high voices teased or asked to perform phone sex or some other similarly insulting thing. And, as has been mentioned, males with squeaky voices can bear the brunt of teasing. I've never seen anyone with an accent made fun of, but I think given our regional speech patterns in the US, most people don't really care about that.

I have used voice chat very effectively to give help with Photoshop, it saved me a lot of time not having to type all the instructions in and clarify everything. Also, it would be nice to have certain events, such as the talk by Cory Doctorow a few weeks back, broadcast in voice chat.

I LOVE voice chat under certain circumstances. Under other circumstances, I HATE it. I'm really middle of the road on this subject.

Ok i dont see how the argument (and sorry to pick on you here Beryl):

"If someone were talking to me IRL, they could rely on other clues to determine my state of mind, such as body language and facial expressions, but online, we are cut off from any other actual physical factors possessed by the other players."

Flies even with the people using it. You have LESS to go on with text than you do with voice, its more imput for understanding what is being expressed. You can garner MORE based on how they say things, the words that they stress. If you make this argument about voice you must must realize it is just as relevent to text.

Crowd control IS an issue and I think that the detractors here are not giving LL enough credit. They work hard to give us the tools to both express and protect ourselves. We have to help them but they do what they can without limiting us much. Give them a chance.


And finaly, for those who simply dont want to participate because they dont want their voice heard. THEN DONT - But Quit bloody trying to stop the rest of us from advancing beyond the masks that YOU hide behind.

People talk about events like trivia, but there are events that would benefit from voice chat immensely..they are called games. Jetball, for instance, benefits enormously from voice. Try stopping and chatting "pass the ball to me. I'm open" in the middle of game play. You wont't be open by the time you finish typing.

While building and socialzing do not require faster than text typing, there are some activities like combat and game play that are much easier under voice conditions.

Now the interesting thing to consider. Would wisespread voice ability encourage faster-paced activities such as, team sports, organized combat?

I love this point. Im not a very outgoing person IRL, and am very selfconcious about my voice (dunno why). Even in chat, sometimes I can not say anything for awhile; sifting through the conversation in Chat History more then actually chatting. I believe voice chat would wipe my freedom to add my own opinion.


Yes, LL loves making things to protect us *and* things that we like, but I truely wouldnt like any implimentation of this... it puts a huge wall between the players who dont want to voice chat (or even listen to it) and those who do.

Evolve D@#$ it! ><

I have to concur with Beryl's very well written post. I have always been kind of on the fence about voice chat myself. With close friends, it is something I love - but in general in an online game, I am not a huge fan of it. It can be very disruptive, changes the feel of a game, and creates a divide between those who voice chat and those who do not.

That said, I would still like to see it as an option, perhaps in conjunction with the chat group feature to keep the range as narrow as possible. Voice chatting can add a lot to the experience - it has brought out the personalities of so many of my online friends in ways that could never be conveyed through text. I hope at some point this feature does get implemented - I would hate to see it left out altogether because a few people are opposed to the idea for various reasons.

Some years back, I used to use MPlayer.com. They had an excellent push-to-talk voice chat system. I saw a serious rift develop between the voice-enabled users and non-voice-enabled users, however. Most chat rooms would be labelled "Voice Only!", and typists would be booted.

Non-voice chatters were treated with suspicion: Was this person underage? Was "Jennifer" actually a 500 pound trucker named "Turk"? And "A/S/L?" had to be answered with voice, NOT keyboard, or you got the boot.

Other problems have been raised in earlier posts to this thread:

* Accessibility: voice chat assumes that you can hear or can use your voice. Keyboard levels the playing field.

* Discrimination: will people discriminate against people based on pitch of voice, accent, language?

* Hardware: not everyone has a mic or wants to buy one. Not everyone wants to buy a new sound card or can even install one, if they did.

* Bandwidth: SL is already pushing the limits of bandwidth. Why waste it on inane prattle. Typing "LOL" takes a lot less bandwidth than sending several k that amounts to the same thing, but with the swear words attached.

ON THE OTHER HAND, with voice chat, no one would have to read AOL text-speak.

I totally agree.

Positive: (Arguably..) Improved interaction, less typing, ___(fill in blank, i cant really think of anything else?)

Negative: Increased bandwidth usage, discrimination possibillities, difficulty in implementation, *already third party programs which do it much better than an in-game system could do it, ease of abuse- intentional and non intentional, ADDED LAG (i think we can all agree that we dont need the added lag..)

..imho

And why shouldnt they? A simple mic costs as little as 5-10 bucks. Most ONBOARD (motherboard) soundsystems support this easily.

From: someone

Other problems have been raised in earlier posts to this thread:

* Accessibility: voice chat assumes that you can hear or can use your voice. Keyboard levels the playing field.

As deragatory as this may sound. I will not use sign language and a wheel chair because others have to. It is unfair to limit the masses for the problems of the few, better to help to elevate the few as best as possible.

From: someone

* Discrimination: will people discriminate against people based on pitch of voice, accent, language?

Only the same people who discriminate for a hoast of other reasons already. Haven't we all been praising SL for its above par maturity / acceptance level? Did such comments mean nothing?

From: someone

* Hardware: not everyone has a mic or wants to buy one. Not everyone wants to buy a new sound card or can even install one, if they did.

Again $5 and I can help ANYONE install a mic, I've been doing it for years.

From: someone

* Bandwidth: SL is already pushing the limits of bandwidth. Why waste it on inane prattle. Typing "LOL" takes a lot less bandwidth than sending several k that amounts to the same thing, but with the swear words attached.

Voice dosnt use near as much bandwith as you might suspect and I'm pretty sure that the voice servers would be seperate. We are all on Broadband here like we are supposed to be right?

From: someone

ON THE OTHER HAND, with voice chat, no one would have to read AOL text-speak.

Vv]-[@+ D0 j00 ]v[3@n?
[Translation: What do you mean?]