Is Voice Chat the end of Role Play in SL?

Uhmm any else confused. Roleplaying is frowned upon as childish, but SL , although only a game (in your opinion) is ok.

You ever do any practice interviews for jobs?
That's role playing.

mmkay, well. I've tried voicechat now, and I actually really enjoyed it. Considering the only people I saw were a couple of furries in lusk talking about doing shrooms...

I don't think it's going to ruin roleplaying at all. roleplay specific sims can be non-voice enabled, people can turn it off, and just stay away from it. I think it might ruin some things, the sex market, for instance... But probably not as bad as some people think.

In the end I thought it was pretty cool. Not perfect, but what ever is. I liked how when my avatar was facing away from the speaker it muffled them, or if they were standing at my side it seemed like I was only hearing it out of one ear, or at a distance as if they were really far away as they are.

Heck, in some creative roleplaying settings with people who are interested in voice, it could actually be a really cool feature to have.

i agree entirely... some of the best fun i have had in SL has been when i also have Skype either one to one, or in a small conference.. but i would not want Sound on SL to become so universal that those who didnt use sound would seem handicapped... and it would kill roleplay if people heard over-60's smokers cough from avatars that look 21... i like the bird and water sounds in SL... and the music is an option too...
===danxie merlin

There's always an individual option to turn it off.

A sim can have it disabled, but more than that, so can -individuals.- One thing I do kinda wish they'd do is make a voicechat IM. A way you can privately voicechat with one person specifically, which I would enjoy.

From the start of the article here:
http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/commentary/games/2007/06/games_frontiers_0617


"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 ... After an hour of this, we all politely logged off and never hooked up again."


...and this...


"Yet here's the thing: You can't deny that voice chat can bring a huge amount of positive social good, too. Dmitri Williams, a communications professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, did a study of World of Warcraft players for one month. The results? Those who used text-only chat experienced "drops in trust and happiness" amongst their fellow players; those who used voice chat did not.The fatter emotional signal of voice apparently helps cement online relationships. Indeed, some guilds won't even let you participate anymore unless you use voice chat, because text-only chat seems shifty."

Hmmm. I read a lot of this thread ... but not all (it is very long)... but I am wondering if Linden Labs is willing to consider advancing VOICE to include FREQUENCY and TIMBRE options so that a woman can have a deep, rumbling voice and a man can have a thin and high pitched sounding voice, or anything in between.

The rest is voice characterization - using dialect, accent, intonation and stress into their roleplay to be who they want to be. I would hope that Linden Labs will consider extending state of the art digital processing on the Client application to allow voice changing. This could go a long way to extending Voice into the same realm as Chat and IM do in the current game functionality.

I have several female friends in SL who are First Life males; I know their FL genders, but I would like to continue to know them as their female counterparts with female voices. And I am sure that there are many First Life Females who also enjoy playing SL males. Why should we give up the illusions that can be destroyed by SL technological advancement when continue technological advancements can enhance the illusions many work so hard to create?

If it ended all roleplay in SL, it wouldn't ruin much.

Well, a lot of Goreans would get screwed. And the four other sims that have actual roleplay could just not have voice.

II

"Role Play" in SL is more than just furries and Goreans... Role play in SL is best illustrated in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6D9K9xTmt0

There are so few avenues for people to be able to step outside the boundaries of the life they live in, and for some SL provides a route for people to be who they want to be, and not be limited to their caste.

...this is really a pointless discussion... enjoy it while it still lasts eh?

You obviously don't know a very diverse group of roleplayers, or you have a very limited definition of what "roleplaying" means. There are far more of us than you might imagine.

Guess it is like being gay. If you're straight, and never associate with Gay or Bi people or talk about sexual oriantation with your friends, the gay population likely seems to be a very small minority. But if you're gay or bisexual, it may seem like everyone you know or hang out with is also Gay or Bi.

"Roleplaying" has many meanings.

It may be a strict scenario, limited to specific sims or parcels. The Gorean sims are an example of that, and so is Midian City, with its cops and robbers theme, or the Isle of Nepenthe, with its Vampire the Requiem theme. You accept a role and play your part when interacting with the other players, like an actor in a play. Breaking character in an RP is like an actor on stage suddenly walking into the audiance and asking to bum a cigarette. It completely breaks the mood.

Yet it can also be much like World of Warcraft, or Dungeons and Dragons, where the characters are more like playing pieces in a tabletop RPG, being pushed around by a group of Human game players. You know it's just your Human pals, and it doesn't matter if the sexy lady Paladin is actually being played by a 18 year old boy.

It can be "high personna play", where you never break character and admit you are anything other than the character that you are representing, and don't even acknowledge that the person at the keyboard exists. That doesn't have to be restricted to ANY location, it's just how the avatar presents himself or herself.

But it is also ANY person, in groups or on their own, who develops a character and plays that character "in personna". Almost all Furries roleplay that they are anthro animals. Any non-Human is roleplaying that they are a dragon, or an elf, or a robot, or an alien Jedi Knight. Perhaps you may admit that your Player is really a college guy in Kansas. But while interacting, you at least try to be an anthro wolf.

*Any* person who tries to believably portray a gender or race that is not identical to their Player is roleplaying. There are more guys roleplaying as girls in SL than there probably are real girls involved in SL at all.

If you are not representing yourself as a carbon-copy clone of your real self when you are in SL, then you're doing roleplaying. You're pretending you're prettier or more handsome, or not overweight, or older, or younger, or...

Get the point?

In SL, you can be anything you can imagine. And many of us take a chance and do just that.

Keyboard? What keyboard?

Ok, I'm not quiet that bad, but I suppose I am of thise type myself. Sorta. There's more to it than a character, a player, and an interface.

On Second Life I can be who I AM, not who people think I am. Yes, in meat space my body is human, goes to college, and does human things. Not my mind, oh no, not my mind. My mind is something else. Something draconic.

So while yes I am "in character" all the time, I am aware of the real world.

How people such as myself (Otherkin, reincarnated "something elses," non-human entities with human host bodies, etc) refer to the real world differs. I persoanally move between the "illusion" of my dragon-self and the "reality" of my human-self freely (ex: this post). Others use "my typist" indicating the being at the keyboard is only there to do the physical work. Others say "host," "controller," "the human."


But then, is it really role playing, or just a manifestation of one's spiritual beliefs?

Personally, I don't think that voice chat will ruin the adult industry. I believe voice chat will find wide use in the escort services combined with text based RP retaining a considerable following. In fact, it already is pretty big. Reason is that escorts in my experience to a considerable extent in fact ARE real women.

The popular notion that 95 percent of all escorts in SL are 50 year old male overweight "florists from Kalamazoo" (liked that one!) is likely a false myth, probably based upon a skewed conception of female sensuality prevalent in politically correct and crypto-feminist contemporary social discourse.

In other words, if LL planned voice chat as a means to eradicate the filth in SL, they are about to become disappointed.

I think you are right about the vast overestimate of the number of women who are played by men rumor.

I think voice chat will probably eliminate more housewives who are playing escorts than gender bending men.

As you have said there are a lot of Escorts who already have higher priced Skype and Webcam services (and even a couple RL escorts Ive heard about )

However, there might be quite a few who DO leave the biz, they wont want to Escort anymore becuase the customers are such cheap skates - and dont want to voice for their old text rates.

I know a few cyberprostitutes who use skype already..and charge more..some even do webcam. I don't think voice will do alot to discourage the adult industry as the prostitutes who leave and clients who leave will simply be replaced by new inflow.

Very true. I have seen some of this on the BETA even. That's why you can mute an individual's voice.

You missed my point.

My point is based on how cheap some of the customers are.

I think a lot of the men who only pay the lower rates wont want to pay higher rates for voice, and thus some women will quit - not wanting to literally do phone sex for such a low rate.

It seems just logical that some men will want voice for the text rate now that voice is universal.

I dont think it will damage the idustry - just cut out some of the lower end of it.

So the woman doesn't enable voice. It just means now they have an easily accessible step up to voice that they can charge more for. Nothing says they have to.

*laughs*

okay , no one is getting my point.

Ill try to explain how this works -


There are generally 3 kind of clients -

1 -Those who dont mind spending a lot of money

2 -Those who are willing to spend what they need to get what they are after.

3 -Those who want to spend as little as possible - and get as much as they can get, not caring what that means for the escort.

Compare those motivations to the fact that there is a huge over-supply problem on Escorts in Second Life- AND there is already a phone sex industry outside of Second Life with established rates, etc.

So basically you end up with a lot of part time escorts who arent making much money - who do it for just a little shopping mad money -

And universal voice is going to up the beggy whiney factor from the #3 catagory of guys up a couple of notches - its simply NOT going to be worth it for many.

It will also make escorting more annoying for some newer girls - for the same reason. And thus give them another reason to give up the biz, which already has a massive turnover rate.

Im not really for or against this part of voice related change - im just saying , I think there will be a noticable reduction in the number of women who are escorting becuase of it.

I still think the biggest dent will be housewives who wont want to voice becuase of kids or husbands hearing what they are up to.

And of course the hit from the gender pretenders quiting. I was just agreeing with that earlier poster that theres not as many as Myth would indicate.

Its actually not a bad thing - necessarily - since the supply is too large anyhow, it could use a reduction. Assuming the demand doesnt go down, it might help those ladies who stay in the biz.

Ah, got it. Not that I'd know. Sure, I pixel-sex, but I tend to go after the people who are willing to do it for free.

No, I'm not a cheapskate. I just don't go after prostitutes, I grind with the people who want to have sex with me because I am me, not because I have money.

Having sex with people who want to becuase thats what you prefer isnt being cheap.

Paying to have sex with people and trying to be a weasel about it - thats being a cheapskate.

Exactly, I was just being overly clear about it.

It irritates me beyond belief that anyone would ask for money for virtual sex OR that anyone would be stupid enough to pay for it! Of course, there's a very real need for exactly that in First Life, where I happen to think it serves an important social function, but it saddens me that so many people want to recreate the RL dystopia in SL.

Now don't misunderstand me - I'm not against virtual sex - I happen to love it! But it should be free people, free - you either do it because you want to, or you don't touch it with a long stick. *sighs* I guess I'm just a role-player from way back, and my naive expectation when I came into SL was that residents would want to create a truly alternative environment where they could push boundaries and be who/whatever they wanted to be, without getting hung up on RL asl, copycat RL social mores and the like.

More broadly, as far as voice goes, it seems to me like a push to turn the place into a giant chat room. There goes my alternative reality...

I would think not all "Escorts" are strictly looking for profit. I'd imagine some are using it as just another type of RP and the exchange of funds ae part of it. If voice chat distresses you, take a Sci Fi outlook on it. Consider texting to be an advanced form of communication, telepathy of a sort. And accept that certain Primitive Societies still use verbal communication as they haven't evolved past it yet........

Phone sex is no more real than SL sex (if anything it's less real) and that costs tens (if not hundreds) times more.

Some of the reasons behing virtual prostitution are the same as RL prostitution.

Specifially the old adage - "You dont pay a hooker for sex, you pay her to leave afterwards"

Theres a lot of men who dont want the entanglement involved with any sort of SL relationship. Or dont wish to be cold and cyber with a woman with no intention of never calling her again.

Besides the fact that girlfriends can end up costing a lot more than professionals .