Unified voice chat on the grid - what do you think?

I feel like the poll is missing an option: I'll talk and listen to close friends who are comfortable with it, but I will not talk or listen to others.

I often run SL with my computer muted anyway -- I find most ambient sounds annoying after the first time through, and I HATE random unexpected noises.

I don't think this feature is stoppable; it's a technological imperative, something the world will have to cope with. I do think it's going to have divisive social effects that will be bad for many many people. I personally will be keeping my land quiet. I hope a lot of other people will too.

And it is noisy at 2am for those sleeping in the house too

Yes I never did like their earlier albums

I will not use it, and I will disable it on any parcel that I control, especially as there seems there will be an added cost to the land owner for allowing this unnecessary service.

Personal: Destroys roleplay value. I'm a good actress, but there is no way I can do appropriate voices for all of my logins. I play both genders. Voice chat will ruin the presentation of my characters as unique individuals.

Social: Strips away a layer of isolation between what your Player is and how you present yourself in SL. I do NOT want audible confirmation of the actual gender of the people I roleplay with. I figure a large percentage of the "females" in SL are really males. If someone does a good job of presenting themselves as the opposite gender in text, why destroy that by use of a voice feature that shows it clearly to be a lie? It's like telling an actor that they can't use an accent when portraying a character of a nationality other than that of their own birth, only worse...

Social: This will be disruptive when someone who thinks Voice is great attempts to talk to someone who thinks it is worthless.

Technical: My system is marginal at best for SL, and I usually have sound disabled, for performance reasons, so I won't hear you anyway.

Financial: I don't want it and am not willing, as a land owner, to pay for something I refuse to use.

To everyone who complain about potential lack of anonymity and/or splitting of communities into ‘typers’ and ‘talkers’:

VOICE CAN BE ALTERED VERY EASILY. I’M SURE SL WILL INTEGRATE SOME SORT OF VOICE ALTERING MECHANISM FOR THOSE WISHING TO REMAIN ANONYMOUS.

You can sound like a woman even if you’re a man or viceversa. You can sound older, younger, stronger, weaker, weirder whatever.

For god sake stop complaining and enjoy it.

If you don’t wanna use it, nobody’s gonna force you into it.

If this feature really is "necessary" -

if its going to be on the mainland and higher priced islands - it should be on all of them.

It completely unfair to those who are paying the $195/mo price they agreed to to be shut out of a new feature any first land owner gets for $9.95.

If it were Just the $295/mo islands I could see it being exclusionary.

See my earlier post about how a dragon sounds to me won't be what a dragon sounds to other people, I don't know how to alter a voice to be "dragony" and I don't know what my dragon voice sounds like.



I **** I will.



Yes they will. I'll put down half the money I have in SL down on a bet that if this becomes widely available for use that I will encounter more "VIOP plz?" messages than I'll know what to do with.
I'm already not using voice chat in two situations and have no intention of ever using it, one of those I've been with for about a year and I am STILL not comfortable with it.

God, I hate ignorant humans.

As a 3 year resident of SL, I've seen it go through a LOT of phases, some good, some horrid!! What I see of late is more disturbing than reassuring.

If I want to enable voice on my island, then I will be forced to pay an additional $100 US a MONTH????

WHAT?!

Has Linden Labs completely Lost their ever loving????

My 'prophecy' of the future is bleak for the little guy in SL. Instead of charging the "Land Owners" Once Again for the "price" of technological advances, Quit the Free Ride!

Ya'll do realize that we are PAYING to continue the beta test of this "Platform" right? I've been on other MMOPG's online and beta tested several, guess what? I didn't PAY them to beta test for them!

I don't make my RL living from SL, I make enough to pay for my play time on SL. I know of several residents who use SL to fund RL. My hats off to you!! and I sincerely wish you the very best of luck, but based on what I've seen of this "Platform" these past years, I wouldn't want to rely on it too strongly!!

How many of you have said, "Where are the bug fixes?" over and over and over... and yet still new features are introduced, instead. Again. and Again. and Again.

Consistently we've been removed from the "loop", first the forums were "revamped" then we got the blog, then the blog was "censored", then more and more of the Forum has been
censored or removed entirely.

I want to do is come to SL, create and provide the services that I do and enjoy the features that still work and that I enjoy about it. Mostly I just want the grab for my wallet to quit!!

**stepping off my lil soap box** I don't surf the forums very often, what's left of them.

I voted "no"

Actually,I wanted to vote on "hell no!" option.I have played a MMORPG for about 5years.We had to react as fast as we could in PvP situation(Person versus Person)So every player in the game started to use VC(named Ventrilo)It brought serious in-game community dividing.No cooperation,no collaboration between groups.(even they speak same language!)

And a month passed in Second Life,I learned various things,and had very good neighbors,friends from all over the world.I enjoyed great time so far.Then that NIGHTMARE again!?Come on,I cant believe it! English is not my 1st language,so text-chat is a good communication tool for me at this moment.

People who want to use VC,they can.Ventrilo,TeamSpeak2 available for free. And I respect people to use it.Its ok.But Linden should NOT implement VC in SL officially."language barrier" will make gigantic walls like "huge prim" between every community.Destruction of community brings mass-exodus(like MMORPG I have played,and I am a witness!)

This gonna be a bad decision.

Sthenno Kurosawa

Ugh. There are SO many reasons not to like this.

It simply will not work to have some people typing and other talking. It will fracture communications.

Eventually, people who choose not to talk, or can't talk because of language barriers or disabilities, or even who, like me, don't want people to hear our voices because it serves as an indicator of our RL identities, will be marginalized.

And who wants to walk into a busy club and not be able to hear themselves think because of the chaotic mixing of a multitude of voices? If I wanted that, I'd go to the bar in RL.

Moreover, if someone is griefing you in voice chat, how do you abuse report it? Is there going to be a recording of everything said so the Lindens can go back and verify it?

To be fair, they only said there would be an extra charge for grandfathered island pricing - not that the extra charge would be the full US$100 difference.

No, it can't.No, they won't.

But I am a radical, freaky anti-socialite worthy of suspicion.

I'll really miss being able to pass as 'normal' here.

It makes sense from the coporate and education viewpoint.

I doubt LL could do anything else.

I'm so visual I think in pictures - requiring translation to words which is ok for text but in voice (blechhh) is just "Ummmm... er....uh.... um..." I had a project I was part of in 2005 that required Ventrilo meetings. I hated it.

What I'd hate to see would be people who don't want to use voice becoming some sort of social outcasts or second class citizens. There are a lot of reasons people wouldn't want to do that, mainly role-playing-related. I think it's basically a bad idea.

There was discussion of voice altering technology in the article I read announcing the feature, actually. The summary is, no it can't be altered easily. The Linden that was quoted said basically it's possible to make you sound like "Darth Vader with a head cold" but that's about it. However, he did express Linden's interest in the technology in the future, assuming it becomes usable.

It's excellent. More options = more choices, more freedom.

I won't use it, frankly. But the fact that I won't use it shouldn't keep others from doing so. Good for them, go for it!

We'll see that communities of people develop who are almost entirely voice, and others that are almost entirely text. This will be little different from communities that assemble based on any other factor, such as desire to role play, or languages spoken. Another form of diversity. Like any form of diversity, yes, there will be discrimination. But inability to do voice is the ultimate discrimination: folks who can't type can't interact much at all in SL. It would be best to remove this programmatic discrimination, and put up with occasional social discrimination.

BTW, the term 'discrimination' tends to have a negative connotation, but all discrimination isn't unethical or inappropriate. We associate with people who interest us in any number of ways. This is discrimination. We also refuse to associate with people who exhibit certain characteristics -- for example, I tend to ignore/avoid rude people and people who shout a lot. Well, I reserve the right to avoid people I don't want to interact with for these reasons. I'll also tend not to associate with people who won't read my chat. Socially, this is fine. In business, it's less so (IMHO), but businesses who ignore a customer base will suffer as a result, so that will tend to police itself.

Actually I've done it before. Wasn't perfect though.

This will happen. It's inevitable. :/ And i will be one of those people.

I will be too Yiffy. I have too many avs to do convincing voices, including a female av. Now I might mention that I am a guy on that profiles front page, but I still wont do voice chat..ruin the immersion in the character and role.

I don't think a mass exodus will occure, but like in RL voice will create nationalistic communities, due to language barriers, and as I am getting a degree in geography/social studies, observing the impact on the virtual geography that the arrival of voice will bring will be an extra bonus for me.

Oota goota, Solo? Soam petalay, e-malai tran tetakma geegh-keetna. Jabba waneechi chokka a noo-ee shahni trai-tranai wanya rooska. Heh heh heh.

Has Linden Labs done any serious inspection of SL's demographics? I recently 'came out' in SL as transgender, and have subsequently been surprised that 12 out of 36 'females' in my friends list have admitted to being guys in real life. I would not be shocked if roughly half the girls in SL are guys in RL. Is Linden Labs prepared to lose them over this half-baked scheme?

(warning- very unscientific statistic) - I remember before there were unverified accounts, The Lindens posted a number stating that 40% of the players had registered as female on the real life registration info.

Although im sure some gender benders who are male irl chose the female pick also- that number is the only one that they could go on.

What proportion of the "logged in in the last 30 days" are female avs with male players is also anyone's guess.

I have known a lot of people who gender pretend on Second Life - many come from MMO settings where they also gender pretended, meaning some cliques might have a higher percentage of gender benders than others - any freinds list sampling is kinda depending on who your freinds are.

Ive always felt that the paranoia over gender bending has inflated the supposed percentages people threw around. The concept that half the women are men irl is a rumor thats lasted forever.

Ive had lovers confess to me after a long time being together that they are men irl. While I personally hated being lied to about it - It doesnt mean no one should play the opposite gender. It just means they shouldnt date people who care about RL gender. (or else come out)

As your post says we all know its common for men to play on female Avs.

How common is debatable. But its a sizable chunk of the SL population.

Will there be voice chat in the teen grid?

If so maybe my daughter would finally take an interest in SL as a place to speak Japanese.