Voice Chat, good or bad move ?

Exactly. That makes me doubtful as well.

Most of the time, I won't use it. I think there are so many practical and logical reasons for people not to use voice that reasonable folks will simply add this as a new type of diversity in SL. Sure, someone may be hiding one’s gender, but also one might be listening to the TV or streaming music, or talking on the telephone, or not able to speak, or has trouble with a speech impediment, or isn't assertive enough to jump into a group conversation, or doesn't speak the language but can type it, or doesn't want to wake up someone else in the house/room/office or let someone else in the house know one is whispering sweet nothings in some stranger’s AV ear. And (IMHO) if others are so concerned with "Why aren't you talking?", they aren’t worth your time. Plus, I like the mystery it generates: "My friend says Rocky Rutabaga is really Brad Pitt."

I probably won't use it much with small groups or even one-on-one. Mostly because I don't want to disturb the other members of my home, and I get lots of phone calls.

In a large club with music blaring, typing is terrific. I know sign language and used to sign at loud RL clubs or concerts with friends, so I will continue typing in clubs and just mute anyone else who is gabbing, "Woo-ing" or "Howlzzz-ing" (which I do now.)

And no matter what, private and group IMs will NEVER go out of fashion.

However, I can see some growth opportunities for me and others.

I would try to learn scripting again if the teachers used voice. It was so slow and painful (well, I was slow and painfully dense) and when I started asking questions combined with chat lag, who knew who was on first?

I would also try learning other languages, like Japanese! The teacher could show the characters onscreen and type the word phonetically. I could say it and they could correct me. I would pay the RL going rate for a class, too. To be able to take a class like that at home would be phenomenal! I’m guessing that’s why so many universities are pouring into Second Life. Night school was never like this.

Team sports will be much more fun now with voice chat. It’s hard to shout encouragement, directions, or even trash talk while one’s hands are busy navigating the AV around a field. /Me starts dusting off his Sloccer game script.

It's going to add new business and educational opportunities all over SL. I think the fantasy folks will continue with type or used "altered" voice technologies. (Which if I knew how to do, I'd be all over it now.)

Exactly. I've been experimentally writing a newbie help notecard for how SL will be when all of these changes and perception alterations go through, and, well... it isn't something I'd want to see as a newbie, but if it's what SL has become by then, I can hardly lie to them. At the moment it ends with:



... Can anyone come up with a better answer than that, that would fit into a world with standardised voice, age verification, etc

I thought about this some more -

I predict a huge number of Angelina Jolie's and Justin Timberlake's.

And some nasty lawsuits/ARs/DMCAs as a result: celebrities can copyright/trademark their appearances.

Tis a Horrible idea that was popular in the 90's

There had better be a Mute, but then people will be mix and match chatting which will drive me up the walls.

There are plenty of Glitches and this is going to cause many conflicts (especially if you have any other programs running at the same time).


If I wanted to go shopping and hear people chatter, carry on coversations, and occasionally have some jerk rush up to me with an Air Horn, I'd be in Real Life, not Second Life.

BTW,.. be prepared to have your hearing blasted suddenly from time to time. And have to strain to hear through annoying sounds someone purposely makes on their mic to suddenly muffle conversation.

Why would people with accents be uncomfortabel using it? I am damn proud of my drawl, I have even had yankees to ask me to talk so that they could hear a Southern accent.

This goes with my experience. I tried out the beta grid a few days back, and there were a group of residents standing there silent, not typing, not moving, not doing anything. I tried typing to them, and someone said Hi, but nothing more. It was only a moment later that I realised they must be voicing.

So I went into preferences and turned on voice. Now, something nasty about this. In the present beta version (I bug reported this so it might be changed): when you turn on voice, "click-to-talk" is OFF by default. In other words, it's not "click-to-talk", it's "always talk". In other words, you might have turned on voice just to listen, but in practice the moment you hit OK on Preferences, any microphone or other attached recording device you have goes live and starts transmitting. I don't have a microphone myself so this wasn't a problem, but it seemed nasty. Oh, and there wasn't even an option to monitor transmission, or to choose the device that was recorded from. So any folks planning to use voice changers may have a problem - there seems to be no way to tell SL to use the voice changer output, and you can never know that it's using it instead of the mic directly.

The perception of the people in the world changed. The avatars were no longer characters but representations of real world people. My impressions of the people there became based on their voices, not their avatars. (Not surprising, since the human brain is pretty much programmed to communicate with other real humans.)

With only typing, I couldn't join in - not just because it would break up their voice conversation, but also because by the time I'd finished typing my response to something, at least 2 or 3 people would already have spoken theirs, and what I was saying was obsolete.

So yes, there will be voicism, and it will create social barriers, and unfortunately people who complain about it will be treated in the same way that people who complain about social exclusion are normally treated: told it is their own fault, then excluded more for being a complainer.

Yep -
This is true and if you have the conversation with normal residents , not the supposedly enlightened Image concious Forums Poster - you will see the voicism has already begun.

Bad !!!

This is one aspect that I really dislike about the whole voice thing. Like you Yumi, when I used voice, it suddenly became just another phone conversation. I totally forgot about my in-world presence and began talking to people as if I was on the phone.

With the advent of voice, SL has lost a lot of its magic to me. It has lost a lot of it's "get-away" fantasy appeal. I enjoyed much more being able to look at a persons avatar and formulating in my mind how they should sound, and who they were, according to how they looked and carried themselves. It was fun. Voice creates a sense of detachment from our in-world presence. It makes it transparently clear that our avatar is just a cartoon on a screen, with a real person on a mic on the other end. It loses any sense of immersion which is really boring.

The really sad thing about all of this is that it really wasn't necessary. Ventrilo, Skype etc., worked perfectly fine for those who wanted to talk, and we were all accustomed to text chat as a default so there was no alienation or devisiveness on the grid. Everyone was comfortable with SL as it was, and SL was flourishing. I fear that with voice, there will now be a lot of alienation and devisiveness ... and noise. Lot's of noise lol.

I really don't think LL had the best interest in mind of the large majority of their customer base when they thought this over. It seems as if they disregarded the concerns of the large majority of their customer base for the influential minority who wanted it. I hope I'm wrong about this, but if this is so, that is really sad

After being in their a few times i say BAD. Not because of the anti voice feelings people have. But the over all quility and junk that is happening doing voice chat backround! If i want that much noise.......never mind

Most people won't use (this has been my experiance with other games), and those who do will just become another minority on the grid. Those who like it will use and those who don't won't. Most people are on SL as an escape from RL, not to be an extention of it.

Yes but there are still problems with Voice in game/environment. First you are not face to face, so there is no chance of being able to percieve when someone will speak. Second is lag, this can cause one persons voice to inadvertly overlap anothers. I use Vent on a nearly dayly basis with my Guild Wars guild, these things are still a problem even when propper ediquit is observed.

Also there is the problem of separate groups having separate conversations. The voice of these groups would have to be separated some how, be it via distance or "channels" otherwise people would have to try and mediate two converstaions over the same voice channel. Again from my experiances using Vent this can be tricky and even more so when more people are involved.

Again, I do not see voice replacing typed text as the main form of mass communication. There are may factors and herdles that have to be looked at before I see SL as a place where everyone, or most everyone can use voice chat as their main form of communication. At current if I wanted to have a live voice chat with some one I would invite them onto our Vent server, we could then chat with the rest of the guild, or chat in a private channel on the server. BTW, I usually run my Vent in the background to chat with my guild that may be spread across several games while I am on SL.

To expand on this: The current setup is bad, and I'm hoping since this is the beta that changes will be made. IF you want to keep up with what is going on and be able to tell who is voicing, you must have voice enabled, if you don't you can't see the voice icons. However, if you have it enabled, it enables the speaker orb over your av's head even if your speakers are turned off. So people are talking to you, and you can't hear them.

I've been asked several times why I have it turned on if I'm not going to use it. Well, if I don't I can't even tell who is talking.

Really though, for the most part it's a bunch of people standing around, in silence.

I think that typed chat will be the default not voice. Afterall this is a game not a RL. At least the Lindens should change the default to off not on. See new feature proposal #3267.

I think for a classroom the voice chat will be quite nice. However there have been many times where I had to run off and then come back and read everything in the chat history. I suppose with voice the instructor would be able to get through lessons faster and the whole class aspect would be more intuitive.

As far as general conversation goes I really wouldn't want to have to talk to everyone I meet. In crowded places I usually have my sound off because of all the idiotic sound bytes and music. How much more unpleasant will that experience be?

Right now we are inside the virtual box. We think and act like we are people sitting inside a virtual world. With voice we are people sitting outside the virtual box and moving little avatars around while we talk to each other sitting outside that box. Immersion will be gone.

In SL you can change every aspect of your virtual form but we cannot change our voice? I would love to see a giant elephant walk up to me and when he talks his voice is booming and low like an elephant. At least how I imagine an elephant would sound if they talked. I would like to see a little rabbit walk up and talk like a cartoon character. I'd like to see a voluptuous vixen or a studly man walk up to me and sound like they look. That's what we'd need. That's what would fit SL better than just plain voice.

Yeah, scared of change. Let's check back a year after it's been in effect to see what people's opinions are after actually having a chance to check it out.

Bottom line: it's optional. If you own land you can disable this option if you feel it takes away from the atmosphere. If it doesn't default "off" then you can go into preferences and turn it off...just like streaming media.

This is mostly going to be for all the people that use Skype with SL only adding an SL twist to it.

It's okay, everybody. We'll get through this together!!

I had the same experience the few times I forced myself to go try the beta. The avies are no longer entities in their own right, but merely useless puppets that stand around idly while voice becomes the primary focus. It just wasn't fun for me.

The conversation bothered me as well because most of it centered on real life. Where was I from, what did I do for work, how old, what's the weather like, etc. Nothing outrageous, but if asked in-world I'd either decline to answer or give a vague answer if any random person I'd never met before would ask me that. However, it just felt too weird to actually *say* that, so I just answered, which made me feel quite uneasy. At the same time, attempts to talk about Second Life made me feel quite silly as well, because *talking* about what my avie does/did in-world is just, iono, surreal to me.

That's really aside from the fact that while I think I do pretty well with written English, I don't ever really *speak* a word of English in real life so I definitely struggle with accents and people who speak too quickly or not clearly enough, and while I don't think my pronunciation is that awful, it's definitely more of an effort to instantly voice thoughts in English and I do fall over my own words (which would probably improve with time I guess).

As far as the division: think of the number of residents a year back compared to now. It's getting increasingly rare for me to meet someone who has been around longer than me. A year from now the same will be true, and all those new residents have no knowledge of an SL without voice; they'll be the majority and will not understand why you wouldn't use it. I'll be surprised if there is anyone on the grid who doesn't use voice at all a year from now, it's an unsustainable "choice" in the long run.

Much more. Go check it out, there are tons of background noises, annoying buzzings, people with loud music, etc. The mute function isn't all that handy either since it's hard to figure out which av is the problem, and once you do mute that person you still get the echo through other av's mics.

Sigh.

I won't be using it and I am female in real life.

It's intrusive and as I am hard of hearing it would make it difficult. LL I guess will forge ahead, it always does, even when it changes things that we don't like.

Someone mentioned using voice whilst having sex (not that I do in SL) and I can see why that would not be good.

This is being implemented to benefit the same group EVERY thing in SL geared to now. They of the fat wallets. It's a useful feature for those that need it. I don't mind that, sometimetimes the needs of the few CAN outweight the needs of the many(with apologies to Kirk and Spock).
You and Yumi point out a great reason why I am not interested. Everyone I meet in world has given me a mental picture of their voice. I dare say most of them wren't going to be true to that vision. I've met furries, dragons, nekos, vampires, not housewives, truckdrivers, teens, or those with "something to hide". (God how I hate that term.)
If I meet an Irishman or a Scot I envision the appropriate brogue, or the prescision of a German accent, or to be ignored by a Frenchman.. (sorry, couldn't resist) I came here for escapism. Also I tend to move around the house while using SL, doung other things. I miss a text comment..I just look at the history to catch up. That's why I won't be using it.
It's a valuable tool..for some. Enjoy it. Don't be suspiscious of thosr that won't use it.For those that won't. Don't be bullied into any sort of inferiority status. You aren't hiding anything. As others have said it will be moot anyway, with voice changing softwear.

Its more than a bad mode, its a totally stupid move. Will it enhance my SL experience? No. If I want to talk to someoneI will use the phone or skype. Will it worsen my SL experience? Probably. I think it will be annoying, distracting and ruin much of the illusion of SL. I wil probably give it a try and may even use it in certain situations IF it is at all workable.

Potentially, it has the possibility of being the worst decision since the brilliant open the flood gates for free accounts idea last year. The warnings went unheeded and LOOK where we are now with the age verification/child porn controversy.

Some at LL seem hell bent on ruining everything that makes SL worth saving. Why?

It's hard to see the virtual forest for the pixilated trees. Especially with dollar signs in your eyes.

IT honestly seems as if they are DEAD SET on ruining a beautiful and wonderful idea. It is like creating a beautiful painting or mural and then setting up a table with cans of spray paint next to it.

I swear, it is almost as if LL has some sort of self destruct fetish.

If they don't get a real handle on the voice, technical problems, free accounts, child porn, age verification, playground for scammers, customer service and communications issues ....say..by the end of 2007 I see a very very limited futire for SL.

They were so close..so very close and I use the past tense deliberately.