Voice Chat, good or bad move ?

*rolls eyes*

COME ON PEOPLE. It's OPTIONAL. Quit crying, it'll be okay!!! Don't use it if you don't wanna...just like all the other voice systems available out there!



All those things you listed that SL needs to get a handle on (especially the non technical issues) are things that NO ONE really has a handle on in the REAL world. The internet is definitely full of scams, child porn (and other nasty stuff), technical problems, age verification problems, etc.

LL could DEFINITELY use some tweaking to be more efficient at what they do but you're looking to get too much out of SL if you expect to be protected from all of that by someone else.

I went to the beta grid to experience the voice chat, that according to LL, there was a HUGE demand for which I never remember seeing people cry for it.

Anyway, I went and it was immediatly annoying. I could hear 3 people speaking very loud even though they were meters away. Add to that a blaring television in the background and a heavy breather.

I'm not sure if you can do this already since I really got annoyed with it and didn't stick around, but it will only be good for me if you can set it up to only hear certain people, such as people in your friends list while silencing everyone else.

hehe. people are just terrified of becoming members of an underclass. besides, age verification might not be happening now.

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Features are never a bad thing as long as there are sufficient options to satisfy every scenario. I believe voice has it. But I doubt there still be any stigma attached to those who refuse to use voice. There's just too many reasons not to. But it will be great for those who wish it.

One thing all the being sad about voice has done on here is shown that it should be an option that comes with everyone muted by default. You should have to choose who you want to hear and who can year you.

Some will want to hear and talk to just anybody and some will be more personal...just like how some are a little more hesitant to add friends and others do it with everyone they meet.

I hope that Linden that posted in here is still taking notes!!!

I give you credit for attempting to look at the glass as half full as opposed to half empty, but the reality is that you're being overly optimistic. With voice being but a click away, the vast majority, if not all, potential friendships will not be validated until both parties "consumate" that friendship via voice. Rare will be the occassion that the third or fourth question out of any persons mouth, after what's your name, how old are you, and where do you live, will be "can we go to voice." Naturally, the party refusing will be automatically assumed to be hiding something. Sure one can chose to dismiss the scenario, and it will affect different people in different ways, but I don't think any one can claim that it wont be annoying and put a definite strain on any conversation or potential friendship.

*chuckles* I voiced some in the late 90's back when it was a novelty - how bout this wrinkle -

How do You tell someone you voice for any length of time that they cant have your phone number?




Back in the 90's we gave out phone numbers a lot - we were more naive then. LOL.

Voice will be useful for US companies wishing to use SL for virtual conferencing, and I guess that's the intention.

I know very well that for most people, conversing in their second or third language is much easier in writing than in speech. You see a line of text, you have time to study the words and work them out. A spoken sentence and you are still trying to recognize the first words after the speaker has finished and you missed the rest.

Considering that now the majority of SL residents are not native English speakers, and you see that voice is not very useful. I see it being widely ignored.

Your opinion is just as valid as everyone else's but I wonder: why do you have to patronise and condescend those that don't agree with you?

The OP wants people's opinions and they are providing them.

Ok, we have french, spanish, Russian, Dutch, chinese, korean, a few japanese etc etc ..........Ok so what.......doubt that will help induce business in this game when the lag teleporting, lost objects data base errors etc.........I Don`t think rl business want to deal with these issues if their products are not protect as well.

I'm looking forward to voice on the grid; I think its a great idea. And for closer relationships, I would feel that voice would be a natural expression of trust in the relationship. Role playing, fantasy, consensual activities are different of course and could be no voice like many of the sims are no fly. The RP are like reading a great book, the chat is the text and works fine.

But for community building or things that are an extension of RL and require trust, I think voice is a good thing. It would expand and enrich those relationships for me. I will always be happy to go to voice if asked and will ask for voice if someone offers friendship to me so I feel secure in the situation. For me SL is an extension of my RL, not a replacement or compartmentalized thing so my take would be relevant to that approach.

Recently I chatted with a man who is deaf in RL and I was glad that we would still have the option to chat in text together as well as use voice with my friends when we sit on the porch, drink virtual tea and gossip.

I'm not sure if voice would be that divisive or not more so than other things. SLers are a pretty opinionated lot and there is a lot else we find to cause divisions.

And from what I understand, if it really isn't right for you, you can disable it on your land like no push options, etc.

While I do like the idea of voice chat, I'm having loads of problems with uploading textures to the beta grid because of it. *shrugs* So, I turned it off and problem solved. I'm not sure if it's on their end or mine, but it's annoying either way.

Otherwise, I don't mind talking to people. It's rather like being on the phone, except, I can turn this off and when I hang up, it doesn't ring again

I think the first thing I do after the client update with voice chat included is to switch it off - both in my client and on my parcel, no second thoughts. I'm already fed up with those inane gesture sounds (I'm thinking about a client patch to disable them individually as well...) and simply don't want another layer of audible crap added to it.

Compared to the alternative I'd rather live in a silent world.

There is an assumption that gender ambiguity works mostly to the favor of real life men who are virtual women. However, gender ambiguity works to the benefit of real life women who are virtual women. Real life women who use voice chat could just be making themselves bigger targets for online stalkers. There is some safety in ambiguity.

For me, though, I'm just going to wait for voice chat go on for a while before deciding whether to use it or not. I'll let someone else figure out the benfits, bugs, and pitfalls before I jump in.

One doesn't have to jump in either fully or not at all, either. It may be that most of the time I don't use voice chat, but do use it in certain situations, like just talking to a few people I know in a private place.

*moves*

I don't understand the reasoning for the voice chat in SL. I just see more lag upon what is already there not excluding the fact everyone would be talking over everyone else. Solution would to be if you really want to talk to that special someone there is other voice chat systems you can run at the same time as running secondlife. Oh and must not forget once they find out you are really a female they many men will assume that your their sex toy!

Karmyst, from what I can tell, voice chat is primarily coming because the large businesses in SL can then hold conferences in SL with more ease. Which does make sense, I suppose. And if I'm not mistaken, it wouldn't route through SL's servers, but more like music and video do now, from source to user's computer, bypassing SL's servers altogether.

What I'm afraid of, beyond how it could affect a lot of regular residents personally, is that SL will simply become a free international phone service/phone sex line. I can see a business setting up somewhere in the world, to offer phone/SLsex combined, for a fee of course, and then it coming out that the 'employees' on the other end of the line were indeed minors, hired or forced to work the customers.

I wouldn't use the voice in SL, as I like the mystery and the way text forces one to think before speaking. However, it sure will be nice to use it to talk to my RL friends all over the world for free.

Another fine kettle of fish....

Impossible. LL is implementing this great new foolprof age verification/data mining scheme. You really should read the forums more often.

All I can say is "Hello to all the 1-900 sex lines" - I'm not kidding. There is already a classified posted hiring female vocal actors to work as sex line girls while they gyrate their sexy SL avatars for customers.

I won't be using voice. The whole point of playing a game for me is distancing from reality. If I play a boy avatar, I don't want folks knowing it is a girl playing a boy avatar - for example. Sometimes us gals prefer to play as boys to escape from all the ridiculous come-ons. Or vice-versa. Now, introduce a voice synthesizer so we can sound like whatever the heck we want - and I'll hop right on board!

Otherwise, it's just a glorified free phone system / sex line hookup. I can just see how Linden Lab is going to try to extend this whole age verification thing to voice chat as well. Can't do a hot & heavy Adult voice chat on a PG or Mature land parcel or if you are non-verified right?

Yeah, let's see how that works for LL.

Voice chat... Im totaly against it. As I have good reason to be. Im deaf in RL, This is going to be a bad hit on the deaf community within SL.

I came from there.com to SL. In there.com they used voice, and It was so bad being left out of 90% of the conversations. Alot of people acted like it would kill them to type a few words to me.

I was really happy when I came to SL and could communicate with everyone I wasn't let out of any of the conversations. Now here it comes again the voice threat... Now my fears are going to come true all over again. Its going to be just like being back in there.com only with different looking world.

I really wish this was something that would be left out of SL. Its not just going to hurt me but every other deaf person in SL.

Yes I agree. Bad hit.

Cinthya Vavoom said:
“Voice chat... Im totaly against it. As I have good reason to be. Im deaf in RL, This is going to be a bad hit on the deaf community within SL.”

Not sure how voice would you prevent you from continuing to participate in a conversation as you currently do Cinthya. Not to be insensitive but if you approach a group of people now and type “hello” and they don’t respond, or don’t respond right away do you assume that its because they know you are deaf? Any time I see a group of people chatting I have to make a choice between me jumping in with my two cents worth, ease dropping or just moving on. Should we eliminate IMs because everyone can’t follow what’s being said in those? If you want to be included in a conversation and others don’t want to type with you then they are rude and not worth your time. Simple etiquette should be that if there is a group… mixed voice and type…everyone should follow the chat history and accompany spoken words with type to include those without voice.
There…my two cents worth.

I don't care anymore. Voice, No voice whatever. If people start annoying me with it...I'll just turn it off (Yeah Turn it off, novel concept no?). Either that or I'll just start belting out show tunes. You don't want that, you really don't.

It depends on the show.

And if we get a dance with it