do we even want voice?

Bigwig. You still don't speak for everyone. You don't speak for the majority. You speak for yourself and yourself only.

Damn you really do believe your own press don't you? And P.S., that smiley doesn't mean a thing. Your attitude leaves precious little to smile about.

Can I suggest something? Perhaps you should just ignore each other, for your own sake. Colette is Colette and as dear as she is to me,she is not going to change her mind on ANYTHING. Squeeze pisses me off at times, but he's not always full of shit, he stands by his opinions adn usually states them with some thought and I respect that. But you two are like oil and water. Watching you fight IS entertaining, but give yourselves a break. Just some friendly advice.

That's not true. Combat and RP aren't hand in hand. I'm not talking combat within the RP world/sim. I'm talking about straight up shoot-em-up games in SL. BIG difference!

FOR YOU. Stop deciding for everyone else, please.

Sorry, Michael...but you're wrong. Your idea separates the voice from the context of the action occuring in an environment. A post in a roleplaying situation contains body language, movement descriptions, and other nonverbal communications.

You're mistaking theatre...with an act of collaborative LITERATURE - which is what RP really is. You simply can't replace that with rhetoric. While the two may be complementary, they're NOT interchangable. It isn't a matter of someone "trying hard", it's a matter of the limitations...yes, the limitations, that voice brings to the table.

RP is not "acting"...it's writing...is a consensual act of literary, descriptive narration that changes person, place and mood. Unless you're talking about actually SAYING the following out-loud.

"I move across the room and and tell Johnny X that he better watch out."

As opposed to...

Jimmy Y stalks across the room, his face a mask of fury as he leans close and whispers to Johnny X, "You'd better watch out...".

See?

P.S. Michael:

Your language is demonstrative of why a lot of people fear and loathe voice. You characterize not wanting to diminish a character with an unsatisfactory voice as insecurity. You imply that roleplay with text isn't *really* roleplay, it's just what we had to do until we got voice. Acting is the REAL roleplay, right?

This is the reaction that time and again people in this and other discussions are expecting, and seeing. What's the matter with you, why aren't you using voice, are you insecure? Right?

Sorry, ten pages in while waiting to see if SL fixes itself, and couldn't continue reading.

Voice has potential to be both good and bad, yes, just like any other tool. However, there are significant differences in how spoken and typed communications work in a virtual environment. Barring things like lag, voice remains superior in communications due to its speed (generally it is always easier to speak than type) and the fact that in some environments (chiefly MMOGs or FPSs) taking the time to actually type anything out can be inimical to the gaming experience (get your character killed, or worse - getting your group killed).

However, those particular bonuses of voice aren't really relevant in SL as far as I can tell. There doesn't seem to be (too m)any sims out there that mimic a FPS or MMO like EQ/WoW, where you /need/ to keep you fingers on the mouse and certain hotkeys and avoid typing for communication.

Text-based communications, however, tend to be better for roleplay purposes. Ignoring for a moment the obvious differences in matching male/female RL to female/male SL avatar, it is far easier to portray a character as speaking in a gruff/robotic/stuttering/etc voice in text by means of meta-conversation clues, such as ----- /me nods and speaks a bit reluctantly, her voice slightly muffled by the veil, "C- Certainly, I do understand that, Miss." ----- than it is to do so in voice, unless you happen to have the relevant props at hand as well as the training or natural skill to be a voice actor. Further, as evidenced by the preceding example, emotes or other information about the scene can/will be much more readily conveyed in text than in voice, as too will meta-conversation details, ((such as going OOC by putting the text in double parens)). While there are voice-based workarounds for those sort of RP and communication elements, they are clunky and confusing.

(And while a good mix might be using text for the scene and emotes and voice for the dialog, the prevailing conditions of lag could make it difficult for synching up the two separate communication streams. If three people are speaking and typing, unless you start using unnaturally long pauses, text will transfer faster than voice, meaning three or four emotes could show up before the speech that goes to the first is heard, making the scene confusing to follow).

Further, if what I'm reading in the thread is accurate, voice is non-attributional? That is, general spatial chat in voice is not tagged with who is speaking it, nor how near/far they are from the listener. This, in itself, has several problems -- first and probably most concerning is that if you cannot detect who is saying what, in the event of harrassment or unlawful behaviours (racist/sexist comments, etc), you do not know whom to report nor whom to mute. Further, in any group larger than a few friends all of whom know each others' voices, non-attributional communications makes it difficult to know how to respond/react in an RP environment.

Voice chat in SL is exclusional and builds barriers that are detrimental to considering SL a community environment. Beyond the basic barrier between "pro-voice / anti-voice" it further complicates the language barrier. Many people for whom English is not their native language are able to keep up with chat and communicate reasonably well in pure text-based communication, even if sometimes their spelling or grammar isn't fully accurate (then again, there's a lot of folk for whom English ~is~ their native language and they can't speak grammatically nor can they spell), but switching to a voice-based communication raises the bar for their participation due to factors such as dialect, speed of communication, and the fact that it is easier to have the confidence to type something than to say it (speaking as a student of foreign languages...)

Additionally, is builds a barrier for those who are shy and find it difficult to communicate verbally rather than textually. Whatever the source root of the shyness (introversion, lack of confidence, dislike of own voice, etc), someone who finds it difficult to speak up in a group is presented another barrier against their participation in SL.

Given the difficulties bring voice into SL seems to be causing, as well as the above reasons, I cannot help but wonder why voice could not have been left as a third-party application like Skype or TeamSpeak where those who wanted to participate in it (for business meetings, chatting with friends, etc) could opt into it without negatively affecting those who do not wish to use voice.

I will not be using voice chat. Not merely because of the RP and barrier reasons above, but because my SL experience is perpetually laggy - my packet loss is constantly redlined, hovering between 5% and 50% packet loss (I did have one odd occurrence where it spiked to 125% packet loss o.o), and as such I cannot afford the further degradation of service that voice-data transfer would incur.

Incredible. People will find ANY way to disagree, just for the sake of disagreeing.

I work with RL clients all the time...do I ask them to hold on as I scroll up to find what they said previous? No, I just ask them to clarify, or repeat what they said. We communicate everyday...why is it so hard to grasp? We don't need a history-based text-box to work efficiently. Using voice is much more efficient, and you should be taking notes with a client in both SL and RL anyway...so instead of using the text box, use a note card to take notes (that's what I do), and it's very efficient.

Contrary to what you're saying, it's a lot easier to get confused with text, then with voice. Many more misunderstandings take place in text chat as opposed to voice.

As far as RP...I guess people just will not let go of the "I'm not an actor" mentality, so all I have to say is...let the role players do what they want to do. Usually, they do it in a group society anyway...so voice is their choice.

As far as the musicians go...I have used SL voice to play for a group...it works fine, and sounds fine. *shrugs*

Wait, who?

You can't mean the Squeeze posting in this thread, so to whom are you referring?

Just curious.

/me jumps in from off stage, striking a noble, heroic pose, his cape billowing in the winds of justice...

It is I!

Hey, they're right about that RP thing!!

This is why people don't like my "negative" reasons of nay-sayers. I tell the truth, and they flame me for it.

Are you honestly telling me, that insecurity has NOTHING to do with why people don't like to use voice?

I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad...I'm not slandering anyone. I'm simply stating it's a strong reason why people don't want to use voice. Well, perhaps you guys should use this SL voice technology to try and get over this problem (if the shoe fits). No one needs to know who you really are...you are your SL avatar. Now, try and open up.

I have made several friends in SL I know to be insecure people in general. And they are embracing SL voice, because it gives them the opportunity to express freely, without fear of judgment.

And lastly, can you give me a freakin' break? Every time I mention "insecurity" I get jumped on. It's a valid reason...if not one of the MOST valid examples. Don't hate me because I actually bring it to the table. Deal with it, and offer me up a dialog I can discuss with you...don't just flame me for being honest.

I didn't say I AGREED with those thoughts.

I see this rather differently. TeamSpeak worked fine for me, and was ideal for training classes and regular meetings. Meeting moderators had all the controls currently lacking in the SL voice client for managing who could get the floor. With the current SL voice client, even in a structured setting like a training class or business meeting, we get the "semi-full-duplex" "stepping on each other's lines" quality of a satellite-network teleconference, unless the participants understand and adopt some out-of-band signaling about who has the floor.

The one downside of TeamSpeak was that it wasn't ubiquitous--although that's not altogether bad, imho.

Never noticed... perhaps it used more RAM than the delta between the SL voice viewer and the standard viewer. But, not being integrated, it had the huge advantage of not bringing down the whole grid every time its integration needed tweaking.

But actually that's all a digression from what I meant to say. The thing that bothers me about viewer-integrated voice is that it displaces perfectly valid third party solutions, rather like Microsoft is apt to do with each new OS release. And--as with Microsoft--the result is further bloating of the viewer itself. And--as with Microsoft--at time of introduction, the feature is inferior (for practical use) to the solutions it displaces strictly on the merit of ubiquity.

IMHO, it would be much wiser of LL to invest its development time--and viewer footprint--in enhancing core components of the application, rather than integrating new features that partially replace functionality already available from third parties.

And in certain contexts, the ability to *speak* in SL is very useful. But it's a far cry from being so in all situations. Consulting with clients is a great example of a benefit of real-time vox communications.

But your insistence that the RP that's developed and evolved in SL is somehow weaker and less-valid than what you're accustomed to, verges on being offensive to many. And your assumption that voice will make things like musical performances somehow better or easier, is also perhaps a bit misguided.

Streaming audio through a server will *always* provide a musician with more flexibility - especially in light of the limited venue SL's voice client provides.

LL would have been MUCH better off in working to streamline its integration with existing or developing third-party vox providers, rather than attempting to build the functionality into the client itself.

I'm sick of this forum. I give valid, well thought out answers...and you guys are just so freakin' thick headed. You can't see the forest through the trees.

Don't you think I know they are opinions. That's what a forum is all about. Opinions. And every single one of my examples of the positives isn't just MY opinions, it's many many others. In fact, they are completely un-bias reasons for why voice is a great thing.

ROFL. Nice tights, Squeeze!

But you're also right about the benefits of voice in combat sims/situations. First-person shooters have always been a bit more fun for me when they're vox enabled...and that applies to the mouselook combat of SL, too.

The great thing about this is that message forums have been around for so long, and people repeat the same patterns so frequently, that eventually you can just post links and be done with it:

http://redwing.hutman.net/%7Emreed/warriorshtm/therapist.htm

Thanks for the lulz, Michael.

There's honest, there's blunt, and then there's beating people about the head and shoulders with what YOU consider truth. What's true for you may not be true for everyone, but you seem to be missing that point.

That said, I'm shy, which I suppose could be considered a form of 'insecurity,' and I have no interest in using voice. I also believe there will be situations where those using voice will make those not using it feel uncomfortable if they can't or won't join in...not to mention the probability of it being damn annoying in high traffic areas. I do not, however, believe the grid will come crashing down with the advent of voice. Like anything with SL, if you don't like what's currently going on in a given area, you can always move on. *shrug*

LOL...I remember this site. Great one. Funny stuff.

By the way, that's MIKE reed...not Michael. It's only coincidental.

So, wait, you're saying SL shouldn't integrate voice into SL because it wouldn't be fair to Skype? That's not how business works.

And for the record, I, and a decent amount of people I know, didn't ever bother with Skype BECAUSE it was a 3rd party deal and not integrated. I don't want to have to switch back and forth to use something that can be (and is) easily integrated into SL. That's nonsense.



In reality, SL's bloating isn't due to voice but to (among other things) having a system that has limited scalability and grew WAY too fast.

While I think Mr. Bigwig is a bit overzealous in some of his arguements for voice, I would have to agree that the "3rd party is better" arguement is kind of a cop-out and doesn't hold water when you look at the actual facts.

It isn't you that needs the break. People expressed a fear that, since they don't want to use voice, they might be belittled or have their identity/integrity challenged. People offered examples of where they've seen it happen.

Then, you step up and ask us why people who don't want to use voice are so insecure. Come on, all we have to do is learn the skills of a trained actor, right? A small price to pay for something as vastly important as SL...

You are the self fulfilling prophesy embodied.

Come on, give US a break. Like I said earlier, this isn't all that important anyway, because I believe devoutly most landowners will disable it within the first couple of months. It's easy to say, "Just mute them", but after the hundredth time you do it, with no hope that it will ever change, you'll be a lot more apt just to disable it completely.

I keep coming back to the "teaching" argument. I attend classes from time to time in SL. I see people tossing questions in at inappropriate times, wandering in and asking what this class is about, etc., etc. And that doesn't include the purposeful troublemakers, no record of what has been said, etc.. No, I don't think classes will be more efficient at all.

You're splitting hairs on that - there is NO difference between the steadfast and thick headed members of either camp. None.

The idea of having someone there to prevent harassment on users is a sound one - but ti should go both ways.

I went to the welcome area in voice once. I don't remember why I'd even go there since it's always been full of morons but I went nonetheless.

I really think there should be a separate Voice Island that main gridders can't get to...kinda like when you first start out an account. That would probably cut way down on the stupid shit that happens at the welcome area...but then again stupid shit is what the welcome area is all about these days!

Kindly provide proof that it is going to 'kill' role Play - beyond the usual rhetoric of voical tone and timbre expectation please.

I role Play just fine using Voice, thank you very much!

I have been saying the same things for months .....100% agree