About our RP communities, Friendships, Economy, and Voice. Expectations, Concerns?

Heres my thoughts on what will happen on the gender stuff -

I think the gender identification aspect of voice will fail after a time.

Eventually,

Widespread use of voice changers could even lead to more Gender benders using voice than actual women. (much easier to voice from Mom's basement than the Family den)

Many actual women are not at all interested due to being married, having kids, not wanting the additional attention becuase they sound female, being private people, not wanting net stalkers, etc.

People will try to sniff out "weird" sounding voices to out fakers - they will, of course not be right a lot of the time.

Once this all settles out the paranoid who wanted voice to be a gender identifier will realize that it was a big failure and hope for integrated webcam sessions.

At this point people will realize voice in day to day use isnt so great after all.

Should be interesting to watch.

Ah, yeah, quite honestly, forcing the 100 USD/mo upgrade for voice on older regions *is* a bad idea.

Let me put it this way.

To bring the voice option to 10 full regions and 4 voidsims I have at 195 a month, that will be 100 * 11 * 12 = ... wait for it... 13,200 USD a year.

Anyone cool with that little bit of pocket change?

Okay, now say the RP crowd doesn't want it (they pretty much don't). It won't matter in 12 to 18 months. There's such a thing as user turnover, and even though mine is scary-low compared to most places, I'm not immune.

If anyone trusts my business acumen *at all*, stumbling as it may be, get this point loud and clear: being a 'typing only' niche area won't fly when 90% of the grid expects to be able to hear voice.

So let's say I pass on expenses. I won't get into details, but it comes out to adding on roughly 80 USD a year on average to the landed people of Caledon (land size a factor of course). Ah, no.

Caledon 'works' *because* it's full of artists and college students and bohemian eccentrics. Many strain to afford it even now.

So if I raise rates (and with my waiting list, I well know I can) what would I become? A dead-quiet enclave for the wealthy, who then all sit around wondering where the fun went.

Ah, yay, I guess. No thanks. Rates stay where they are unless I'm forced with my back to the wall.

* * * * *

This issue is larger than I am. Were I rich, I'd pop for the additional 13,200 a year. But you know what? I bust my tail in SL and it's tolerated by my family because I can bring some money in exchange for the humongous amounts of time spent.

To put this in perspective, I'd make more hourly as the sweeper at McDonalds right now. In first life, I'm a corporate president and electrical engineering consultant, but with 3 kids about to go to college, a 13 year old car and a California mortgage.

Pulling another 13,200 a year either out of Caledon residents, or me - simply won't fly.

I'll state right now I'm not 'going anywhere' or ever going to do less than my best. But how long can I provide a top-quality experience without the same features most of the grid will have?

That is what troubles me. It won't be just Caledon affected, either. Unless you've spent time in worlds like there.com you'll have no idea of the overwhelming, all-consuming effects of a culture-change like voice.

To be without that feature... due to the pricing, well, I'll do my best, and we'll see. It just might be a horrible thing to watch though, over the coming months. For me, for the residents, for everyone.

I already have the technology to do a fairly realistic, digitally created and animated face. Webcam isn't going to work.

When people figure that out, there's only going to be one way left to gender-verify Second Life users. There will be demand to integrate into Second Life the ability to meet users in real life.

Yes, they can. There is also the option to turn if off completely, then you don't hear the chatter at all. One problem I ran into: I keep my speakers on mute when in SL, but on the beta I still had the speaker "orb" above my head. I had no idea people were talking to me.

I have no headphone jack either, I had to plug them directely into the soundcard. Pain in the butt.

Desmond you have a legitamate concern. Easily as important as any of the others on Voice chat.


I can not beleive that it costs LL the $100 difference a month to provide voice. They should only pass on the cost to them to provide voice to a region.

Using a key feature like Voice as a lever to force grandfatherd pricing sim owners to pay the current new sim rate is a slimy business practice.

hehehe

"Teleport user SL or RL?"

huh?

lol

I just want people to be able to send me food by teleport - Everyone I talk to on SL has more interesting things cooking then I ever seem to.

...forgot to answer this point - SL totally pwned There.com because of There.com's repeated pricing mistakes.

That mistake: milking the daylights out of the paying users, to create a great experience for everyone including the nonpaying. It failed.

Kinda like... charging another 100 USD/mo for voice, mmm?

* * * * *

I would LOVE to give a private tour to decisionmaking Lindens of my regions and some others in SL, showing how delicate the balance is. Financially, culturally, it's tricky to get a healthy region just right.

And how easy it is to kill a good area off - even $L 2/m upfront pricing or a coupla bucks a month can be deadly.

I liked Caledon when I visited, and if you actually decide not to use Voice, then I will be even more inclined to spend lots of time there.

No one wants to learn math in SL anyway.

Plus, SL would be the PERFECT place to teach people who don't otherwise have the resources or money available to learn things...especially languages.

Think about it. SL IS a visual aid! You can upload all types of things, you can type out key points in chat or IM or whatever...and in the case of building you can say something as they work on stuff...like "no no, to the left...ok perfect".

Anyone who doesn't take advantage of this as a teaching tool is fooling themself and/or afraid of the future.

I have no idea how voice will affect my SL experience. I don't want it, don't plan to use it, and don't want to listen to it, and I won't. If people want to draw conclusions about me as a result, that's certainly their perrogative. I simply enjoy the written word, the flow of typed conversations, the ability to think before speaking, the ability to backspace, the ability to go take a leak and not miss anything, and so on. I didn't sign up for a partyline service, nor do I plan to use SL as one. I don't begrudge anyone who will use it and enjoy it, but if they want to speak to me or be heard by me they're gonna have to type.

I would LOVE to.

Brutal fact of the matter is this: in a year or two, when all the voiceless RP types are a distinct minority, I'll still have well over 3000 USD/mo in tier to pay.

Pop over to there.com without voice access and see what I'm talking about. I wish I was kidding; I *want* to be viable without voice.

But I'll have to do exactly what the paying, landed customers want at that time. Or explain to my family why we can't send a kid to college.

It's out of my hands, Sonia. I'm not extremely wealthy.

Here's a thought.

For those of us who "opt out" of voice, we'll now know what it's like to be deaf.

Actually, I forgot to mention. Makeup, prosthetics, and surgical and chemical science have all developed to the point to which people can, in real life, make themselves appear to be, or even transform themselves into, another sex.

When that gets out, then we will need an army of private investigators to obtain the life history of any person with whom we want to talk to verify that they have spent an acceptable amount of time in real life defined as a specific gender.

SL - complete with voice, cam , and DNA testing.

LOL

I feel the same way Chip. I presume there are some advantages to voice, but the disadvantages far away outweigh the advantages for me. I love the silence in SL now and the ability to simply relax and listen to music as I explore or do things in SL. A huge benefit for me is being able to edit what I have to say before pressing enter. I know you all wish I would do that more often on these forums, but I am worse in voice, if you can imagine that
I'm a busy body too. While I am on SL I am multi-tasking doing tons of things around the house. With text chat its not a problem because i can just scroll and catch up. With voice I'll just be lost. And I'm not looking forward to the verbal harassment that voice will bring. You are sadly mistaken if you dont think this will be an issue for women.

And it goes on and on.

To hear Voice AT ALL, you must configure your system to be voice-capable. On my Mac Mini, which has no sound input circuit AT ALL, I was incapable of even listening to Voice unless I attached a several hundred dollar USB Audio adapter device.

Even if your hardware is sound-capable, and you set the preferences to "push to talk" (The default, incidentally, is a LIVE MIKE), you then give the indication to all Voice users that you ARE willing and able to use Voice! Thee is no way to listen without having an icon over your head that Voice users can see, and which they will interpret as "That person uses Voice too!", and having them chatter away at you.

I think all Roleplayers will be well advised to disable Voice on their land and in their RP sims. I know I plan to. I know for a fact that some of the "girls" I RP with are, in real life, actually males. But when I am doing RP with their female alts, the LAST thing I want is to be constantly reminded of that! If they can do a good enough job in text RP to convince me that they are the opposite gender, more power to them.

As someone who has taught College classes, I would NEVER use Voice to teach in SL. It would be like teaching a class and not allowing anyone to take notes. With no chat log, they have no way to review the course later, or to catch up when they missed something because they got interrupted in RL.

As someone who regularly uses Corporate-quality teleconferencing services for Real World international business, I can tell you that having Voice in a 40-person sim (and you can really only hear 10 to 20 of the closest people) is a kid's tin-can telephone compared to the robust Internet and Phone basesd systems that real Businesses use. 40 people max? Give me a break. Come back when you can do 10,000 or more, and maybe I'll take you seriously. If LL thinks serious business users will flock to SL, with all its bugs and glitches and limitations, they are deluding themselves severely.

I do fear that the "Next generation" of SL players, who come to SL when Voice is "mainstream", will completely marginalize the older Players who dislike using Voice. SL is becoming more and more a virtual reflection of the Real World, and less and less a place where one's dreams and imagination are the only limits. It's becoming a cheap video-phone, with avatars standing in for web cams. Some people will love it, as all they want to do is "be themselves". But for those who roleplay, we will probably keep to ourselves, or will move on as soon as a competitor shows up.

Might be some more work for that German TV crew.

I will say this, knowing full well how easy it is for me to say--

Do you know until you try?

Do you really think all of Caledon would flee, were you to remain text only in most of the sim? I can't think of ANYONE in Caledon who would leave for that reason. I can think of many who would leave if voice became the standard.

You've said it yourself. Linden Labs wants you to foot the bill for this ill-concieved project. It's Scylla and Charybdis, sir. You can't absorb the costs. Pass it onto the customer, and some WILL leave. Refuse to pay, and lose potential voicers.

But of these two horns of dilemma you are facing, one caters to the client base you've already established. Yes, it might not be the fastest growing sim anymore. But it might be a refuge for those who hate what SL might/will become should voice be the standard.

Yes, we have RL examples of artist districts destroyed by real estate agents and virtual examples of places like There.com. But does it have to be that way? Even if we fail in the end to fight the onslaught of the Vulgarians, can we not spit in the face of the storm?

I for one will be happy to fight the good fight. But, I will never fault you should you give up and move on.

If anyone has ever played Star Wars Galaxies then they know when the developers get an idea in their head they want but no one else does NGE in that case, they do not care if it destroys the platform and its community. It seems to me that that is where this will be heading.

Desmond, I, for one, would happily seek land in Caledon if it remains non-voice, if the sim I have my current home in decides to go with the sheep to the shears and caves in to Voice. I haven't bought land with you before, simply because you are always so full, and because Victorian isn't my main theme (Edo-Period Japanese is my preference). But I dare say that not only will your current residents in Caledon remain quite loyal, but you could probably expand and do other venues and eras for other RP groups fleeing the Chattering Hoardes.

Stand firm, dear boy! Stiff upper lip!

I already know what it is like to be hard of hearing (though not completely deaf).

Rebel without a cause...

Man, you guys are trippin! No one will stop going to an area because of voice chat. SL isn't just the social aspect but the surroundings it's population creates.

As someone who has actually used voice chat for an extended period of time on the beta grid I can tell you a couple things...all the voice people I was hanging out with were respectful to people not talking and did their best to see what they were typing despite the difficulty that it causes. The only time there was an issue was when someone that didn't want to use v-chat started being rude about it and demanded attention...which is that person's problem.

I can also tell you that there are plenty of people in SL that aren't the best typers or chatroom conversationalists and they have been somewhat left out of the conversation until now. I think this will actually level the playing field for a lot of people.

Since the forums prove there are plenty of people that are scared of v-chat I think you will be in good company and will find plenty of people that still want to type instead of talk. That's fine.

All anyone can ask is for you not to assume v-chatters will look down on you for not using your voice. That'll just give you an attitude and make v-chatters think most typers are jerks.

There will definitely need to be some new social protocols for people once v-chat starts on the 23rd...

Eloquently put, sir. Thank you.

I must respectfully disagree. Non-voicers are quite likely to avoid areas where Voice becomes popular. They will do so for much the same reason you don't see a lot of deaf people at dances or rock concerts. There is nothing there to hold their interest.

I participated briefly in the Voice Beta, as someone who can not possibly use a mike. I had to borrow an expensive add-on USB audio adapter even to be able to hear the voices. What I found was that when I was near people who were voice chatting, if I had Voice disabled, I was largely ignored and I had absolutely no way to participate in the conversation that I could not hear. If I had voice enabled, and chose not to speak, I still had a very hard time following the "conversation", and I still couldn't participate.

Personally, I will avoid any area that caters to the Voice Using crowd. There will be no reason for me to wade through a forest of motionless zombies that may as well be statues, and who I can't communicate with. It's a poor social situation when you can't even hear the conversations. I guess I'll stick to the RP sims and other places that ban Voice. While I may still shop in areas with Voice enabled, I certainly won't go to such areas to socialize. And I'll have voice disabled and my speakers off when I do.

You aren't wrong. painting all voicers as potential ostracizers is no better than painting non voicers as disingenuous people with something to hide. Some will probably fall into these two categories, but I bet a lot won't.