Do We HAVE To Use Voice??

No problem. I'm hunting for more actually. I have a two yr old nephew who lives with me and thinks "ELECTRONICS SMASH!!" is funny. So I'm stockpiling.

So they can use voice changers, and the self righteous, paranoid suspiscion can start all over again....

I'm a guy! I roleplay cross gender all the time on GW, and use Vent to talk to my ROLEPLAY guild, they all know I am a guy. We still roleplay in text! I roleplay everything from a 10 year old sweet little monk girl, to a mildly bitchy 900 year old assassin, and guess what? When it comes to my younger characters, I still get "Awww, shes soo cute." comments. If I as a 25 year old guy with a talent for developing female roleplay personalities can still make my 10 year old girl character believable to such an extent why can't people in SL?

It is vastly becoming my opinion that people that believe voice will destroy roleplay have never REALLY roleplayed before, or are just VERY bad at it. I have said it in another thread and I will say it here, LL is not taking our keyboards away, nor are they forcing roleplayers to roleplay over voice! bilbo99, us roleplayers tend to be really stubborn and set in our ways, well true roleplayers anyway, I do not see text giving way to voice roleplay any time soon.

Ohhh, that could get expensive.

I have a crate of inexpensive yet quality Andrea mics I'm trying to figure out how to donate to anyone who wants them for voice in SL. But the shipping costs might be prohibitive and ultimately better deals had elsewhere. I live in Canada, where shipping is very expensive at times.

Pfft !! - I've been on Beta, and enjoyed playing with voice. But, there are many legitimate reasons for people choosing to type rather than speak, and we should not judge them.

Some of the reasons I can think of :

1. RL household issues.
2. English as a second language speaker - easier for them to understand typed rather than spoken English.
3. Hearing impaired people - there's quite a few here.
4. People with bandwidth caps on their internet connection
5. People that don't wanna listen to gum poppin' noobs with the TV on in the background.
6. People with strong RL accents
7. and of course, our gender bender friends.

I'm excited about using voice in certain circumstances, but will prob. type most of the time...

Erm, before you start accusing people of having something to hide, reconsider please.
For instance, I have nothing to hide, i'm a female, but I _can't_ use voice. I guess I'll be on the suspect-list then Great, voice isn't even here yet and the accusations start already.

Oh come on. This statement is awful. So you are going to paint a scarlet letter on anyone who doesn't use voice? I do believe it is this type of attitude that the anti-voice folk are worried about.

I've been reading through these voice threads. Some people will like to sit in front of their computer and treat it like a phone, and others will want to interact via text and *listen* to something other than other people talking. Some folks totally mute SL today and run their own music on the stereo (e.g. I prefer running iTunes in the background and totally muting SL). Some folks don't want to be tethered to the computer. Some folks hate using the telephone. Some women don't feel comfortable getting the vocal versions of the sexual propositions they currently receive in text form. Others point to how it ruined There.com. Others don't want to pay for a feature that they find dubious and solvable via other means such as Skype.

There are a myriad of reasons to not use voice other than your reasoning.

For the record, I am not in Carlos' camp. Though it would be funny to hear the very sultry chick in silks sound like Frank from accounting.


I'm going to use voice. That being said if people around me don't want to, I can type as well. On good days, I can type and speak at the same time.

However Carlos' opinion is common on the grid. At least hes honost in his judging people based on a computer feature.

To all those who dont think there will be pressure for everyone to use voice, read Carlos' post again.

I notice Carlos didnt even bother reading Jig's conversation all the way through. She said her voice was widely recognizable.

Carlos also assumed Jig was a He. Which basically sums the attitude up. Not only do people like that assume if those dont use voice are gender benders, they assume if those have an OPINION or a QUESTION about opting out of voice are gender benders.

I think people will find that those with disabilities wont be using this voice very often and those are the ones going to be left out.

It won't work for those who can't hear

It wont work without all kinds of frustration for those who use software to activate commands on their computer via voice

It wont work for those who have issues with actual talking itself

Its going to be a barrier in many situations and I"m pretty sure the online population of those with some kind of impairment in second life is a much higher percentage then in real life.

I would hope that those people would try to accomodate those that can't keep up due to lack of voice chat by switching to text. I doubt it though so back to not talking to many people for a lot of people I suppose. I think there will be a split, but not in the way people anticipate. I'm also not overly concerned about the split as most people I know dont want to even plug in a mic.

There are also issues with it ruining immersion which has always been a big thing with me. I remember the time I tried voice chat the thing that ruined the entire immersion for me was hearing an orc with a boston accent and a dark elf with a southern accent lol that just ruined it and I said so. It was not even a roleplay type situation and it was many years ago.

The last thing that always bothered me was having to press a hotkey to talk. I could never figure out how to then maneuvre my character while talking which is something everyone seemed to insist on (something about having hands free if you talk but yet they said use a hotkey to press to talk.. the logic escaped me)

Anyhow there will be new social groups that arise and honestly I guess if people want to leave me out because I have not got voice chat active for more then one reason oh well. More human nature at work of "go with the clique or be left out" . Since I'm not a clique type person and have never been one to submit to any type of peer pressure just cause everyone else is I guess as usual I will be left out because I wont do what the rest of the crowd is doing.

/shrug

I'm generalize the generalizer here, but I bet the majority of the "If you've got nothing to hide" crowd are males, probably in the "Hormonally Active " age range who have never had to deal with unwanted amourousness.

That old chestnut. How about bandwidth? I turn off music streams generally. How about noise? People making lewd comments? English not being your first language so you find it easier to communicate by text? Are those people all hiding something?



Those people are roleplaying, it's a big part of SL.

I have a daughter, son, and wife who talk with me all the time while I'm on SL.

If someone thinks I'm going to close my door to them just so I can use voice on SL, they are sadly mistaken.

Truly, investing in voice, sculpties (etc) rather than a stable system which is scaleable and reliable is a pretty unfortunate management decision on the part of Linden Lab.

There aren't nearly enough "complaining about v-chat" threads on these forums.

Don't use it if you don't want to. Maybe it'll be a good idea to have v-chat enabled but never use the mic so you can still have a part in the conversation! That way you can be aware of what's going on around you without having to add to it!!

I've been in plenty of conversations on the beta grid where it was mixed v-chat and typers and it seemed to work out fine.

Besides, the people that want to pass judgement on you for not wanting (or being able) to use v-chat probably aren't worth talking to anyway!

If those voicers who feel it's a bother to type to acommodate non voicers, that's fine. You have all a right to free association. I just don't want to see non voicers actively harassed or belittled. Don't bother us and we won't bother you. (Anyone remember The Ellen James society in "The World According to Garp"?)

Wilhelm, I'll be on the outside looking in with you. Bring your crayons,I'll bring the coloring books.

Yup we are all gonna be "ebil" if we dont use voice

this is what will happen there is going to be two social groups and I think that the non voice group is gonna be a lot larger then anyone realizes

I'm actually looking forward to seeing what happens because I have not anyone that i know so far had them say they were even considering using voice. They have in fact said the opposite.

The biggest reason is the noise.

Anyone who wants to volunteer to pay my headset bill on a monthly basis however will be the one that gets me to use voice on a regular basis. ^^

"But why are you closing your door? What are you saying that you don't want them to hear?".........or stuff to that extent.

I agree with The Squeezer, though. There will be division, but probably nowhere as bad as feared, and care has to be taken not to make it a self fufilling prophecy. It can easily wind up that non voicers ostracize themselves, by making the same rash judgements we are trying to deter.

It is this kind of bigotry and intolerance that assure that there will never be voice active on my land. There should be places where people can go in SL and feel welcome no matter what their gender or abilities or simply desires compel them to do. There are many people in rl who are marginalized due to their inabilty to speak or to strange quirks in the way they sound - SL is a place where those people can be equals, and, on my land at least, they will continue to be.

In addition, there are many who simply do not want to hear the chatter, myself included. As another poster stated, SL is a place to escape from the noise of the world - why bring more noise into it?

I am not saying that voice overall is a bad thing. There are many situations where it will be useful, and there are places where I will probably use it occasionally, but it does not need to be everywhere, and will in fact be very detrimental to some if it is.

Why do people actively seek out being a victim?

I've spent about 2 weeks on the beta grid and not once was anyone shunned for not using voice. There was the "hey why no voice?" and the person would say anything from "don't have a headset yet" to "I'm shy" or "not a native english speaker" and people would accept that and go from there.

Maybe you people should ACTUALLY TRY it before you criticize it!!

I'm going for the donald duck voice changer ^^



DONE just dont use my discontinued colours I covet them !

Ill probably treat SL with voice a lot like i treat Yahoo with voice. If its someone I know well and want to voice with them, Ill voice with them.

If its not - Ill ingore them.

Come to think of it if the phone rings and I dont know who it is on the caller ID, I dont answer it either.

It helps to remember voice isnt new to the internet.

A lot of people already have opinions on voice becuase ..... Its not New.

Voice chat has been around since the 90's

Phones have been around since the 1890's

Me too. If I'm paying for Caller ID, I'm gonna use it.

Back on topic: this is simply a new feature. It isn't being forced on anyone. If you don't like it, don't use it. But don't step in the way of other people's fun to use it by trying to demonize it.

If you read my post after that you see that I am basically agreeing with you. And I did try it, or at least listened to it, I don't have a microphone. It doesn't interest me. I can't report any negative reaction from voicers, but I generally stick to myself while wandering about so I'm not a good test case.

I might give it a try, if I'm able to do it with the equipment I have. If I can't, I'm not spending money on it.

So people might think I'm a guy. *shrug* Some people already do.