3D Voice coming to SL?

I'm going to make an assumption that you really haven't spent that much time with people who don't habitually speak English, or are around those that do. Or you do, and you think everyone else is as patient and willing to help as you are.

I'd rate myself as probably above average on English skills, but the fact remains that I don't ever use it as a spoken language, nor am I ever around people who do. When I had a friend visit from Australia for two days it took most of that time to get used to the way she spoke. Most of the first day was spent with asking her to repeat, or slow down, or me simply not bringing it up because from the context it seemed like I could do away with not understanding. The problem is only more prevalent for me on voice chat.

With written text, most of the burden of understanding lays on the receiver and they'll take the effort to try to grab any meaning they can from it, to the point of quickly grabbing a dictionary. With voice, it's the speaker who has to repeat, and repeat, or rephrase in the case of idioms, or even consciously watch their normal speech pattern and try and reduce any unusual accents or pronunciation. This quickly becomes tiresome and annoying and frustrating which ends up seeping through in tone.

In the case of group chatter, even asking to repeat or clarify becomes an impossibility, and they're stuck to mostly a listener role and end up not mattering, because they're just not on equal footing with the rest.

And in case you might have forgotten (http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/02/09/state-of-the-virtual-world-–-key-metrics-january-2007): only 44% of the active population comes from a country where English is the main language. People already far prefer typing in their own language, that's only going to be more so for voice and you'll not only end with segregation between "voicers" and "typers", but "voicers" will further shatter on language. English may be the biggest language group, but it isn't even the majority in any way.

Absolutely agreed. Real Voices only increase immersion when everyone involved is merely depicting themselves in SL as a clone of their RL self. But for the rest of us, who take advantage of the promise and potential of SL to be whatever we can imagine? It completely destroys any illusions of "otherness" that we have tried so hard to create. It's like insisting all actors and actresses perform naked, without makeup, in their native language and dialect only.

Voice Chat will be absolutely banned from any roleplaying that I am involved in. The last thing I want to hear is the same voice coming from two completely different characters that had, until that moment, been so superbly crafted and performed that no one had suspected, for years, that they were the same person performing the roles.

Have you ever tried chatting with somebody that can't type?

I once killed a man for taking 10 minutes to type "yes".


It seems that some people seem to think that because they prefer to type then everybody else should be forced to type.

Yes. It may cause the talkers and the typers to avoid eachother. But isn't this the case with anything? Some people prefer to hang out in clubs, some don't.

Or just maybe the anti-voice squad are right. Perhaps Linden Lab should force everybody to have the same sexual preference, have red as their favorite color and only listen to Tchaikovsky? This way we'd all get along and live happily ever after.


Thank you for reading, comrades!.

Unless you're talking about a disability I don't see how someone "can't type". They may not be able to type as well, or easily as others, but that's simply a quickly learned skill and anyone who spends any amount of time behind a computer is going to have typing skills.

On the other hand, I have considered that maybe all those people who don't necessarily lack typing skills, but do lack the motivation to type properly are going to be using voice, which leaves people capable of typing three letter words such as "you" which should be a big boost for RP places or general conversation.

I know it's not what you intended but, I'm sure it can't be too difficult for you to imagine a situation where you'd have to AFK for 5 or 10 minutes. Say it happens while you're chatting with a group of friends, you go "brb", meanwhile the conversation moves on. Normally you'd come back and cast a quick glance over history to catch back, no such thing with voice. Or you simply crashed, in which case you might just ask for a quick copy/paste of the last few minutes.

No problem, you'll catch up, unless of course someone made a joke 2 minutes before you returned and everyone is laughing hysterically. You do an akward giggle and go "what? what are you all laughing about?" in the hopes of fitting back in, but there's no way to recapture the moment and you can hope the conversation moves on to a point where you're included again.

True, the same happens in any RL conversation, but at home there are a dozen and one things that cause me to momentarily divert attention to something else which is one of the main and big advantages of typed text. It lets everyone set their own pace and has a very high tolerance for interruptions.

There are as many drawbacks to voice as there are with text, one isn't better than the other, but they really just don't mix.

As someoen who works daily with people learning English as a second language, I can tell you that it takes a special kind of patience to give 2nd language learners the time needed to communicate effectively in spoken English. Most people don't have that kind of patiience, and just as importantly, most people don't have/can fake a sufficiently neutral accent to be easily comprehensible to 2nd language learners.

In short, the idea that random chatter on the net will *help* a 2nd language learner is, in my professional opinion, ridiculous.

(spelling/grammar mistakes intentional; I'm off-duty)

When I was a larvae, gaming was something that geeky kids did. Spotty boys and nerdly girls. What else did we do? We read. We read and read and read and read. We are comfortable with text. We express ourselves well in it. We are judged on our ideas and our imagination, not our voices, for me nasal and soft, for others geeky, and god help the girl with the sexy voice who doesn't feel like being an escort.

Voice in gaming is the triumph of the mainstream over the nerdly in gaming.

I think it should be possible for you to voice your disagreement to the anti voice posters without resorting to cheap theatrical comparisons to the Soviet Union.

Please remember the voice is being imposed and it will be an opt out system, Therefore the *forcing* that is currently going on is in the "Pro -voice" favor.

Arguing that the option should be there is one thing.

Dismissing the fact many who dont use voice will be discriminated against is unrealisitc. It will happen.

Will voice catch on? I think it will. I think a lot of who dont like the idea will end up going along with it. I also think theres going to be a lot of people who feel Second Life has become a much less friendly place.

if you had any idea what happens to our mainstream television broadcasts at teatime, you'd take that back. we've been learning your unique form of english since the young doctors, sons and daughters and prisoner cell block H at least. =P

lawl. despite my reservations about dis voice thang, i saw a really cool plantronics headset in manchester this morning and instantly bought it. my last cheapo headset became faulty ages ago. so i start skype-ing in sl with some friends this afternoon and they all come to the conclusion i sound like hugh grant.

i'm taking the damn thing back for a refund tomorrow. =D

Is there going to be an icon or symbol that shows up in someone's name tag everywhere they go describing if they have voice enabled or not? I am unclear on this, and I'm not thinking it would be a good idea. What if these sims with voice enabled had voice cafes where voice was enabled there, but not in the rest of the sim. Then, the symbol for voice usage would show in this area only. It could be similar to the way the heart shows up in combat zones.

You would've loved my performance via voice. I do a splendid russian accent.

*shrugs*

It may be possible that with the broadening base of Second Lifers we are getting, we need voice.

Since the dumbing down of the average resident surely has lead to a lower average vocabulary and reading level.

Noone but the Lindens have an answer to that question until the beta opens.

My interpretation of the blog is that those who aren't voice-enabled will be visibly marked as such somehow, while those who are voice-enabled will appear as normal (the wrong way around).

Relevant quote:

One thing........ how do you report someone for abuse on voice chat?

If you mute them, does it mute their voice? On teamspeak etc.. if you control the 'room' you can kick someone......

I think you said it well. I am surprised by the uproar, especially by those who think voice takes away virtual. That's ridiculous. Once voice is implimented, we will wonder how we did without it.

Joe Linden, in his announcement of this new feature, said:

So it appears that if you don't hook up a headset, you get "branded" with an extra bit of garbage over your head that indicates you don't choose to use voice. No matter where you go. A "Scarlet letter", branding you as someone who didn't join in.

As someone who will flatly refuse to hook up a headset to play SL, I strongly object to having extra stuff floating over my head just because I don't choose to use a mike. If anyone gets tagged at all, it should be voice-enabled users, and that indicator should ONLY be visible to OTHER VOICE ENABLED USERS. The rest of us should remain unaware of anyone's Voice status, just as we remain unaware of their parcel music stream if we have streaming audio disabled.

Note also that eventually, if a land owner on a "grandfathered" private sim does NOT opt out, they will be charged an additional fee!

Sounds like a good time to hook a mike up to a white noise generator and claim technical difficulties.

You bring up a good point!

People who enjoy to watch others slap pixels, rejoice! Now, by zooming the camera, you will get to hear the seXX0ring of others. What a hoot!

and for those of us whose sexplay in SL sometimes involves the use of ducttape, I will be damned if I go that far for voice, my husband is ok with my activitys on SL but not that ok. Plus my neighbor's bedroom is right on the otherside of the PC room,with paper thin walls.