Ban voice changers >:#

Tell that to his therapist.

I am totally with Ceera on this one, and her opinion/take on the matter. I play a character that would not sound well at all with my player's IRL voice. The OP also had the pleasure of being rather poitedly (and rudely told off) instructed to mute my character when the first reaction they had was to criticize my voice changer/mod. Funny that was the first thing out of their mouth when they were listening - never heard them speak. It's fun watching the paranoia of others being so adamantly enforced on others too.

Voice on, and keep those innovative mods coming!

(EDIT: Correcting Ceera's name - sorry!)

Ceera's post evokes the history of film When movies went from silent to talkie, many of the greats were out of work, Valentino was one I believe, because their voices were just not suited to their on screen personna. Once overdubbing came about, many actors were hired to re record voice tracks for other actors, primarily singing parts, ie: Natalie Wood in West Side Story.

My sixth grade teacher was HAWT

oh no! /me wonders...

I'm personally in favor of voice changers.

I'm a guy fyi and I sound male-ish (at least to me). Whenever my voice enters the microphone, it seems to enjoy the twisted pleasure of making making me sound un-manly. I hate it and it knows that. Therefore,if there is software that can get my voice back to normal from the evil clutches of the microphone, I'd be confident enough to speak out to the virtual public. Otherwise I'd have people assuming that I was some girl or worse... a shemale! D:>

That pretty much sums up why I favor voice changers.

Great idea! And then we could have contests, and the losers could be kicked off the island one by one, until .... no wait, I think that's already been done.

But then we couldn't fly, and the creation of prims might take a little longer than it does in SL.

I'm pretty sure that Gin's original post was because he had a hmmm 'bad experience' with someone

But really, this question is more or less moot. Second Life is not "guaranteed" to be a dating service of any kind; if that's the type of environment you're looking for, you're on the wrong location. In fact, until the Terms of Service are changed (they might be), revealing private data about someone's self (and what could be more private than your "voice signature"?) is actually 'forbidden' by Linden Lab. Obviously, people are allowed to reveal as much data as they want to, but they're not required to do so.

I can imagine that as identity validation comes to Second Life, one possible validation might be voice validation, although I wonder what that actually means if people are using voice morphers I mean, unless you do a physical validation with the person in front of you in the same room, I cannot understand how it could even be possible.

"Forbidding" voice changers is as pointless as forbidding, say, someone to use a furry avatar instead of a "real life" avatar. These issues are completely pointless to "demand". There is no single way to technically "forbid" voice morphing/synthesizing software. More to the point, as these technologies evolve and become better and better, how can you possibly detect them, sort of running into people's homes with a recorder or something.

So there is basically two types of "banning". One is a technological "ban" on voice morphing technology, which is next to impossible in SL; the other is a social ban, in the sense that one might conceivable admit that Linden Lab, for some silly reason, might wish to "limit" people using voice not to use voice morphing technology.

However, this would be exactly the reverse of what they've publicly announce on their blog: that LL not only endorses that kind of technology, but they're going to integrate in SL as well! It'll take a year or so of development, but it'll come, and one day it'll be as popular and easy to use as changing your appearance with the sliders. In the mean time, companies like Screaming Bee already have their representatives in-world (contact Gwygory Voom) to help people to fine-tune their voice morphing software and get the best results with it.

That means that if all you wish is to find "hot dates" in SL, you really should use some other technology — there are plenty of websites for that, where the users are all registered and validated as to their real identity, and you have no fear of getting a "gender-bender" or "age-bender" or whatever your preference/taste might be...

I've been able to detect underaged people pretty easily even before voice. Most people's maturity levels are shown by the things they say, not the pitch of the voice they use.

What about those of us (me) who use a voice changer on occasion to enhance their overall avatar...like robots or demons or dogs or whatever?

Don't limit people's ability to get into character...wait, there's also the whole "there's no way to regulate that" thing.

LL can barely keep up with the offenses we currently have. You think adding something they can't even begin to control (your computer outside of SL) to the list of "don'ts" will bring any results?

That is almost as bad as saying LL should ban diversity. I do not support this at all. It's bad enough that voice chat is ruining role play, forcing us to use a voice that does not match our character. Not just gender play but size, race and robot play too. Some people are short, robotic, or chibi... A normal human voice is not suitable for that. Do the teletubbies have male adult voices? How about the transformers? They have alterations. Keep muting them if you wish, but you will find yourself with one big assed mute list after so long and you will forget why most of them are there.

There are already enough interfering do gooders trying to make virtual life a pale and neurotic sideline of 1st life and banning stuff... and I think the OP's suggestion was just laughable anyways. Isn't a voice changer ( Don;t ask me I'm not that techy) an actual gadget or something rather than a program and presume u'd have t have that at home plugged in between your mic and your PC to make it work on your voice BEFORE it went thru into SL so how would you know anyway if anyone was using one? Catch22, the mere existence of them would be impossible to police.

Also I agree with what Ceera said .. Ban voice changers in SL? Heck no - make it *mandatory* when you use Voice, and part of the Voice UI!

Some of us model our Avs closely to our real selves some of us exist as bears and dragons and little rodents.. or robots ( and heaven forbid... child AVs.. the persecuted minority scared to speak its name for fear of moronic retribution) so as we spend time and money and skill infinitely customising our virtual forms from fingernail to hair to form and accesories.. why should the 'sound' our Av generates vocally be any different, it's just another amazing customisable personal freedom to make our Avs sound exactly as we want them to. Some trivial people will doubtless get all worried about who's a boy who's a girl in what world blah blah... but this is ( even with all the rampant stupidity and moral nonsense going on) still VIRTUAL LIFE...so I am dead against anything that inhibits creative modelling and the thrill and freedom of a virtual alternative world.

I am sure same as anims, a/o, and such, some clever people will soon think about making 'custom voice programs' for AVs (there I just gave you a killer idea!) using some sort of software add-on .. and people will rush to buy them as Ceera says to give them yet another bit of completeness in their AV.

I use Skype in my 1st life.. in SL game? maybe I will, not tried the beta but then I rarely ever do. but in reality same as conventions etc, I really do have little interest in who my Virtual Friends are in 1st life. Virtual Life for me is the book, film, play, combined and imagination playground of the mind...perhaps untailored innapropriate 1st world vocals will in fact just detract from the polished world of our AVs, as Ceera says and spoil many illusions. Not everyone has a voice that will suit their creations.. I mean how do robots speak? or dragons?..

What next... celebrity voice packs for your avatar?... maybe.. you can already get them for your satellite nav in your car....

Roll on creativity I say and down with anyone who wants to stifle it...

Voice changers will be cool as long as they sound ok & realistic, some developement may still be needed, but voice is here, us Bots & Furries will just have to adapt if we use it. Some ov my AV's may use it, some may not, going to get confusing

Can I get a voice changer that sounds like me, only taller?

Silliness (and my objections to voice on behalf of a few RL mute friends) aside, the voice changers will be very important to many roleplayers. And, honestly, if you can't trust the one you're with when they tell you their age and gender, should you really be with them at all?
Peace

Voice coming on Second Life has already started to destroy the whole concept. I thought Second Life was supposed to be just that, not any part of your Real Life.

Its also split people up in the Welcome areas - In fact I see even less people there now, where before it was the liveliest place on the whole of the grid. I put this down to Voice usage.

Voice changers? - they say dont work properly sound cartoonish but if it will serve to wreck the whole principal of voice arriving to SL then I'm all for it. Unfortunately its doubtful SL will remove the feature.

Snakekiss, there are indeed two technologies easily available for morphing voice. The less used one is indeed a physical gadget/device that can be plugged in as a microphone, or in some creative cases, even on your cellular phone. It's totally based on hardware, it's portable, and doesn't have very high quality, but at least it doesn't require any software and will work often with computers and phones. They're not very popular because of its limited choices.

The more powerful voice morphing technologies are software-based (like MorphVox, but there are many others). The biggest disadvantage of those is that they consume precious CPU on your computer, and, besides that, will need to "intercept" the audio stream coming in from your microphone. Some applications don't allow it (due to poor programming), but most (including SL and Skype) will. They're flexible and adaptable; and yes, you can buy "celebrity voice packs" for them, as well as an assortment of effects for roleplaying voices (robots, dragons, vampires, ogres, and so on being very popular). You can also, to a degree, "design your own voice".

So, yes, all this exists already; and yes, Linden Lab sort of hinted that they would be including those advanced features on their own client, so that you won't need to buy a third-party application — but don't expect that "soon".

Tegg, the quality of these applications has increased dramatically. It's obviously not perfect — no, you won't sound like Johnny Depp or Jennifer Lopez — but since we humans are used to "poor sound quality" from our mobile phones, the quality of those voice morphers is "as good as" a mobile phone. What an improvement! And they're getting better all the time.

Vicki, you're so right. The battle against voice was doomed to fail as soon as it was pretty clear that the overwhelming majority wants voice and has no interest in any "concept" of Second Life. They just want to yell and insult people, or use it as a cheap replacement of phone calls with their friends, or, obviously, for dating purposes, and 'hitting' on babes to see if they are, well, really 18-year-old bombshells and not old wives at home (or, worse, guys in drag ). A very small part of the voice-lovers want it for business or education — ie. doing meetings, presentations, classes in SL. One might appreciate that teaching using voice can, in some circumstances, be faster than typing and viewing slideshows.

When the number of people in SL who wanted voice increased beyond the majority of users (ie. in this case about 4 million of users), LL felt the time was ripe to introduce it. It's a well-known effect that voice draws newbies like honey draws ants — expect an increase, now that SL is voice-enabled. There was a slight stagnation in the number of new registrations, and LL wants to revert that process. Note that almost all of these newbies will never "stay" in SL (it's a well-researched effect), but they will certainly come to it, and LL needs those numbers to constantly increase — even at the loss of other things. People who dislike voice will just have to adapt. We have a good excuse for a few weeks — saying that the First Look Voice-enabled Viewer crashes our computer or something — but once Voice is part of the default viewer, that excuse sadly won't work any more.

This all has long, long ago been discussed. In 2003, Richard Bartle, inventor of MUDs, wrote the reference article on why voice is such a bad idea in platforms like SL:

http://www.gamegirladvance.com/archives/2003/07/28/not_yet_you_fools.html

Still, history proved Bartle's right: companies never read these articles and to the voice of reason (pun intended!) but only to the marketing hype surrounding voice. As if voice communications were a major breakthrough — we have a phone system since the 1880s, it's hardly a novelty any more!

I also agree that people will behave very strangely these days. Instead of being in an active display of body language — in SL, that means gestures, and looking at people, and sitting near them, and playing looped sounds, whatever, in a flurry of activity when people are communicating — voice chat, from an outsider, is like watching an alien civilisation. A group of people are loosely around in a circle. They don't move, they don't even look at each other, they seem to be frozen in place. You address them (in chat, IM) and they don't reply, and totally ignore you. They might even oversee who you are. They're silent drones, statues in the landscape, just like the trees — mere decoration. And yet, they're laughing like crazy behind their headsets, yelling "hello? can you hear me? hahaha" all the time, or "hey, move the slider down on your mic, it's picking up too much noise!" and the sort of nonsense that goes on for hours and hours — assuming you can understand each other, which is mostly the case.

It's a sorry sight. But I'm afraid it's going to be the norm from now on. When I get invited to a party or an official launch, now I have to look around and see what people are doing. If they're carelessly distributed across the landscape and totally frozen and not doing anything, they're most certainly all using voice. It's time for people like me to leave and go find a group of interesting people to talk to...

Gwyneth Llewellyn
I have to say your previous posting on the subject is totally brilliant. Awesome stuff! Its says it all. I will keep that to assist me in making points against voice on SL. I'm afraid I actually copied and pasted a couple of lines (hope you didnt mind) and used it in a welcome area (ahern) that actually did have a small group all huddled together using voice just like you say. Oh My, did I wind them up. Ha Ha got em all going so much they were tellin me to get lost and what are you doing here if you dont have voice and all that kind of discriminatory stuff, which as you say is going to occur now in future.
And Yes I totally agree LLabs is only interested in getting them here not whether they stay or not after they experience it - totally concur with you on that.
regards
V

Snake, Gwynn and Vicki, 3 great reads. Thank You.

I think your post is interesting , if not entirely factual.

First of all you numbers are silly, theres no way 4 million people who are in Second Life want voice. For the simple reason that theres not 4 million people IN second life.

Second Life has only a 10% retention, added to the fact that there are 1.4 accounts (known, actual is certainly worse) average per person. That gives you somewhere less than 600,000 current users.

Considering the peak concurrency is little less than 50k, that seems reasonable.

Second, I dont think even half the regular users were clamoring for voice. I think the MAJORITY of SL residents were completly unconcerned with the issue - With a vocal MINORITY who wanted voice, and another vocal minority who reacted to the idea negatively.

While the ones who arent interested in voice are the majority of those who vote on the forums, they arent likely the majority of those who had a definite interest in the issue before it was brought up.

Whether a majority of current residents supports the Idea of Voice NOW they've been told it is here/coming .. well that could be. But the picture you painted was Linden Labs was giving in to intense community pressure, which is silly, becuase there wasnt any.

Linden Labs, has made no serious effort to even know what stances on issues the current residents have. No, talking to a few people on the betta grid and help island really isnt a reliable polling technique.

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(this part below would be my opinion only)
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Still the bottom line is- Voice is coming get used to it. Some people wont want their Real Voice on Second Life, any more then they want it in other Internet places. So there will be widespread use of voice changers, oh well.

Some dont like the idea of voice for a score of other reasons, and they will either grudgingly use it, or they wont. And theres going to be CONTINUED issues related to that.

People should voice all they want, it would be nice though if they didnt give those not interested a hard time about it.

As for those using the voice changers - if the people talking to them dont like it - they shoudl stop talking to those people on voice.

Oh god...Colette is at it again with more half truths laid out to make her look right and justified in her bitterness towards the company supplying her the product she is addicted to. I think she muted me (dissent is never appreciated) but I'll lay it out for you.

What Colette is unable (or refuses) to understand is that LL doesn't have to literally ask the population what it wants every time it looks at new potential features. They can just look at the fact that there are a ton of people that regularly use Skype and other voice programs along with SL would be all the indication anyone needs to see that there is some sort of demand for the option of voice in concert with SL. Why not integrate it into SL and give it more features? This is a basic idea for product development. I don't know why it's so hard to understand yet here we are again...

Back to the relevant subject at hand, banning voice changers is stupid and unenforceable. It's Prohibition all over again only without anything cool happening in the criminal underworld. Let people express themselves the way they want and if you don't like how they do it then find a different crowd to be around.

I have to deal with bling so you have to deal with voice changers.

The two things don't necessarily go together. In fact, most of the hardcore skype crowd I know aren't particularly interested in SL-Voice, because it isn't usable in the same way that skype is.

In fact, I think of SL-Voice had been done anything like skype, where it was tied to the IM system instead of done as a pseudo-localized, open chat with whoever is nearby, there would be a lot less complaints.



Of course, in this case, it got half-assedly integrated into SL and has less features, but whatever.



Meeting every conceivable desire of every section of the user base is actually poor product development. It's what is called "bloat" or "feature creep".

SL voice CAN be what you're looking for. That's what the individual and group chat features do, and they're even integrated with the IM user interface. There may well be residents who only use voice for IM-style chat, and never use the open voice chat at all.

Except that there is no way to turn on ONLY IM-style voice chat. To use Voice in IM's, you must still listen to open Voice Chat, even if you refuse to speak that way.

i found a cool solution, disabled voice in my sim

How about instead of restricting us any more than they already have, they ban you to satisfy the masses?

With this whole new adult-content B.S. and all the other snafoos that have been going on with the Germans and uppity conservatives (or just close minded people in general), you will honestly ask for another restriction?

No thank you -- I reserve the right to change my voice.