[MUD-Dev] voice vs. text

[Matthew Mihaly]

On Sun, 20 Feb 2000, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:

> > Mind you, I should admit that voice chat changes all the math, and that I
> > think voice chat will be ubiquitous and necessary to be a major
> > communications app or multiplayer game in the future.  
> 
> I would disagree here, because I think it would be rather difficult to
> maintain a role that way. I can "talk like a girl" all I want, but if
> you heard my voice there is positively no way you'd take me for anything
> but a big middle-aged man. (I may only be thirty, but I *sound* a lot
> older and bigger.) Most people don't play games to be themselves, and
> when I was much younger I adored the way I could act like an adult on a
> text-only medium... and be treated like one. It's interesting and
> instructive to be someone else for a while, but video and voice would
> doom all of that... so I think the benefits of text channels far
> outweigh the liabilities. 

I'd have to agree with Dr. Cat here. I think adding real-time voice chat
to games is going to be inevitable. I don't know that much about the
technology, but it seems to me that the client could have some sort of
capacity to alter the sound of your voice, no?

--matt




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