[MUD-Dev] On socialization and convenience

[Koster]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Buehler
> Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2001 6:04 PM
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev] On socialization and convenience

> I'll offer an observation about why it seems that socialization
> and downtime seem intimately related: the keyboard and mouse are
> used for all activity in the game.  Socialization requires lots of
> typing.  That same keyboard and mouse combination is used for all
> elements of achieving, killing and exploring.  So if I'm intently
> involved in some activity in the game world, it means that my
> hands are tied, almost literally speaking.

A very important point. A single point of input; adding real-time
voice provides two input channels. In addition, voice in real life
is a much faster input channel than typing is, so the addition of
voice allows you to socialize in smaller timeslices.

> What would a game like EverQuest be like if players or their
> characters could actually talk to each other?  By actually using
> their mouths to speak and their ears to listen?  I suspect that
> socialization would then be entirely tied to how big a mouth the
> player had and little else.

I think it's going to be entirely dependent on the game anyway, and
how much concentration it demands (cf my reply to Jeff
Freeman). People use voice constantly in shooter games such as
Counterstrike. But they don't socialize with it because the game
itself is very intense and offers a lot of sustained, high pressure
decision-making. Instead, it is seen as a better way to accomplish
the game tasks.

> As far as I'm concerned, there's no need for architected downtime
> periods in order to encourage socialization.

Obviously, I still disagree. What I will agree with is that the
downtimes can be made much smaller if you support a faster means of
communication; and I'd say that this is a universal principle. You
can encourage more communication in any game by either a) slowing
the pace of the game or b) speeding up the communication
facilities. It's a simple mathematical equation. You can either make
the window bigger or the throughput greater.

> What we need is to move socialization to a separate game
> 'channel'.  This could be done with players talking to each other,
> or with characters talking to each other.  In the case of players
> talking, provide low quality audio through that broadband
> connection.  In the case of characters talking, use speech-to-text
> on input and text-to-speech on output.  Do the same with the NPCs.
> Impractical with current technologies?  Probably.  This is why I
> started with offering a simple observation.  I don't see a
> 'solution' with current technologies.

It's not entirely impractical. Cybertown, for example, uses the
text-to-speech stuff.

-Raph
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