[MUD-Dev] DGN: Effect of voice chat on game design

[Per Magne Bjørnerud]

On Wed, 13 Oct 2004 12:59:01 +0800, Brett Bibby
<research at gamebrains.com> wrote:

> With all the posts recently on programs that allow out-of-game
> voice communications (e.g. Roger Wilco, etc.), it has got me
> wondering if this will severly limit the appeal of many games in
> the future.

> For example, if I want to roleplay a female as a RL male, I
> wouldn't be able to join any guilds that require voice if I wanted
> to maintain my roleplaying.  And what about immersion in the
> world? If I'm supposed to be an old battle-hardened Orc, or
> someone with a known accent, and I'm a young female, it would be
> impossible to actually roleplay.

I don't think that is a problem. People would still be fully able to
roleplay, it would just be harder to pretend they are something else
in real life. If a guy wants me to believe he actually is a female,
that's a completely different kind of roleplaying ;)

Remember that many friends have been roleplaying while sitting
face-to-face rolling dice on the table. Knowledge of real life poses
no problems to role-playing.

In fact, I think voice communication could even lead to improved
in-game roleplaying. Obviously, you would in-game text to roleplay
your character. Roleplaying someone's voice would often be terribly
hard, especially for non-native English speakers.

With voice software, all chitchat and out-of-character communication
would default to the voice channel. It would be gone from the game,
and text role play would have been cleaned up a great deal. And I
don't see any problem with a female friend in voice chat doing a
completely in-character emote with her Orc in the game.

--
Per Magne Bjornerud
(1st post, just to see what it's like. Will go back to lurking now. :)
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