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

[Paul Canniff]

Areas I worry about with voice chat:

  a) Simultaneous conversations are hard

  b) Past conversations are hard to re-visit, even the immediate
  past

  c) Immersion is affected

  d) Bandwidth (eventually goes away as a problem when we all have
  T1s)

  e) Filtering is hard - profanity, etc.

Since Brett started with immersion and roleplay, I will start with
that and probably end with that to keep a little focus.  (I tend to
ramble)

Regarding inbound data (stuff one hears over voice chat): people who
have fragile immersion states are already being assaulted by
inappropriate names, bad typing, scare roleplaying, and such.  Some
tiny percent will be pushed over the edge by voice chat.  The rest
are either gone already or will soldier on.  Meanwhile voice chat
will have a strong appeal to a large number of bad typists, slow
typists, etc.  I think the total appeal will increase as measured by
player retention.  I might be wrong of course, and endless arguments
can ensue about who the "long-term paying audience" is for
commercial games.

Regarding outbound data (stuff one says over voice chat): voice
reduces the ability to impersonate, not roleplay.  Brett speaks
about " declining to join a guild with such a voice requirement
would generally reveal that the person in the game is roleplaying in
some way."  That idea seems to go beyond roleplay and to a level of
actually deceiving (not necessarily in an evil way) others as to
your true persona.  I agree that becomes very hard, but it is not
the only way to roleplay.  (In fact gender impersonation is often
done WITHOUT roleplay, for various reasons including to gain a
perceived advantage in MMPORPG social settings.)  I would assert
that any attempt in TEXT to impersonate an Orc is likely to already
be detected.  :)

It is possible to roleplay even with limited sensory fidelity.  For
example, people do roleplay in person, though I expect that the
majority of MMORPG players may never have been exposed to the old
paper-and-pencil style of RPG.  In person it is quite hard for a
petite female to impersonate a male half-ogre, but roleplay is still
very possible, for some part of the gaming audience.  Those folks
use imagination to fill in missing data or to compensate for
conflicting data.  I think those very folks who roleplay in the most
hardcore fashion are those best equipped to deal with voice chat,
just as they dealt with limited choices in hairstyles etc.

Will voice chat reduce game appeal?  Maybe for a certain subset, but
I assert that the subset is small.  Text =3D radio, voice =3D TV.  I
think it will increase the total audience.  I also think that, like
radio, text chat will persist for quite some time in parallel -- see
b,c,d,e in my list above.  :)=20

Paul Canniff
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