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

[Dana V. Baldwin]

Brett Bibby 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.

> Once that happens, just simply declining to join a guild with such
> a voice requirement would generally reveal that the person in the
> game is roleplaying in some way.  At some point, with the majority
> of players using such a communication system, the players will
> roleplay less and less.  It is already hard enough to innovate on
> a large scale and make the world compelling, but imagine if
> everyone is using voice chat....

In our guild, there are many roleplayers and they are cross gender
with characters. We don't roleplay on voice chat, we roleplay on
text chat. I find that this actually drastically increses the
ammount of text chat that is in character.

It could certainly be immersion breaking for outsiders and I don't
see RPG games being able to benefit from widespread voice chat for
all players. Still it's an excellent communicatio and coordination
tool for a group.
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev