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

[Richard A. Bartle]

On 17th October 2004, Mike Rozak wrote:

> If a large number of players are using 3rd party voice chat, how
> does a VW design co-opt voice chat in order to mitigate the
> immersion damage and add some gameplay elements into it?

The genre can play a part - a contemporary or Science Fiction world
would be less troubled by people having real voiced and different
accents, for example. Nevertheless, role-playing would still be
considerably dampened.

> Voice chat might be beneficial in some cases:

I agree. There'd be no problem in, say, an educational virtual world
where the players knew one another in real life and weren't even
attempting to role-play.

> (Maybe it's the way to go for people who are poor typists?)

But they take everyone who isn't a poor typist with them, or at
least split the player base along voice/text lines. It's hard to
talk to one person while typing to someone else, so if you come
across someone who doesn't use your preferred method of
communication then you won't be inclined to communicate with them.

I don't think being unable to type is all that much of an issue
anyway (at least if you're physically able to type - obviously it IS
an issue if you have no hands). Millions of people send text
messages to one another every day using their mobile phones -
devices that are quite able to support speech. They could phone and
leave a voicemail message, but they use SMS instead. Typing
something on an ABC keyboard using only your thumb isn't exactly
easy (at least initially), yet that doesn't put them off.

This raises another issue: sometimes text is actually better than
voice. They are relatively silent, for example: my students in class
send one another text messages because that way I don't get to hear
what they say.  I personally would find it very difficult to play a
virtual world with voice in it because my constant talking would
annoy the other 3 people in the house.

Another thing that text has over voice is multi-tasking. I can carry
on 4 conversations in text simultaneously, but I can't in voice.
Voice does have some huge advantages over text, but text also has
some over voice that can't be discounted.

> - A group of RL friends playing together in the game. There's no
> point disguising voices, and voice-chat is more convenient than
> typing.

While they're playing together, yes, fair enough. If they're bound
closely enough, they can consider the group to be the number 1
object of advancement in the virtual world, rather than their own
characters, and instant communication between members would assist
that. The question is, what happens when they come across other
people with whom they want to communicate?

> - In a VW where people aren't trying to be anonymous.

It's not so much anonymity as pseudonimity, but yes, if you don't
mind people knowing who you are in RL (and, importantly, if the
people with whom you're playing don't mind either) then this is
fine. It means that the virtual world doesn't allow for hero's
journey type progression, but if you don't want players to
experience that then putting voice into it won't hurt.

> Besides, having ever-resurrecting medieval warriors using virtual
> walkie-talkies to raid a dragon with damage numbers wafting from
> its body is already close to zero immersion.

It is when you look at it objectively from the outside, but it isn't
when you're there, doing it.

Richard
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