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

[Douglas Galbi]

Richard Bartle wrote:

> 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.

A key factor in the take-off of mobile text messaging (SMS) was
pricing.  SMS was much cheaper than mobile voice calls in Europe in
the 1990s, and that provided an obvious incentive for its
development there.  Efforts to promote SMS in the US have not been
successful (all non-voice revenue in the US in 2002 amounted to 2.4%
of total mobile revenue).  One clear challenge in that, with
bucket-based mobile minute pricing in the US, the marginal cost of
most mobile voice calls is zero.  Given (equal) monetary cost of
use, most persons most of the time prefer voice communication to
text communication.

Consider letter-writing vs. telephone calling.  One might argue,
rightly and convincingly, that it's much nicer to get a letter than
a phone call from a friend or lover.  But most persons most of the
time communicate at a distance with friends and family through phone
calls, not letter writing.  Social use of email and instant
messaging is not as well studied, but I think that, all else equal,
the same pattern of popular choice holds.

Industry views on the future of SMS are mixed. Some analysts see a
brilliant future for it, while at least one person who has actually
done some serious study of the issue reportedly wrote:

"There will always be a need for asynchronous mobile communication,"
Ling noted in a recent e-mail to me, "but SMS will go the way of
paisley ties and bell bottom pants, i.e., will become a nostalgic
phenomenon that today's teens will remember fondly as part of their
youth." See

  http://www.thefeature.com/article?articleid=100945&ref=6e0793a4ab798225c9e074f1040d8aa4::7052

and note dissenting comments.

Paul Canniff wrote:

> Text = radio, voice = 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

The identification text=book, voice=radio seems to me more sensible.
In the US since about 1925 (about when radio broadcasting began),
discretionary time spent reading and writing has fallen from about 6
hours per week to 3 hours per week, while time spent "watching"
television has increased from 0 hours to 16 hours per week.  For
details and sources, as well as discussion of the shift of narrative
drama, e.g.  "soap operas," from radio to TV, See Section V, "Sense
in Media Evolution" of "Sense in Communication," freely available at
www.galbithink.org Overall, it seems to me that the data strongly
supports a connection between sensuous scope and popular use.

It seems to me a mistake to limit consideration of voice to words.
Many organisms other than humans respond to sounds that like
organisms make.  The way human beings make sense of sound is not
limited to words (for discussion of some interesting experimental
data, see Section II of "Sense in Communication).  Giving virtual
world participants opportunities to make expressive, non-verbal
sounds would support more sensuous scope at less cost than voice
chat/voice cloaking, and would provide a different creative
dimension for role-playing.

Douglas Galbi
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