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

[Damion Schubert]

Mike Rozak wrote:

> The question for the designer becomes: Does the design fight the
> trend, embrace it, ignore it, or co-opt it? Or, in the case of
> macroing and E-bay, solve the problem that the 3rd party add-ons
> are attempting to solve... namely boring gameplay.

Virtually all of the upper-tier Shadowbane guilds play with
Teamspeak or some other 3rd party voice program.  Voice chat works
well for Shadowbane for a number of reasons.  Mostly, we're a
siege-oriented PvP game, and as such, the need to communicate
efficiently is enormous.  It's not about making Shadowbane less
_boring_ in our case, it's about being competitive at all.

If we had time and resources, we'd love to integrate voice chat, but
without that time and resources, we're happy to point our customers
to 3rd party solutions.  We're also happy that our customers are
willing to take the bandwidth costs onto themselves.

> An ideal solution for voice chat would be a realistically morphed
> voice with a realistic accent. However, any attempt to correct
> accents using speech recognition will result in characters
> occasionally speaking words they didn't intend to say, which
> although highly amusiing, is worse than the original accent. Only
> voice morphing is feasable, and it is of questionable quality,
> although better can be done than http://www.audio4fun.com/.

And while I'm the first to admit that Shadowbane isn't a
roleplayer's nirvana, few people care when a female talks with a
male's voice.  One of the first rules of making these games is that
there are fewer true role-players playing your game than you think
they are.  Most are there to have a good time - your world is their
equivalent of the corner pub.  The fact that their guildmaster looks
like Daisy Duke and talks like Bubba the Truck Driver is usually
little more than an interesting footnote.

Having a female speaking with a male's voice isn't always immersion-
breaking - you can get used to it.  However, having a voice
modulated to the point where you can't understand what the speaker
is saying is ALWAYS immersion-breaking.  Anytime a 'feature' acts as
an obstacle to communication, you've got something that is an
immersion stumbling block to roleplayer and red-named ganker alike.

> I agree that a poorly morphed voice with its original speaker's
> accent can be immersion breaking.

> The arguments against voice chat are:
>   - Immersion breaking.

The largest argument against is, simply put, the amazing ability for
players to be as annoying and abrasive as possible.  One of the
fallouts of our 3rd party reliance is that you will never go around
town square and hear players chatter randomly - you'll only hear
people who you've actively let connect to your TS server.  Some
might say this is bad, but I'd argue it works out well.  You're not
likely to hear someone else spout out vile, racist talk that we
cannot easily filter, store or police -- unless you've let that
person into your guild - in which case you can easily ditch him and
never have to hear his filthy mouth again.

> Voice chat might be beneficial in some cases:

>   - For the SE Asian market, voice chat is probably the way to go
>   since typing is such a drag. Same issue with consoles. (Maybe
>   it's the way to go for people who are poor typists?)

When XBox was looking for MMO titles, they were only interested in
those with Voice Chat solutions.  They clearly think it's the future
over there, and it probably is.

>   - The raid communcation system where the speed of voice far
>   outweighs any loss to immersion. 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.

Voice chat is ALWAYS optimal in squads with people you trust.

>   - Any others?

> Question:

>   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? Perhaps
>   VW voice-chat for guilds can be magically spyed upon or jammed
>   by other players. (This only works if the VW can hog the audio
>   record channels and prevent other voice-chats from working,
>   since no guild would agree to using a potentially compromised
>   in-world voice chat. I think I know how to do this.)

I've always wanted to make a South Park MMO.  You could modulate
everyone's voices to be high and squeaky like the kids', and the
profane environment would be expected and embraced.  Plus, the art
would be bone cheap...

--d
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev