[MUD-Dev] DESIGN: Role playing and Voice Chat

[John Buehler]

Tess Snider writes:
> On 10/15/05, Damion Schubert <dschubert at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Perhaps what I'm arguing is that roleplaying isn't as important
>> as immersion.

> The original thread you branched this one off of was asking if
> various features Mike Rozak was planning to institute were of
> value or interest to roleplayers, so I've been assuming that we're
> talking about roleplayers.  I think it would be fair to start with
> the assumption that roleplayers do, in fact, want to roleplay.

> Heck, in some games, roleplaying is all the immersion the players
> get.  You can have the best damn room descriptions in the world,
> but after you see the same wallpaper for the 15th time, you really
> don't notice it anymore.  You say that typing chat destroys
> immersion, but typing chat never destroyed anyone's immersion in a
> TinyMUSH.  That's all the immersion there is, man.

Which makes me wonder why voice is going to ruin immersion for
roleplayers (which seems to be the consensus among those who care).
If reading text that is interspersed with system messages, prompts
and wallpaper graphics can be immersive, why is voice an impediment?
Is it simply that it is different?  Is it that it will be equally
immersive, only to a different group of roleplayers than the ones
who find text MUDs immersive?

I'm speculating that those who play and enjoy roleplaying MUDs today
are naturally going to be the ones who find text immersive.  If a
voice MUD came out, it might be that it would need a slightly
different type of player.  One who is more audially-focused.

JB
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