[MUD-Dev2] Importance of emoting (Was: A rantagainstVanguardreviews and rants)

[John Buehler]

Raph Koster writes:

> John Buehler wrote:
> > Richard A. Bartle writes:
> >
> > > On 29 March 2007, John Buehler wrote:
> > > >Is a textual emote in a graphical environment a reasonable thing?
> > >         Sure it is. It works for speech, why not emotes?
> >
> > Because emotes are visual and speech is not.  Typed speech is a crutch
> > until we can get voice working properly.  Whether that means player
> > voices or character voices, I have no idea.
>
> Typed speech is not a crutch; it's an alternate mode of expression. It
> has different strengths and weaknesses. Large-scale multithreaded
> conversations, for example, are something that text enables that voice
> fails at.
>
> Technologies accrete, they don't replace. Text chat arrived in the 70s,
> and isn't likely to just go away; it may lose some popularity, but it
> will likely remain as a feature in the same way that the command line
> still lurks in all the current OSes.

Typed speech is, indeed, a crutch.  I know that because I cannot talk to
people when I want to talk to them.  I use text in those situations.  The
fact that text is a crutch for voice is not saying that text has no value at
any time.  The very fact that we invented text as a medium after we had
voice suggests that voice is no panacea.

JB