Let's Talk About Talking

March 01, 2007

In a post on the Terranova blog yesterday titled The Inevitability of Voice, game academic Nate Combs talks about in-game voice. Nobody is arguing whether or not it's integral to the future of gaming. Microsoft's Xbox 360 makes extensive use of voice-chat (it's built into the Xbox Live framework). Ventrillo is becoming a de-facto voice tool for MMO games, while many developers are integrating voice chat into their titles (For example Eve Online just announced they're rolling it out on a test server.) This is a process that's been going on for years.

But is it really a good thing? I'll be honest, when I play World of Warcraft, the Barrens chat is bad enough -- I can't imagine if I actually had to listen to the other players. Plus, the believability of the world would be continually shattered: when my hot female Blood Elf friend opens her mouth and suddenly sounds like my emphysemic Uncle Stu, my suspension of disbelief is going out the window (along with my lunch).

And, as Combs and others have mentioned before, hearing someone's voice introduces all kinds of predjudices back into the online world that otherwise wouldn't exist. I'm totally guilty of this. If you and I want to adventure together and you sound like a 12-year-old over my PC speakers, I'm going to make some snap judgments about the way you play. I hate to admit it, but that's the ugly truth.


On the flip-side, there's an immediacy to gaming that you get with real-time communication. My favorite way to play games is with a LAN party (yes, I had one this weekend even.) Gaming becomes like a sport, with smack talking and team planning and side jokes and yelping. Organizing a complex attack that would be a total pain to plan using the keyboard is a cinch when you're in the same room together. It's the best way to play. That's what in-game voice does: it turns the Internet into a giant LAN party.

After wrestling with this issue for a while I decided that in-game chat should be handled consensually within games. That is to say, there's a wall of silence around each player, but I can choose to let my friends through to talk to me with their real voice. If I'm playing an MMO, I can choose not to listen to anyone until they're in my party. Other games already do this well -- Battlefield 2 has a great integrated voice chat where players can group up into squads and only hear chat within their squads.

How about YOU? Do you use voice chat in-game? Do you have any stories? Do you think it should be more restrictive, or less? What do you want to see in the future? Mail me and I'll post some of the best responses here.

      -Fargo

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