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When
I was introduced to the blooming new gaming genre of
MMOs in the late 90s, the majority of us were on dialup connections and
voice
communication wasn’t even a dream yet. Cell phones were 2-ton
bricks and cost
an average of $8/minute so unless you had two phones lines at home, you
were
doing all your communicating through a keyboard. As long as you learned
how to
type at a decent speed or at least knew how to set up some macros with
commonly
used phrases such as, “Out of mana” or
“Add incoming”, you got by just fine.
As
time moved on, technology moved with it. Eventually,
services such as Ventrillo and Teamspeak began popping up and proved
popular
with gamers. Now they were able to finally keep their hands free from
distraction while they concentrated on the game and communication
speeds
increased accordingly. This allowed developers to slowly start
introducing
encounters that would prove difficult for players to coordinate through
typing,
but easily manageable through instant voice communication.
Little
did we know that in 2006, Turbine would set the
world of player communication on fire with the release of
style="">Dungeons & Dragons Online
with its in-game voice communication
service. On the surface, it seemed like a great idea. To this day,
I’m sure
there are plenty of players that still feel it was. By implementing its
own
in-game voice service, it allowed those that didn’t want to
deal with setting
up a third-party program from having to deal with the hassles that
entailed.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, the addition of this system had an
unintended consequence.
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When
you were grouped with other players, DDO had an icon
that would appear if you had voice chat activated. At the very least,
it would
show if you were set to hear, even if you had no microphone. Since the
game
itself included a voice communication service, most players felt there
was no
reason for others in their group to not have it turned on. As a result,
it
quickly became virtually impossible to find a group if you had yours
turned
off. To this day, there are those that feel it should be mandatory for
other
players to be able to hear their group when playing.
On
the surface, such a request seems innocuous but this
view leaves out one important piece to the puzzle – the human
equation. I’m in
the category of those that didn’t (and don’t) like
to turn on their voice chat.
When I play games that aren’t for work, I play for the sake
of relaxing. I like
to be immersed in the actions and adventures of my character. Having
players
talk (even if it’s only about in-game events) immediately
breaks this sense of
immersion.
More
importantly, I don’t want to hear about what’s
going
in the daily drudgery you call your life. I’m sorry if your
truck needs a new carburetor.
I’m sorry if I don’t want to listen to your drunken
ass ramble on about how
awesome your dog is. I’m sorry if you feel it’s
rude, but I don’t care that your
baby is beginning to crawl. In other words, we all have a billion
things going
on in our lives and I play games to take a break from all of it. That
means
that I have zero interest (or tolerance) for listening to those that
insist on
sharing everything about theirs.
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Obviously,
this dynamic can change when you’re dealing
with personal friends. This includes those made online as well as off.
My
complaint comes largely in the realm of pickup groups. I
don’t care what’s
going on in your life when the chances of running into you again are
very
small. If we do happen to find ourselves playing together on occasion,
then I’m
happy to have some general chatter in-game, but only through text. This
allows
my brain to compartmentalize anything that takes place in the chat box.
It also
allows me to choose when and if I even look at the chat box.
As
games continue to get more and more complex, I can
understand the desire to lean more heavily on voice communication, and
if I
were in a raid, I would completely understand a request to have voice
chat
turned on so you can hear instructions from the raid leader. That being
said,
that’s the only time I’m willing to compromise on
this.
So
this brings me to my question for all of you. How many
of you prefer typing to chatting? Is it a generational thing? Since I
also
don’t use a headset when playing on my Xbox 360 or PS3, does
this just mean I’m
an anti-social ass? Don’t be shy. Be sure to leave a comment
below. If you’re
not comfortable doing that, you’re also more than welcome to
href="https://twitter.com/Dalmarus">give me a holler
on Twitter!
