Vivox for the Masses

On the eve of Vivox premium voicechat technology integration into EVE Online, Monty Sharma and Robert Seaver take time to introduce us to the latest advances in the field of gaming voicechat.

by Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle

Unlike its perceived large-scale voicechat competitors such as Teamspeak or Ventrilo, googling Vivox won't reveal a brace of sites offering your guild insanely low prices on a 20-slot voice-over-IP server. Vivox isn't a technology available to the general public. Instead, it's a custom voicechat solution available to online game developers, who tune the Vivox featureset to the needs of their gaming community. In EVE Online, for example, this requires support for fast-paced strategic and tactical combat on an epic scale, corporate negotiations (yes seriously!), as well as tools to control griefing and promote rapid moderation.

We'll get more into the nitty gritty of voicechat in EVE in a bit. But first, the obvious question is: why Vivox, when so many online gamers already use a voicechat solution like Teamspeak or Ventrilo? Perhaps this is a welcome question, since no one is asking “why voicechat?” anymore, since the pace of (especially) high-level combat encounters makes voice something more than a luxury.

But, why Vivox, instead of Teamspeak, Ventrilo, or another solution? Robert Seaver, Vivox CEO and Co-Founder, offered a few sensible reasons from the context of EVE Online.

1. Security – Bad things can happen when your IP address is made known to potentially vindictive elements... er, not that EVE might spawn someone out for a little out-of-game revenge, right? Vivox keeps this information under wraps.

2. Convenience – Setting up Teamspeak or Ventrilo server or account isn't the most intuitive process in the world, and passing along the credentials to access your voicechat server to an corporation (a.k.a. guild) who's allied with you is both tedious and a little harrowing (they might turn on you, and if they do, will you remember to fix the permissions?). Vivox takes care of the details; if they're in your corporation or alliance, they can communicate with you. That is, if the gangleader (a.k.a. group leader) allows them to.

3. Functionality – A recent battle in EVE pitted something like 600 ships against 400. How do you begin to manage a voice chat solution in that kind of arena? Not very well, without an integrated voicechat solution that does things like mute the channel when the gangleader speaks.

4. Quality & Performance – When using a peer-to-peer or even a server-based client, audio information might be decoded on your local machine, which can occupy processor cycles at very inopportune times. In a game like EVE Online, lag in any form can be the difference between life and a very expensive death. Vivox recently announced a deal with IBM to use new state-of-the-art BladeCenters to do the processor dirty work apart from the EVE servers and your local machine, and deliver or transmit audio data from your computer as an efficiently mixed stream. This minimizes both line lag and client-side lag, and is probably the most compelling reason to adopt the new Vivox service.

But Vivox comes at a price apart from the regular subscription of EVE Online. Magnus Bergson, CMO of CCP (makers of EVE Online) stated that the cost of the service would be $14.95 a year, with an introductory rate of $9.95. This is a little more expensive than gamers would pay per member for a comparable Teamspeak server (and is about on par with a Ventrilo server). But you also get much more. Vivox offers theoretically infinite scalability, potentially higher quality, a perfomance boost over 3rd party solutions, and integrated functionality. While it might be a “tipping point” issue- where the community as a whole tends to adopt or shun the new tech based on what everyone else is doing- the future of Vivox in EVE Online will no doubt be exciting to watch.

We then were treated to some of the latest developments in voice fonts which, though not implemented in any games yet, could potentially be a huge boon to MMORPG immersion. Seaver described Vivox's vision for voice fonts in games as “morphological”, in that the size of the chest cavity, windpipe, nasal cavity, and other physical factors could govern how the voice is interpreted and sent over game audio. A large orc would sound as big and deep as the player makes the avatar, just as a small fairy would have a voice to match.