MUD Co-Creator Bartle On Voice Chat in MMOGs 154
Fusty writes "In 1979, Richard Bartle co-created a MUD, the first system for players to share adventures online. Aside from veteran game coding skills, Bartle has strong opinions about game design. He recently examined the idea of voice chat in massively-multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). His opinion? Not Yet You Fools! - on Game Girl Advance."
Hrmm (Score:5, Funny)
"n0 way I k1ll3d u d00d! u c4mp1ng f4g!"
Re:Hrmm (Score:2, Funny)
Oh, and this one is funny too
No, it's just trying to put off becoming an anime (Score:2)
*honk*
Re:not for MMORPG, but it's perfect for co-op FPS (Score:3, Informative)
Unfortunately, this isn't always an option.
Unreal Championship on the Xbox has, quite possibly, the worst voice set up ever. In team based play there are 2 channels for each team, and only 4 out of the possible 8 players can be on any one chanel.
And even in the games where the entire team can talk to eac
Re:not for MMORPG, but it's perfect for co-op FPS (Score:2, Interesting)
But if they made a system where the volume of the voice is related to the distance of the one speaking?
If you're standing in a *real* town, you may hear lots of people talking in the background, but that doesn't hinder you from having a conversation with someone standing right next to you.
And if you're in a pub, you may very well be unable to have a conversation with someone right next to you due to all the
Could he write some Slashcode??? (Score:5, Funny)
Okay, here's the scenario:
Strong opinions: All Slashdotters have them
Voice vhat : Vow! That'd be cool over here...
Massively-multiplayer : The very definition of Slashdot.
Online role-playing: Yeah, we have the MS shills, the Apple astro-turfers, the GNU devotees, the FSF freaks, the trolls, the GNAA folks...
Let's get this chap to write Slashcode I say!
-
problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:problems (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:problems (Score:4, Funny)
I have a decent she-elf accent!
Re:problems (Score:1)
Re:problems (Score:1)
Here's $100. Buy me some.
Re:problems (Score:1)
Re:problems (Score:3, Funny)
Re:problems (Score:1)
Re:problems (Score:5, Insightful)
What role playing element? In all successful MMORPGs so far, role playing dies for most players around level 5 or so, except as an occasional thing.
Take a look at group chat in a game like EQ or DAoC during an idle moment between fights. If the players are chatting about game stuff, they most likely will be chatting as human game players, not as citizens of Norrath or Camelot. If not chatting about game-specific stuff, they'll be talking about movies, TV, sports, politics, and everything else people talk about on, say, AOL or MSN.
Re:problems (Score:1)
Oh wait, people. Gotcha
Re:problems (Score:2)
With text, he can easily do that. Let the voice through, and the minute it changes pitch in the mi
Re:problems (Score:2)
Roleplaying in Ultima Online is alive and well (and I dare say the game is still succesfull despite its age). Not every player is into RP, but there are many who like it, and some of them are RP'ing full time.
Thank god UO has no chat window... 'spoken' text appears over the avatars' heads instead, which greatly helps immersion and makes it quite easy to ignore non-roleplayers around
Re:problems (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:problems (Score:2)
Those technical issues are going to drive technology in voice compression technology as well as bandwidth.
There will be some inevitable failures of course, but those are just stepping stones.
Re:problems (Score:1)
Re:problems (Score:3, Insightful)
When you use an IM program like MSN messenger, do voice streams run through the server? No, they're client-to-client. There will be other problems, like people behind NAT, people on dialup who won't be able to listen to more than 2 people shouting to each other, but so what? People with the most impressive hardware/pipe will get the best experience. Same as it always was.
You might also want to note that there already are non-MMORPG games that use voice. They seem
Re:problems (Score:2)
When we play LAROS it is totally ruined.
Even before that, playing pen and paper games, when I had to talk to the people it made it absolutly no fun at all. I was thrilled when MMORGs came out, because when I had to type everything it really added a whole new dimmension to my role playing.
CPU argument stands though
Re:problems (Score:5, Insightful)
None of course, but the player doesn't care. No more than the player will care about voice commands to the game or beeps notifying them of events. If you look at a lot of these games players can also do a lot of "impossible" things like talk to one another wherever they are in the game, if you remove that you'll annoy the players just like any paper RPG game master will annoy players who can't chit-chat out of character just because their character is currently next door.
Tolkien summed up the key to believable fantasy long before MMORPG - it is consistency rather than simulation. The online world has no value to the people who crave the physical experience - thats what the SCA is for. Instead its about story telling - which means that evil guys behave in a believable fashion, swords work the same way all the time, books can all be read and so on.
Another great example is distance. It takes eight hours to make some journey, now try inflicting that on players with live reality simulated eight hour horse rides.
As to "I can tell Foo the Elf is English", I already can - Foo the Elf can spell colour 8),
Abuse btw isnt a problem - the technology for scanning voice data is well understood for things like voice mailboxes, "chat line" services and of course on a large scale by the security services 8).
Alan
"Destroys the ROLE PLAYING element"? (Score:2)
*honk*
Re:problems (Score:2)
Its bad enough right now with female avatars and attention and flirting, but if the geeks on the other end had 100% confirmation that this was an ACTUAL GIRL behind the big breasted elf avatar, she would never get a moment to herself.
And god help us all if the girl turns out to be Japanese.
Re:problems.... remember D&D? (Score:2, Insightful)
Um, the last time I remember, online RPGs are simply an extension of "offline" RPGs like D&D. And as I recall, people playing D&D don't write down what they want to say on little pieces of paper and show them to everybody. They talk to each other.
In my experience of playing D&D, people are way more into the roleplaying element when they're talking out-loud. My (brief) experience of MMORPGs is that people break character all the time.
Sure, no
Re:problems (Score:2)
No, that's still fantasy, reality would be the elf babe sounding like a 13 year old boy with his voice cracking.
I don't see the problem (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't see anything wrong with it. You can set aside some game servers for voice, and some for non-voice, depending on demand.
To each his own!
role playing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:role playing... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:role playing... (Score:1)
But, maybe they are roleplaying a selfish character?
Props to realism!
Re:role playing... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, sadly you aren't. You're in the majority. I say that as a person, who likes role-playing games, and not item gathering/leveling games.
> Why should I have to pretend to be an stupid ogre?
Because that is the whole idea of a role-playing game? When you want to l/m/i/etc, play Diablo, but not a role-playing game. Because it destroys the fucking athmosphere, wandering through, say Middle-Earth, and see a knight in shiny armor called "+R011Ki114".
Well, actually that's
Re:role playing... (Score:1)
What the public wants, it will get. Go found your own exclusive club! You cannot expect people "in the wild" to create the exact atmosphere you desire.
Re:role playing... (Score:2)
Of course, this is an assumption, but I think there are other people like me, who feel that level-and-gather people are destroying the atmosphere. As I said, I believe the people like me are in the minority of the active players. I don't want to deny them to play the game the way the like.
But I think it is a sizeable minority, which is able and willing to pay for a game, which would more carter for their needs. So, I t
Re:role playing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:role playing... (Score:2)
As I wrote in another post, I'm not a hard-core roleplayer. In my experience, every attempt at role-play was appreciated by role-players, and non-roleplay was tolerated.
The only thing I heard of, what you could call "punishmemt" of a non-role-player was the following:
A NRP wanted to buy something at a market place from a RP from the opposing faction, the RP denied, because the NRP was f
Re:role playing... (Score:1)
Re:role playing... (Score:1)
Yeah well (Score:2, Funny)
heh, yeah. (Score:5, Funny)
I disagree (Score:4, Interesting)
But seriously I can also understand the other side who thinks it's a problem. If they allowed everyone to hear everyone in the bazzar that may be cool only in a perfect world where little johnny has his gag in place. Otherwise you'll have some of the most annoying things going on. I would give such a system 10 minutes before someone started playing the soundtrack to a pr0n or worse. And the bad part there is in that type of situation how do you find out who's doing it?
Private chat channels YES.
General chat NO!
Re:I disagree (Score:1)
Re:I disagree (Score:2)
Probably the best game ever was playing System Shock 2 with my friend using voice chat. The game became almost real - we played through it in only two sittings. With the voice chat and the lights out, the game became *very* immersive.
Chat may not be ready for MMORPGs, but it's more than ready for regular multiplayer games.
Wow. Is this a mistake? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Wow. Is this a mistake? (Score:1)
Choice (Score:4, Insightful)
This option would keep most parties happy: the newbies who are drawn to the promise of trash-talking, the tight-knit group of friends who like to chat while they explore and conquer, and the veterans who would rather not have voice interfere with their virtual world immersion.
While Marx (maybe Lennin? I get the modern Socialists mixed up) complained about the tyranny of choices, I think most contemporary people find choices to be a good thing.
Re:Choice (Score:1)
Re:Choice (Score:2)
No, you don't understand - the article is about in-game voice taking away choice from everyone.
Once a game with significant popularity implements voice, then every game out there will put it in. And people will start using it, not just to talk within their guilds, but to talk to everyone out there. That removes the concept of choice from those who don't want to listen to other people, because technology isn't rea
think hes forgotten about a certain games origins. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:think hes forgotten about a certain games origi (Score:2)
The guy doesn't get it.... (Score:5, Interesting)
It won't, and I have proof: everyone who has ever played a tabletop roleplaying game knows what I'm talking about. If a voice is enough to destroy your suspension of disbelief, it wasn't very strong to begin with.
Not only that, but voice filters can (and will) make you sound like a troll (
The only halfway valid argument he makes is the 'difficulty' of having to deal with two streams of communication, text and voice. And the only people who can't cope with that aren't too bright; we've all had school here where you read and write down what the teacher has written on the blackboard
Fact is that voice is just the best/fastest comm system available. The only problem it does have, which mister whiskers didn't even address, is that sometimes people don't speak the common carrier language well enough...in which case they might have to type, thereby communicating slower than others.
Which means they'll either learn better english (or mandarin, whatever) or go adventuring with people who speak the same language.
And as for abuse; even a basic personal kick/ban system will take care of that.
In short: the guy might know his MUD's, but I think he should have stayed there.
Re:The guy doesn't get it.... (Score:1)
erm, no. The MOST I ever did was listen to the lecture and doodle over the printouts, most of the time I slept or read a book, and printed the notes out later...
However I learnt to sleep with my eyes open, does that count?
Re:The guy doesn't get it.... (Score:1)
Re:The guy doesn't get it.... (Score:2)
Your second point however is true...but nearly everyone who plays computer games has had at least some secondary school education. Not only that, but you can
Re:The guy doesn't get it.... (Score:2)
One, the tech is already there. It's been around for a while now, too; realtime voice masking is not only possible, but has been and is done.
Secondly, so what if the voice doesn't match up to the character? For those really bothered, they can use voicemasking tech, and the rest can just use that imagination which worked fine in tabletop games (and many other parts of life).
I mean, come on! Now you're reading text, for chissakes! How much doesn't that break
Re:The guy doesn't get it.... (Score:2)
Fair enough, there is enough place in the world for contrary beliefs.
We'll just have to see for ourselves when such games come to market (and I hope you are right that the tech is good enough, no use having bad games if we can have good one directly).
So, Voice destroys roleplaying.. ? (Score:3, Interesting)
I do wonder if he's ever played a tabletop, or freeform, roleplaying game? If he did, did he and the other players sit there passing notes instead of speaking so they didn't have to suspend any disbelief for voices?
Roleplaying has a history far longer than MMORPGs, and it's mainly a vocal one. I consider it much easier to manage to get into a character if you speak what they say, and the fact you're typing on a keyboard isn't there to get in the way. I'd say that was a far greater intrusion of reality than someone sounding 'wrong', I don't normally communicate face-to-face with people by typing.
Some players do change their voice, put on accents and so forth, but most just use their normal voices, and it still works if the player can roleplay. If they can't roleplay then it doesn't matter if they're speaking or typing- what's said will still not feel right.
I have played some MMORPGs, admittedly though not to any great extent each. I generally found the worlds to be repetative and also many people just didn't act in the world at all, much metagaming. I remember trying Ultima Online for a bit, spending a few hours digging and lugging stuff so I could make a few low-quality daggers, then going off to the bank to deposit the new-found fortune I'd made.
The bank was absolutely packed, the machine slowed to a crawl. It looked like everyone in the town had come to the bank, and bought their horses, pet dragons, etc. with them.
Whilst some were idly wandering against the tide of lag, many were standing there shouting prescripted offers of items and so forth.
I'd say it takes less suspension of disbelief to imagine the gruff Scots voice coming out of the headphones to be the Elven swordswoman than it does to imagine r0X0r the Ranger going "So, what shall I do today to help serve the Good? I know, I'll take my horse ScreamingDeff and my enchanted rust turtle ScreamingDeffII and go and shout '****Enchanted Axxes to SELL!***** Offers?' in the bank for a few hours.
I know many of the games have come a way since then, but I still think MMORPGs have a loooong way to go before they could consider voices to be a major problem.
Re:So, Voice destroys roleplaying.. ? (Score:3, Insightful)
That seems like a huge problem to me.
Many people here are bitching that "RPGs were based on voice, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about!" How wrong can you be? The "MMO" part of "MMORPG" precludes using voice. I don't want to hear hundreds of voices around me all the time. I also don't want people to hear me
Re:So, Voice destroys roleplaying.. ? (Score:2)
Not only that, but I type things wrong much, much more often than I say things wrong...I hardly ever do the latter unless I'm drunk! And furthe
simple solution! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:simple solution! (Score:2)
Oh right, it's pretty much the entire point of the article.
I cast Magic Missile! (Score:3, Funny)
He's completely RIGHT! (Score:1)
Counter-Strike is a bad example (Score:2, Insightful)
Team-work is essential, and it's so fast paced that communicating via the keyboard is not an option. The only type of non-voice communication I used was moving the mouse to produce quick visual gestures to tell my team-mate things like "you go first", "duck, so I can climb over there", and stuff like that.
No way are you going to type those. Getting your hand off the mouse for any length of time is not a good idea (unless you're a camper).
Counter-Str
Yeah, destroying the roleplaying element... (Score:2, Funny)
Nice article but: (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Nice article but: (Score:2)
Voicechatting does NOT work in games. (Score:2, Insightful)
1. People will speak all kinds of languages.
2. People will scream.
3. There will not be any 1337speak (that way we can't decide who's a newbie or not)
Re:Voicechatting does NOT work in games. (Score:2)
This reminds me of... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Who the HELL wants to hear actors talk?" H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927
Is this article just the online equivalent?
Re:This reminds me of... (Score:2, Funny)
Mr. Warner must have forseen Gigli...
Re:This reminds me of... (Score:2)
Not really. He isn't flat out against voice in virtual worlds, he just think that the technology is too premature to make it fit with the kind of immersion currently present in these worlds (i.e. your Avatar will sound differently than it looks).
aRgh (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:aRgh (Score:2)
Re:aRgh (Score:2)
Re:aRgh (Score:2)
I can't wait... (Score:5, Funny)
Great. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Great. (Score:2)
Gaming Zine for Girls... Necessary? (Score:4, Insightful)
Girls, to my limited knowledge gleaned from being the father of three daughters (2 of whom game on the PS2 and PC), enjoy games that test problem solving spatial skills like Tetris, Pac Man and The Sims among many others. These are the same games guys play. Sex has nothing to do with it.
Re:Gaming Zine for Girls... Necessary? (Score:2)
Well, the answer is simple: No. In fact, I think that who site is actually more of a disgrace and an insult to women and gamers alike and it simply proves that sex sells [gamegirladvance.com]. Hey, it's perfect marketing, can't say it didn't work. Anyways, as for serious female gamers that I know of (That excludes the "OMG i play cs because that cute boi from halfway across teh world plays it 2!!1" types) mostly enjoy the same games as guys. Some enjoy BF1942, some of em enjoy The Sims, some others enjoy online turn based strate
Re:Gaming Zine for Girls... Necessary? (Score:3, Interesting)
Your own experience with your daughters largely supports this idea. The point is NOT that boys also enjoy Tetris etc., it's that these games are different from most of the offerings and girls can enjoy them.
But anecdotal support is going to be largely irrelevant here--lots of people probably know girls/women who love blasting their way through so
Re:Gaming Zine for Girls... Necessary? (Score:2)
Mod as -1,spelling nazi or -1,unfunny at your discretion.
Who gives a %$#^& about "neccessary"? (Score:3)
So... if somebody thinks GGA is a good idea, more power to them. If it's an oasis of female-positive gaming jour
Nice idea ... (Score:3, Funny)
You'll probably only be able to talk to your party (Score:2)
I'm not convinced this'll have that big an impact on Role Playing. I used voice in Role Playing all the time playing D & D in a room with friends, how's this any different? Besides, Newbies will gladly give up the some role playing to avoid typing (every watch someone who can't touch type playing one of these games, it's painful...). Moreover, I think a lot of people (especially casual game
Hearing Voices (Score:2, Interesting)
Graphical MMORPGs on the other hand could benefit from voice. When you are interacting in a graphical world, actually speaking to each other just makes sense, more sense
Anyone remember Abermud? (Score:3, Insightful)
Bottom line is that some ideas sound great, but just don't work in practice. The technological constraints are such that you end up with something worse than not using that idea at all.
Richard Bartle is an expert on these issues, by the sheer amount of time and effort he has spent on developing MUD. I'd be very cautious about simply dismissing the guy's thoughts. Sure, his idea of commercializing the MUD engine didn't work out. IMHO, though, that gives him more practical experience in what works and what doesn't. He's been on both sides.
Voices in MUDs are bandwidth-intensive and OOC (Out Of Character) unless you've speech synthesis. And, while Festival is a decent system, I don't think it's quite at the point where it can support the quality you'd want.
Speech synthesis requires only that the text be transmitted. Transmitting voice-over-IP, at any kind of quality, requires digitizing the speech and transmitting the result. Even if you assume 10K/sec/voice, I've seen MUSHes with 40-50 people in the same room RPing. That's 500K/second, just for the sound, with one hell of a mixing desk on the other end to merge those streams.
I don't know about you, but I'm not sure there are enough MUDders out there with that kind of bandwidth. Not many home owners have their own T1 line, and DSL at that kind of bandwidth is often sold to businesses only.
So you drop some of the voices, perhaps. And then what's the point of having the VoIP link? If what you get is inferior to plain text (which loses nothing), then who is going to use VoIP for anything other than a novelty?
The final problem is the lack of multicasting. If you've 50 people in a room, the server is going to have to multicast to transmit the volume of data to each user. However, "Internet Providers" don't generally offer multicasting. Unless you're rich. Not for technical reasons, but because they don't know how to bill it, so opt for only providing it for really expensive lines.
Why do you need multicast? Let's look at the numbers. 50 users x 500K/sec/user = 25 M/sec of data, if you unicast it. If you look at the times that there have been unicast transmissions - say of the Leonid meteors - the server rapidly collapses from the load. If multicast were deployed, you could have as many recipients as you liked, and there wouldn't be an issue. But because ISPs are cheapskates and the admins offering public services often aren't as clueful as they could be, the system fails very rapidly, offering nobody anything.
REAL broadband (ie: gigabit to the home) plus multicasting plus good speech synthesis would make audio MUDding a real, practical, possibility. As things stand, the idea is going to be tried (as with Abermud), it will fail, and when the technology does emerge people will remember only the prior failure, not the future possibility.
Some things you just have to wait for. If you want to cut the waiting time, then pressure your ISP to enable multicasting. If you're using DSL, then pressure your ISP to make SDSL available to home users for a reasonable price. But if you do nothing, expect nothing. ISPs are happy to provide you with the smallest scraps of service that you'll tolerate, and that'll never be enough to do quality VoIP MUDding.
I agree (Score:2, Interesting)
I've tried running a voice server for my old EQ guild. At first, a few people would log on and chat about the weather and whatnot, but after a few weeks nearly everyone stopped using it. Except during the few high-intensity raiding situations, it was just another way to chitchat. Eve
Better roleplaying? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Better roleplaying? (Score:2)
Does anyone else remember the game starflight (I think that was the name)? You had a communications officer and depending on the skill, the aliens woult range from being unintelligible to having poor grammar to having perfect english (with a few screwed up colloquilisms like "see you later crocadile"). This was all in text, of course.
Give a shout out if (Score:2)
this is exactly the reason (Score:2)
this is exactly why actors always just mime plays, because we could never believe they were the characters there playing if they spoke.
When this happens, so many filter willl be in place. You will jut be able to choose who you here, that way you can hear people who play the game the way you do.
Now, he says voice can be a good thing, but that it's just not ready. Well Smarty McPants, how will it get perfec
He missed the hard part of changing voices (Score:2)
He got it partially right that we should change my voice to fit my charicter. However he missed the hard part. I'f I'm playing a southern bell, not only does my voice need to change from midwest male to southern female, but the words change. Nobody in the south would use the word pop when they want a carbonated drink, they use soda, while in my area nobody uses the word soda, we use pop. Do you bucket or pail? Vacuume cleaner or Hover? Xerox or copier? Those are just a few examples I can think of, a
Re: assume role while playing (Score:2, Informative)
Other than MUD2? Try his website [mud.co.uk]
Re:Motto da! (Score:1)
Re:Motto da! (Score:1)
(This may be parsed incorrectly)
This is the best I can parse: again:take-return-not-is! all::[...]::. Blood! Darkness! Begins with me
-uso.
Re:Yeah, he's missing the point. (Score:2)
I play book RPG's for roleplaying - Paranoia and Fading Suns are my faves. I've never been fond of dungeon crawlers - "lets get a bunch of human players together to slaughter non-existant monsters". It becomes even more strange in MMO's - "Join a netw
Re:I agree. (Score:3, Insightful)