What happened to voice chat?!

[job32]

What ever happened to the old saying " Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me. "

Those sayings were said for a reason. When words can be criminalised, you have tyranny. Punishment is for violent crimes, sexual crimes, thievery & treason.

 

[Burzuru]

What ever happened to the old saying " Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me. "

Those sayings were said for a reason. When words can be criminalised, you have tyranny. Punishment is for violent crimes, sexual crimes, thievery & treason.

honestly if someone called me mean names online i would just think its the funniest thing.

 

[Nidstang]

It's twofold.
1 - centralized chat apps like Discord took over. People use them and just talk with friends instead of chatting in in-game lobbies.

2 - Censorship pushes. Game companies are so afraid of people crying and being offended that they block and ban for the slighest offense. They fail to realize that trash talk is an integral part of the online gaming experience, and simply giving people the option to mute is more than sufficient if they cant handle it. They'd rather completely kill their community and socialization than allow people the freedom to offend.

 

[Sir Auriel of Lionel]

What ever happened to the old saying " Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me. "

Those sayings were said for a reason. When words can be criminalised, you have tyranny. Punishment is for violent crimes, sexual crimes, thievery & treason.

It stuff like that that reminds me of an elder WoW streamer that was mistaken for a sexual predator was sent harassment in game and in his stream.

Obviously there's a line that that's not ment to be crossed but you do sign away that oh so favored right of "freedom of speech" when you agree to take a service provided and reviewed under private parties.

 

[Jayonnaise6105 Jayonnaise6105]

Yeah the trash talk and the fact I'm non competitive and happy to play alone in my sandbox is one of the reasons I never wanted to dip my toes in online gaming. Doesn't matter if he place is safe space (which in my experience is worse) I'm not paying those memberships to hop on servers to have brats half my age throw slurs at me as a newbie or get lewd and unfunny sexual comments my way the minutes my more feminine voice is registered in heir ears.

Is it unreasonable? Is it paranoia? Nope I'm just not going to bother in wasting my precious free time on bullshit and stick to solo playing. As for VC on discord I'm more willing to talk there and share gameplay just I don't join random servers and I'd need time off to fully engage with people on a server as I just only have time to pop my head in and read some highlights and leave until next week/month.

This! but I will make exceptions to play and voice chat with people I already know that I don't get to see as often as I'd like. Never through any in-game feature, but some third-party voice chat software

 

[ZEGA ZONIC]

I hardly use voice chat.

 

[Deleted member 132407]

It's just as worse when playing Halo: Infinite or Call of Duty, I can't have a civil conversation without swearing, racial derogatory slurs, just basically yelling & bitching on the mic. From what I understand Microsoft is cracking down on cyber bullying, voice messages can be investigated and will get you banned or punished. I can understand why no one uses voice chat on Xbox these days.

 

[quixotic_kimchi]

this thread makes me not wanna post on RGT anymore.

so i won't. enjoy your slurs and dead mics, grandpas.

 

[Deleted member 58254]

I literally never use voice chat because all it ever is, is some 9 year old too young for the game screaming the n word

 

[Rusk]

I literally never use voice chat because all it ever is, is some 9 year old too young for the game screaming the n word

This is so damn relatable lol.
And sometimes when I play a non-competitive game and try to voice chat, it just devolves into people making fart noises and burping into the mic.

Really miss the old days when gamers weren't monkey brains.

There are certain times though in NA where everyone is stoned off their ass lol. That can be fun.

 

[eyixon]

"Voice Chat". That is a term i have not heard in a LOOOOOONG time
I've forgotten things like Live Messenger and Skype, to the point that zoom and streaming are my new "voice chat". Things have really changed...damn

 

[Ezri_Muldoon]

Hot take.
Voice chat didn't become Toxic, it became accessible.
And with accessibility comes the inevitable death of community as what was once considered a niche hobby is flooded with people from all walks of life who will inevitably clash.

The days of hoping onto a game of Quake 3 arena or Alien vs Predator 2 and just talking with people who at the very least shared at least one interest with you are gone.
Even the Xbox Live was relatively curated, Halo fans in one lane, Call of Duty in another.

Now-a-days in the era of Free to play slop it's pure chaos. And chaos is the perfect excuse for governments and corporation's to exercise restrictions on citizens for "Their own good."
Remember sprays? When anyone could upload a random jpg and have it appear in game for everyone else. No curation or censorship. Just pure expression.

Went the same way Voice chat has. Censored to appease the lowest common denominator.

 

[job32]

It stuff like that that reminds me of an elder WoW streamer that was mistaken for a sexual predator was sent harassment in game and in his stream.

Obviously there's a line that that's not ment to be crossed but you do sign away that oh so favored right of "freedom of speech" when you agree to take a service provided and reviewed under private parties.

Yeah, I understand what you are saying and I don't disagree. I am probably talking more real world than online. I think common sense in both would work fine. This thread was about online, so, my bad. With voice chat, I suppose you have to moderate it. There does have to be moderation online because things can get pretty dark. It's a tricky thing. I just don't like when real world legislation is brought in for the innocent majority due to a shady minority.

 

[fake-chan]

I'm far more confused by voice chat even being a thing in the first place. Why would you ever want to listen to some stranger's voice?

 

[Clippy]

I'm far more confused by voice chat even being a thing in the first place. Why would you ever want to listen to some stranger's voice?

In teamwork-based games voice communication is MUCH faster than typing things out plus you can still play the game uninterrupted. Text chat tends to lock up your controls. Wouldn't want to be a sitting duck in a fast-paced FPS for example.

And you can make friends that way sometimes, given the right circumstances. At least it used to be that way. Or you can get repeatedly called an anagram of ginger and a maggot with an f. Online offers a myriad of possibilities.

 

[Burzuru]

I'm far more confused by voice chat even being a thing in the first place. Why would you ever want to listen to some stranger's voice?

people used to shoot the shit more often because of it. made the game feel like a dedicated hang out.

 

[RETRO-VETRO RETRO-VETRO]

You'll never catch me using voice-chat, most of the time it's just people swearing, saying racial slurs and such.

 

[7eve70rd]

Hot take.
Voice chat didn't become Toxic, it became accessible.
And with accessibility comes the inevitable death of community as what was once considered a niche hobby is flooded with people from all walks of life who will inevitably clash.

The Xbox LIVE Headset was the first online console voice chat headset, released in 2002 during the launch of Xbox Live. It provided players with the ability to communicate using voice chat on the original Xbox console. This headset was a key component of the Xbox Live service, which featured standardized voice chat with a headset and communication, a feature that was still in its infancy at the time.

Go back to 2003 and earlier.

This is accurate.


PC gaming was an expensive hobby. Wealthy and educated American men set up TeamSpeak Servers for Voice Chat for Guilds and Teams. Others outside of this demographic joined as the timeline of development pushed forward and Steam added chat overlay for games and then Discord took over.

We had struggled through hosting our own paid servers.

Mumble (software) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Ventrilo - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Steam's core Steam Chat feature, which includes voice chat support, was significantly updated in July 2018

Xfire / Roger Wilco -> TeamSpeak -> Ventrilo -> Mumble -> Discord

Different age groups, genders, demographics, languages, regions, all found themselves in the same voice chats for a brief period.

This is my personal experience with voice chatting. This was all before the era of live-streaming gameplay and recording and uploading voice chat.

 

[Lee__Kanker]

You don't understand the underlying issue. Words that acutely and accurately describe issues are now 'slurs' and no-no words. Control what people say and you'll control what they think. If a bad word makes you spiral then I have no idea how you made it to adulthood.

With that said, it's not like I want RGT to turn into slur central. If you know of any terms that accurately describe anything that's extremely stupid without going for the ol' reliable AND they have the same payload then I'm all ears. I'll be happy to expand my repertoire.

As far as Ive seen; mongoloid, spastic and cretinous doesnt trigger the usual suspects

Also saying it in simlish

And I guess its the same reason others have described, many companies cather to turbo sensitive shut ins nowdays (even if they're a minority of the playerbase); so talking shit with a stranger without taking yourself seriously is an alien concept to them

 

[Tonberry]

As far as Ive seen; mongoloid, spastic and cretinous doesnt trigger the usual suspects

Also saying it in simlish

And I guess its the same reason others have described, many companies cather to turbo sensitive shut ins nowdays (even if they're a minority of the playerbase); so talking shit with a stranger without taking yourself seriously is an alien concept to them

It’s also probably a win-win situation retention-wise for the developer in most cases.
If someone gets offended in voice chat they’re probably more likely to quit playing entirely, than someone who is quicker to go for trash talk who might not get to. So monitoring that stuff harder likely means that more players (even if it’s probably not a huge number) remain playing.

I’ve never ever in my life had an experience where voice chat (outside of premade groups with people you know obviously) has been superior to text chat or pings/callouts. It just breaks immersion when I have to listen to someone shout callouts in fractured English while I hear their grandmother dying in the other end of the room and their faucets running on full blast.
Why is it always the faucets?!

 

[Lee__Kanker]

It’s also probably a win-win situation retention-wise for the developer in most cases.
If someone gets offended in voice chat they’re probably more likely to quit playing entirely, than someone who is quicker to go for trash talk who might not get to. So monitoring that stuff harder likely means that more players (even if it’s probably not a huge number) remain playing.

I’ve never ever in my life had an experience where voice chat (outside of premade groups with people you know obviously) has been superior to text chat or pings/callouts. It just breaks immersion when I have to listen to someone shout callouts in fractured English while I hear their grandmother dying in the other end of the room and their faucets running on full blast.
Why is it always the faucets?!

Then again, tons of people play online games for the social aspect, and broken english sink is part of the fun for them. I cant say that much from personal experience, cause my only go-to online games are tf2 and killing floor 2; but the audience for fucking around in vc (most young men) didnt go anywhere. I think its still there in cod battlefield and rainbow six siege

 

[Tonberry]

Then again, tons of people play online games for the social aspect, and broken english sink is part of the fun for them. I cant say that much from personal experience, cause my only go-to online games are tf2 and killing floor 2; but the audience for fucking around in vc (most young men) didnt go anywhere. I think its still there in cod battlefield and rainbow six siege

I take it back. It has certainly made Sea of Thieves more fun.

 

[Clippy]

So monitoring that stuff harder likely means that more players (even if it’s probably not a huge number) remain playing.

Until it gets to this point:

 

[Tonberry]

Until it gets to this point:
View attachment 105468

 

[RuckusMcGuckus]

People are babies, that’s one reason.
Example: @quixotic_kimchi didn’t like what he was reading here and decided not to participate. What got to em’ that badly? Idk but that’s their problem

I feel like the only voice chats that still work, and actively get people engaged, are proximity voice chats but I could be wrong. I don’t play too many games with prox chat