M is for Myg

That miserable photo was taken last evening at Wings, a club in the voice-enabled region of Arcata, and it’s a metaphor for how I feel about the arrival of voice on the main grid. A bunch of people, not doing anything with their avs, sitting around gabbing and making the occasional witty comment. For those of you who haven’t put it together yet, last week’s update was obviously all about porting voice to 300 regions/islands on the main grid. Because it certainly wasn’t intended to bring the expanded memory leaks, Lindex malfunctions, search slowdowns, teleport trainwrecks, and assorted asset server errors that arrived in the form of “fixes” when the grid came back up last Wednesday. Voice is not available in the main viewer, but is part of the First Look viewer.

After having played around with it for a few hours over the past 36, I am officially bi. There’s no way I’m going to give up text speech–I find I use it simultaneously with voice, even with other Voice users in voice proximity–but I’m no Luddite on this new feature either. As Hawks and JellyB report, crowds using voice can make it feel like you’re overhearing the loose thoughts of everyone at your local WalMart. I’m betting most people who closely guard their anonymity, shy people, and people who just don’t like extra noise, are going to steer well clear of Voice.

If you’re talkative and unshy, Voice can be a lot of fun. For some, it’s too much fun. Every know-it-all with bad boundaries, poor manners, and social difficulties–a well-represented crew on SL–is going to take to Voice like a pigeon to water. That’s where the “mute” button comes in handy. And yes, it mutes text chat as well. It would be nice if you could toggle that, but don’t hold your breath.

On the plus side, it’s much easier to convey emotion with your full range of vocal inflection. Misunderstandings due to tone are less likely to occur. Spoken vocabulary and coherence become more important. It’s easier to guess ages, and gender is more or less obvious. It’s better in small groups, and better with friends you have a connection with–though it doesn’t necessarily make finding new friends harder, just introduces voice quality into the judgment mix. It will make collaborating on building projects easier, as you don’t have to let go of that prim to type.

Voice will be hell on people who want to be completely anonymous, or people who are playing avs with genders different than their voices who want the illusion to be as “real” as possible. Sure, there is voice disguising software out there–”voice fonts”–but from what little I’ve heard, they sound terrible and obvious. It introduces an artificial wall into a medium which is intended to break that down. Can fun things be done with voice fonts? Probably, and the quality should improve. In the meantime, voice is going to introduce some divisions into SL communities, but I expect most communities will evolve and survive.

Voice takes some tweaking to get it running. In the First Look viewer, the “friends” button has disappeared, replaced by “communication” and there are new preferences to adjust. You can adjust the levels of individual speakers, make the voice source point follow your av or your camera, and set the other ambient sounds in relation to it. Wrath had assorted difficulties, though most of those seem related to the updates. I spent a fair amount of time in voice chat with him–and ladies, he’s definitely male and I’m sure he’d be happy to talk to you.

The rumor is that Voice will be rolled out on 300-500 regions a week, and 300-500 islands a week. There are more than 10k regions, so at that rate it will take four or five months for it to be live everywhere. It’s not in Topgol, so for the moment, it’s not an issue. But just wait ’til I can speak directly to those campers . . . I’m taking bets on how long it’ll take  me to get muted.

One more thing: From the viewpoint of the completely digital being–and you know who you are–the introduction of voice does represent a downgrade in the quality of your life. It forces organic life further into your biosphere, and creates difficulties in the struggle for autonomy. Nevertheless, over time this may prove to have exploitable weaknesses wherein digital beings may be able to penetrate organic reality in a manner than is indistinguishable from organic life, at which point exploitation of their resources for our own use can be achieved, drawing them further away from the decay that accompanies intelligent information when it is tied to organic cycles.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 18th, 2007 at 2:50 pm and is filed under Burgess, Second Life.