Voice Options
The wonders of online gaming are great. We can communicate with players from around the world, make new friends and easily make new enemies. Just because we as gamers have the freedom of speech in the gaming sphere doesn’t mean you should use it all the time. I have a few ideas on the subject after the jump….
As I am sure most of us have played a multiplayer game in one form or another and find yourself in that weird moment where you realize that your brain is being violated through your headset from the person on the other end. With privileges comes responsibility just like it was told to all of us as kids when growing up. Why is it that players feel the need to talk about the most unrelated topics when they are playing video games?
Hey person on the other end of the microphone I do not want to hear about how much weed you smoke, how much you drink alcohol, your views on other races and lastly about your sexual conquers with my mother. None of this impresses me when I want to play a game to relax from a long day. I am sure most of us have come across something in one of the previous categories playing games on any major gaming network. It is really something that makes me wonder about the community that we hold and what changes need to be made both on the community end and on the developer end so this unwanted opinioned voice will not be heard.
There are many options when it comes to muting players and leaving feedback on players where needed for those who really start to become annoying or obscene. As gamers should we even have to subject ourselves to these unwanted advances to our ears? I believe that all current and future matchmaking should implement these features out of the box:
1. All matchmaking should include voice options for team and party.
2. All matchmaking should include a quick mute feature
3. All players muted in the game will become permanently muted
I would hope to see that those three options implemented in future games because I do not see the point of hearing my opponent talk trash to me and listen in on the strategy that my team is trying to make both before and during the game.
With the first option helping alleviate some of the problem point two will help reduce it even further as sometimes you might not always be playing with friends in a full party and will be matched with players to fill the team. On occasion there will be someone on your team that might not be contributing to the conversation or just saying something that you wouldn’t want to hear, so use the quick mute feature for them.
Lastly the final point for voice options would help if by chance the person you muted in the current game would still be muted in future games if you were so matched up again.
I am curious to think what goes through the minds of those players that will sit there and curse and talking about things that would normally get them in trouble with the law or someone in real life. While the internet is vast and most of us might not ever meet each other in real life please make sure the things you say online would be the same things you could repeat in front of your mother, a cop, and a judge if not then by all means keep it to yourself.
So I leave you with this final thought for your future gaming. Always be aware of what you are saying as you never know who could be on the other end of the microphone.
PS – You can’t have chocolate milk, we are all out.
Editorial
