I very much liked this Voice Chat Can Really Kill the Mood on WoW on Wired News. As I said a little ago, the addition of voice to virtual worlds is not to be taken light-heartedly, and the article points to a side of the issue that I had nicely failed to target: how voice can de-virtualize a virtual presence.
As I see it, the issue will rapidly be overtaken by technology: as the Wired article implies, there is now an implicit demand for voice-morphing that will soon be satisfied, and exactly for the reason the article points out: we (dwellers or casual visitors of online universes) do enjoy the else-ness of being there.
The amount of “else-ness” should be more or less a personal choice (I foresee some group-pressure issues looming, but I am pretty sure they can be out-teched, so to say) if the online reality is to have any sense beyond being a replica of the offline world.
I am not saying that the online should or should not be a replica (although I think the online really ought not to replicate dumbly the offline) only that if the online wants to be different, then:
- people should not be forced to bring online anything more of their offline self than they deem adequate
- online personas ought to be judged only by their coherence and not by their adherence to an external model.
In other words, if I impersonate a female furry vampire online, judge my online persona only by its effectiveness, and don’t worry if I am a balding male vegan offline.
What is the advantage of doing this? Quite simply, the freedom of expressing oneself, up to the point of inventing a completely different self to use online. After all, we do not expect Othellos to actually strangle Desdemonas on stage: rather, we judge their show by its impact as a “show”; impact which (sorry, ILM) has little to do with how “realistic” the strangling is and a lot to do with the actors’ ability to convey emotions.
Unless we take an ideological stance to going online, we should allow the online world to evolve by its own rules, other than try to cage it into some predefined cultural frame.
Which brings me to some of my deepst-felt opinions on the current crop of online “worlds”, opinions which is about time I wrote about.
