There've been a few announcements in recent months about voice chat being added to virtual worlds and MMOs, but how much do users/players actually want it? Some research from Greg Wadley at the University of Melbourne sheds some light on the issue.
Together with colleagues, he looked specifically at how people use voice communication when playing MMOs - World of Warcraft and Dungeons & Dragons Online:
“Briefly, we found the usefulness of voice to be context-dependent. It works well when used by small groups of players, who already know each other, and are collaborating in fast-paced coordinated activity such as raids (ie, the MMORPG scenario that most resembles a team FPS). But when group size, type of activity or number of channels varies, the usefulness of voice may vary. Some players are uncomfortable using voice with strangers, or when playing a character of different age or gender. And voice channels allow in-game communication to pass into the player’s surroundings: for example, a player’s family and guildmates may unwittingly share the channel.”
He’s currently looking into similar topics with Second Life, which should make an interesting study.
(via Terra Nova)
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