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As many of you all may know, voice chat was recently implemented into the latest version of Second Life. There has been somewhat of an uproar from the residents of the game, the players, that Linden Labs should be less worried about adding new features like voice chat and more interested in stablizing the grid. Ever since its implementation, everything has been completely wonky and everyone has come down with a case of the “ruths.” (Check out pictures to see the difference between a ruth and non-ruth avatar)

Ruth:

When your avatar is “ruthed” it means that Second Life is glitching and showing you as the default character. It’s quite hilarious to see furries and tinies ruthed, not to mention seeing males with the ugly brown hair and the small breasts that she has.

For reference, here is me non-ruthed:

Anyway, back to voice…
I was not entirely convinced that I was going to enjoy taking my first life into my second by allowing others to really hear my voice. I was also not prepared for how hearing other people’s voices would change my perceptions of their second life personae. I actually welcome voice now. It’s added a human element and reminded me that there are real people behind the avatars I interact with on almost a daily basis.

That being said, however, there have been a few voices that are like nails on a chalkboard. I’ve been tempted far too many times to tell off a certain “woman” solely because of her voice. It’s also amusing to hear the men who have female avatars. On that note, I’m curious about how voice chat is going to segregate the SL population. Not only are there the different roleplayers, men playing women for example, but there are also those residents who are handicapped. How is that going to separate them from all the able-bodied players? Are they going to band together and what will be the effects of their isolation. I know first hand that if you don’t have voice enabled on the grid these days, it really is like being disconnected from the group. Is that going to help or hinder the SLexperience? Only time will tell.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007 at 3:20 pm and is filed under Photos, Second Life, Voice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.