The magic of video game voice chat
Writings on my reluctant acceptance of a medium that I had previously written off.
Editor’s note:
Hi, welcome back.
This essay will present an argument that voice chat – specifically for the purpose of playing multiplayer video games – has the potential for something whimsical, nostalgic, and wholesome.
For my first trick, however, I will take on a different (and quite possibly harder) challenge. It will be apparent what that is. I promise not to spend too much time on it. It’s not my main point.
But… look, I get a kick out of defending the indefensible. And I can’t resist a “twofor”.
See ya in 2 weeks.
-Phil
I’m going to name three video games, and I would like you to try to think of a through line between them. There’s more than one valid answer, but I’m thinking of a certain commonality. Even if you aren’t a gamer, you might be able to get this. Here we go:
Grand Theft Auto 3
World of Warcraft
Fortnite
I’ll pause here and you think of an answer.
One valid answer is that they’re all successful games. Mega successful, the lot of them. They’re some of the highest grossing and most played games of all time.
Also, all of them are mega addictive; and now we’re getting closer to my answer, which is that for all three, they generated a media blitz because of how “harmful” they were.
For GTA3, I remember a ton of press about how teenagers to were being trained to steal cars, pick up hookers, and murder people… in real life. Yes, really. People argued that.
There was also a big hubbub surrounding a deleted scene which was mistakenly left in (an expansion of) the game. The scene was sexually suggestive, but it wasn’t really all that racy by modern standards. In retrospect, it’s hilarious that that story blew up like it did.
For WoW, all the news stories were about addiction, and honestly, the media were correct about that one. A lot of people got addicted, including me. I really struggled in my first semester of freshman year, back in 2005, and it was largely to do with WoW. Those memories are going be important, later in this article.
For Fortnite, it was much of the same as it was with WoW: parents were proclaiming their kids hadn’t gone outside in months. Lost girlfriends, failed schoolwork… stuff like that.
I once heard someone talking about this very matter:
“Anytime the media says you shouldn’t play a game, that’s a sign that the game is actually really good, and you should play it immediately.”
In my opinion, that’s very true. Which is why I’ll come out of the closet here… Fortnite is good.
A lighthearted defense of Fortnite
Generally, Fortnite is seen as “kids’ game”. Meanwhile, I’m a grown-ass man, and I love it. So why is it good?
For one, I really appreciate the loud, cartoonish, overly-saturated graphics. They fit my personal taste.
It’s an immensely satisfying game. The creators know how to pull you in with lots of stuff to unlock. Many seasons, I buy the “Battle Pass” and try to make it to the end, meaning I’m constantly receiving new rewards over the course of months.
But mostly, I love the combat, which is not only fun, but also forgiving. If someone ambushes you, you don’t die immediately (like you do in Call of Duty, say). You have a moment to gather your thoughts, figure out where the enemy is, and then try to kill them back. It’s sort of like Halo (another great series) in that way.
Perhaps because it’s got a relatively young audience, it’s also easy. Mostly. I’m not that good at a lot of competitive online games, but I do well on Fortnite. If I decide to really focus, I’m able to get a lot of eliminations, and I routinely win games. For the layperson, that means out of the 100 players in the match, I played the best.
If I’m not really focusing, it’s still just fun. It’s a great podcast game. I love listening to tech/entrepreneur/politics YouTube while I play. I’ll play a little worse, but it’s supremely relaxing.
To be clear, I like other games too – I’ll exclusively play other games for months (or years) at a time – but eventually, I always reinstall Fortnite. You could definitely call it “comfort food.” Nothing else lights up my brain in the same way.
Branching out and grouping up
I used to only play the solo variant. Myself and 99 other players drop into an arena, a and a free-for-all battle ensues, concluding with only one a single player left. That’s solo.
In the past few months, I began playing the 4-player team mode – a little at first, and then almost always.
The game has a really good “ping” system, by which you can use the controller to communicate with your team. You press a certain button on your controller, and a location dot is sent to the other members of your team: “I want to go here” or “I just saw an enemy combatant over here.” Stuff like that.
I didn’t want to use a microphone while I played, so I just pinged. Eventually, though, I got a random urge to play with other people, as a team.
Ideally, my real-life friends would fill this role. But, I’ve given up hope on that front a long time ago – on the order of “decades ago.” Convincing my friends to play Fortnite would be like convincing my friends to enjoy my music taste. (My music taste is obscure and polarizing.)
I pondered whether or not I could find teammates on Discord, a gamer-focused communication app. To this end, I happened upon a Discord server called “Fortnite Looking for Group”, and started posting modern-day personal ads.
My first Fortnite friend
A few hours after my first post, I got a DM: “Wanna play?” followed by “How old r u?”
“old as shit”, I reply, then “you?" (Editor’s note: I’m 37.)
The reply comes: “Why u talk like a scared kid 😭… 20”.
I reply “i'm a youthful person ok”. (Editor’s note: I do identify as a youthful person.)
Instantly, this young man wants to chat on Discord voice chat. That wasn’t part of my plan. I just wanted to “ping”. But, fine, why not.
We have something basically equivalent to a phone call, then launch into a few games. While playing, I ask about his life. Turns out he lives in Canada, just moved into his first apartment a few weeks ago, and is already in trouble (with his building management) for putting a piece of cardboard in the wrong location.
I give him some life advice: you should tell them you’re sorry, and that “you just moved in and are still figuring out the ropes.” He’s super appreciative of the advice.
Over the next few weeks, we play more games together. He always want to do voice chat. At the same time, I get more DMs on Discord, and the process plays out similarly. That’s when I start to become fascinated by the concept of meeting people this way.
A cross-section of western North America
As I continue to meet people on Discord, these people introduce me to other friends of theirs in the game. The network is expanding.
Many of them ask me to switch to in-game voice chat. Again, this was something I initially wasn’t open to doing. And anyway, my microphone is attached to my computer, not my PS5. Maybe there’s a way to make that work, though? I’ll just have to order some $10 adaptors on Amazon. Why not?
Fast forward a few more weeks, and I’ve met oodles of people – now almost entirely within the game itself.
I have my server preference as “North America West”, so it’s almost entirely people from California, Oregon, Washington, B.C., and Arizona. (I’m still not sure why, but there’s an over-represented number of people from Arizona.)
Regarding age, it runs the gamut from 17 to 40, with a notable cluster around age 27. On gender, it’s probably 70-30 male versus female; which is not what I would have predicted.
In getting to know all these people, I’m continually fascinated by little nuggets of their lives one can glean over voice alone – because, keep in mind, I don’t know what any of them actually look like.
But you do hear about a fishing trip someone is getting ready to take, what it’s like being the fifth out of six siblings in a Mexican family in southern California, and other random things of this nature.
One new friend, an Amazon delivery driver in Oregon, also has “a crystal business and I flip things as well.” Wait, I ask, “crystal the drug, or crystals the spiritual coffee table item?" Thankfully, it’s the latter. Over Discord DMs, he sends pictures of all his shiny, semi-translucent wares.
These are people I would never have met otherwise. Never. And that’s why it’s so interesting to observe what little I can, about real Americans (and Canadians), living out their real lives. If you really wanted to get a pulse of society, this is a better way than most.
Who’s on?
I realize nothing is new about this state of affairs. Voice chat has been around a long time. If anything, I’ve just fallen out of this way of doing things for the last couple decades. But honestly, it reminds me a lot of the days of World of Warcraft. For me, that’s 2004-2008. But really, the days that remind me of this are 2005 and 2006.
Those years, I was in a WoW guild. We communicated on a technology known as “vent” (short for Ventrilo). A few times a week, the guild would gather up for a “raid”, which was 40 people on a big group call. (By the way… for 2005, that’s an impressive feat of technology.)
Mostly, though, there were far fewer than 40 on the communal call. We’re talking 5, maybe 3 people, most of the time. I would come back to my dorm room after class, hop in front of my computer, and then get excited, because I wanted to know who was on.
I’m finding similar feeling right now with random Fortnite voice chat. I kinda want to know who’s on. There’s actually a feeling of – dare I say – friendship?
It’s got a vibe to it, not unlike that one elementary school friend’s house, for people that were lucky enough to have that.
For me, I had one friend whose house was the communal hang out. A random assortment of people would be there. When I rode my bike over there on afternoons in 1998, I knew it was going to be chill. Because it was always chill.
Your other name
Another similarity with WoW is the usage of your in-game name. “Sparky, come save me!” or “I’ve got something for you, Bird.”
My name on PS5 is “RhinoFuture”, so everyone calls me “Rhino”. That’s fine. I actually love rhinos; they’re practically my favorite animal, which is why I chose that name. (I just added “future” to it because I like the concept of the future, and it sounded cool.)
But because I never really planned to do online voice chat, I never expected other people to say it aloud. (That particular handle is far newer than the last time I did online voice chat.) As such, I’m always a little taken aback when I hear it spoken. “Rhino? No… I’m Phil,” goes off in my head.
Overall, I find the use of online names in spoken conversation to be rather cute. To wit, the same thing happens at Burning Man, with their version being “Playa names”. It adds a whimsy to things. It’s fun. In the case of games like Fortnite, it’s a feature not a bug, because it gives you anonymity.
There have been times I’ve exchanged first names with someone, but we continued to use each other’s online names. This is exactly like WoW. You become your online persona, in at least one narrow way.
There’s something interesting happening here
Do you have any relationships – friends, spouses, etc – which would never have begun in the first place if you hadn’t done a certain random thing, on a certain random day?
For example, perhaps it’s an invite to a bar, 10 years ago, and if you hadn’t gone to it, you’d have a dozen less friends today. Not that you would’ve met all twelve at that party, but maybe one friend led to more friends, gradually over time.
I think about that kind of thing all the time. So much of my life is like that.
The text message I sent to a tangential acquaintance in 2012 that turned into a lifelong best friend. The text exchange between my ex-girlfriend and her yoga friend, that led to 50 new friends, including my current wife. I’ve had so many serendipitous moments like that.
For some of the random people I’m meeting on Fortnite, I wonder if online voice chat isn’t the only window they have open. That is to say: maybe, just maybe, I’m getting a better conversation with that person than their own mom is getting.
In some ways, with some people, it feels that way. For some of my original Discord friends, we actually check in on each other, even after months of not playing together. When one of them said he wasn’t doing too well with mental health lately, I made a point to follow up, and he was thoroughly appreciative. It’s all so very wholesome.
A treasure trove, of sorts
One of my darker thoughts on the matter is that this medium would be a gold mine for people peddling pyramid schemes. Suddenly, the annoying fuckers that do that stuff aren’t limited to their high school friends on Facebook (that they haven’t talked to in 15 years) – now they have a renewable resource.
A more positive – yet still conniving – thought is the idea of building an online audience this way. Use random squadmates as the top of your sales funnel. I mean, I already did send this very publication to a few of them.
Hell, you could probably build a cult on the back of gamer voice chat.
Looking at it this way, I’m positioning this as untouched wilderness, ripe for exploitation. I don’t really want to linger on the exploitation aspect, other than to draw attention to the fact that it’s untouched wilderness in the first place.
Wrapping up
Fortnite voice chat is not that great. Video game voice chat, generally, is not that great. Don’t get me wrong on that. It can definitely be toxic at times.
But, there is something really pure, here, too. And, that’s all I have to say right now.
I don't understand video games, but I do understand finding online communities.