Every day, new advances are being made in the technology that powers our games. Often, these changes are subtle, and while they may certainly improve our gaming experiences, they're not always terribly exciting; it's hard to get enthusiastic about things like new networking protocols or eco-friendly microchips. So, when one visits a company at CES that's promised to showcase the latest "trends around in-game voice communications," one prepares to be underwhelmed. On the other hand, if that company is Vivox, one may just be in for some very pleasant surprises.
Vivox (pronounced "vee-vocks") is a company devoted to providing voice chat to online games -- a feature that is anything but brand-new. Whether it's through a push-to-talk button in one's favorite FPS, or the constant trash talk of Xbox LIVE, gamers have been able to speak to one another in-game for years. Plenty of dedicated solutions for managing one's voice chat are available to the talkative gamer, including Ventrilo and Skype, and a number of games have chat systems already built in. As I learned from Monty Sharma, Vivox's VP of Product Management, Vivox's systems tend towards the latter option -- their software has been integrated into several MMORPGs, including "EverQuest II," "Star Wars Galaxies," "EVE Online," and "Second Life."
At its most basic, Vivox allows game developers to make voice chat an easy and accessible part of their titles. An EQ2 player, for example, can log in and have instant access to dedicated chat channels for their guild or their immediate party, generated automatically based on the in-game guild roster or a just-formed pick-up group. This saves a gamer the trouble of installing and operating an extra client, while still allowing one all the functionality and customization of forming a customized chat channel for any players they please.
I was given the opportunity to sample Vivox for myself, and I certainly had no complaints about the service. Chatting with Vivox team members in Austin and Boston produced a clean sound over my headset, with very little latency. Still, this was nothing I hadn't experienced before -- until Sharma started walking me through the detailed features of Vivox's chat options.
Has this ever happened to you? While it may be hilarious on occasion, we're not always so lucky with our co-chatters -- there's always one person in the channel who is painfully loud, or inaudibly soft. One can't adjust the headset volume without silencing/blasting everyone else in the channel, leading to arguments of who needs to adjust whose microphone. With Vivox, however, any individual user in the chat channel can be manually adjusted for volume, on the fly, by any listener, allowing you to tailor your teammates' voices to your own level of comfort. Of course, if your teammate is simply prone to screaming long strings of profanity, you can also mute them completely.
It seems like a basic feature, but given the number of times we've all had the microphone adjustment argument in the middle of a game, it's clearly the kind of common-sense idea that ought to rapidly become a standard inclusion. Several of Vivox's other interface options are similarly simple yet practical, including the ability to sort channel users by who was the last to speak, create massive channels with only a few approved speakers for raids or presentations, and so forth. I asked how many users could join a single channel using Vivox in EQ2, and Sharma assured me that the system's maximum was well above the number of users who could be on any given game server. The maximum, he said, was easily somewhere in the tens of thousands; Vivox had recently been used to allow gamers to listen in on SOE's John Smedley, delivering a keynote speech at the company's Fan Faire event. Sharma also pointed out that Vivox can allow users to set up their own keynotes (or perhaps just raids), forming channels in advance via a system of invites and appointed moderators.
Once I'd had a chance to try out the basic features of Vivox via conversation with the remote team members, Sharma indicated that he would like to join our chat as well -- but there wasn't a spare PC in the room. Instead, Sharma produced a cell phone, and after briefly dialing a specific number and authentication code, he was suddenly audible within our in-game channel. We at GameCyte have been asking whether mobile devices can be used to augment the MMO gamer's experience, and it seems the answer is yes: Using Vivox, it is possible to join an in-game chat without being in the game, or even being at one's PC. You need only call a pre-set Vivox line, and your in-game companions will see you appear in the channel like any other user -- listed, per your preference, as your phone number, or your name, or your in-game avatar.
Sharma had plenty of suggestions as to how this feature could be used. Are you supposed to be raiding tonight but you're stuck in traffic? Call the guild and tell them you'll be late, or, if you're so inclined, walk them through the raid remotely, like a field commander. Not sure whether to go home and game, or hang out with your extremely annoying co-workers? Call the game first and see who's online before you decide.
Naturally, a cross-platform voice chat program that works with mobile devices could have applications outside of gaming, as well, similar to other services offered by products like Skype. I asked Sharma about bringing Vivox into the business world, but he said Vivox wasn't likely to enter business applications, because "It bores us." Instead, Sharma went on to show me more of the system's fun features.
Beyond simple transmission of sound, Vivox is also able to record voice chats for posterity, in case one happens to come across further instances of comedy gold. Instead of just a sound file, though, your chat will be saved as a multi-track file, allowing you to tweak and edit the voices, to better highlight the hysterical members of your group. Or, perhaps you've come back to the computer after a quick bathroom break, and everyone is laughing at something funny that you missed out on hearing. Vivox allows one to pause and rewind live chat as though it were a TiVo, maintaining a backlog of recent chat transmissions -- in fact, in order to get you caught up quickly, it will play back the recent chat at a faster speed, with silences and pauses automatically edited out.
Sharma wasn't able to say when features like cell phone integration will be available in Vivox-supported games; the technology is still "in testing." The company is also working on bringing its services to PS3 games via SOE's lineup, and has plans to integrate Vivox into titles from NCsoft and 38 Studios. We look forward to hearing more from Vivox.
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