The Ever Increasing Impact of Voice Chat in Games

[Music] hi everyone my name is hank howie and i'm the director of partnerships for modulate i've been in the game industry for well quite some time now in various companies and roles i was one of the co-founders of blue fang games and we made zoo tycoon back in the day uh but today i'm here to talk to you about the ever increasing impact of voice chat in games i don't we don't think that's a terribly uh controversial notion but one of the interesting things is how much research there is around voice chat and games you know both the good and the bad and there's plenty of both and thought it would be useful to share that data with a lot of you some of the studies and so forth and just you know

again talk about voice chat and gains so the nature of gaming obviously has been shifting for some time now um ever since 2008 the the largest selling games are invariably the big online multiplayer games um you know game usage gameplay has been growing you know really since i've been in the industry and it's um you know and it's really it seems like growth has gotten even more precipitous um in more recent times than i'll say in the last decade um you know even pre-copied 63 percent of game players adult game players were playing five hours or more a week um cove it obviously did a lot to [Music] increase that you know as we shall see um for and again less for i want to play games more than you know i i want to go hang on online

my friends because well that's where they are and it's pandemic i can't go see them right now so so uh again pretty obvious but you know bears mentioning um and then and really it didn't just affect you know gamers per se but really you know having um uh sort of sharing one's life and social life online is has affected everyone from you know kids to grandparents and everyone in between people you know i think understand now um you know post pandemic kind of what it is to live and socialize online and how it really is you know a thing um you know and and something that i alluded to earlier which is the games are not just you know people aren't just going online to play the games per se i mean sure a lot of folks do that but

again during the pandemic in particular people would go to various online online places online communities in order to in order to basically interact with you know anyone socially um you know again it's it's this phenomenon of folks going online to play a game per se and the game is really just on in the background you know i mean play players aren't communicating about the bank about the game and what's going on in it and you know if there's a threat that you know everybody runs or hides or shoots back but but um but really then it's in the sort of the in the down times of the game or just you know when not much is going on people are basically just you know sharing what's going on in their lives um you know uh sharing with their friends

and basically hanging out um i mean look at the pub g numbers of you know indian players using it as a social platform you know it's kind of if the bowling with friends kind of philosophy but or golf golf with your friends it's that same notion where sure everyone's going online to this destination which happens to be a game but really what's going on is not only gameplay but socialization um you know uh talking with your friends voice chat uh and i think somewhat obviously to voice chat clearly um it it leads to a more um um stronger bonds in game um deeper empathy uh for other players in the game um than mere you know text chat um you know and then here is where we kind of get to that to edge we first touch on the real two-edged

sword of uh voice chat in gaming you know the pros and the cons and you know like for example you know in the women in gaming study 80 of women reported being empowered um by access to online voice chat to interact with folks you know in kind of new and compelling ways you know they really they really really um they like that um and then at the same time you know just about all of them uh reported facing toxicity and in particular through voice and voice chat and you know it's this it's the sad truth voice chat's obviously um you know in the impact of voice chat and games it's obviously um very important for various aspects of gaming um clearly with voice chat

players can feel greater immersion within the game and within the within the world that they're they're playing it you know in order to in order to you know to role play and and feel um you know closer identity say to their avatar within the game um you know they uh they can express that you know through voice um for obviously for any kind of competitive online game um voice chat is is a must um there's just there's just no good replacement right now in order to get the information you know to your teammates um and communicate and function effectively as a team uh players have to be talking to one another and then for example just even if you know not that long ago talking about you know proximity voice chat stuff was kind of unheard of um all kinds of issues you know technology bandwidth and so forth

and now you see any number of of games and environments that are starting to implement those um those features and you know it just it adds to the um it adds the experience you know and the players experience within the game yeah but then you know now we get to maybe even deeper into the dark side of of of games and you know i just you know called out for the articles here i'm sure all of us who are almost invariably in the game community um have read or seen or almost certainly experienced um toxicity within you know online gaming environments the voice chat uh you know and the thing is you know the thing is when people talk about toxicity yeah oh yeah there's there's swear words and all that sure

but i think we also know that it's way worse than that it's way worse than that you know players are experiencing racism uh uh doxxing uh misogyny uh um child grooming um even believe it or not even um uh even terrorist recruitment believe it or not goes on in in game of game environments and again it's all through the use of voice chat um it's again it's it's uh it's the downside for sure um voice you know voice voice in general is in is an intimate form of communication right and there despite the earlier figures about you know women and gay men and so forth um you know these studies show um about 60 of women

generally seek to mask their gender online you know in the obvious ways right they're either using they're either um you know they're in a uh a male avatar or or in some other ways or or perhaps not even using voice chat because invariably when they do reveal their gender many times toxic behavior occurs from their fellow players it's just a sad truth right um a voice it's just 68 of players experience severe abuse through voice chat uh physical threats stalking uh sustained harassment um it's talking both you know online in real life um so it's again it's uh it's it's the it's the real cutting edge of of voice chat games and not the good kind

um this is an interesting notion at least i think it's interesting um there's a phenomena in in this has been studied you know um in the past to a great degree and you know crowd behavior when when people are in a crowd and they're they start to become just part of the crowd and you know they feel somewhat anonymous right like they're they they as a person don't stand out as much and they can kind of start to be um absorbed and enmeshed into the crowd it's it's a uh it's a condition called de-individuation um we're basically excuse me people basically lose their external and individual constraints right um so where they might they might act perfectly normally in a normal social

situation you put them in this different environment um with these different factors and their behavior changes right and not for the better not for the better um you know i think all one only need to have watched the news over the past year to see in certainly in real life how these behaviors can play out and how people can kind of lose lose what are their normal you know normal societal constraints and and you know and not and not behave in in good positive ways right and and the other the other factor at play here is kind of you know which which which environment begins or which environment you know begets which uh when it comes to these behaviors right are are people learning uh are people learning this at younger ages um

in a more acute fashion because they're online because they're seeing all this toxic behavior take place because perhaps they're experiencing it and and starting to do it themselves uh do people bring these behaviors online because you know and then clearly this happens right people have tough days and then they go online and maybe they're maybe they act in ways that that they normally would you know even in an online situation but it's just it's the behaviors we need to it's better if we can tamp down these behaviors and these toxic behaviors that make them you know create environments where they're not tolerant right and they're not they're not set as a norm of behavior and that's i think what we really have to start to strive for when it comes to you know moderating um online social behavior online voice chat um and then let's talk about children

right uh you know as we can see i don't think these stats are going to surprise anybody i mean 40 to 75 percent of kids are using platforms that they're technically you know not supposed to be on too young to be on right they're younger than 13 and they're going online and they're playing these games and they have headsets on and they're in voice chat and what are they learning what are they seeing what kind of behaviors you know are there for them to model right other interesting factors kids are twice as likely to you just use platform blocking and reporting tools versus you know telling someone telling a grown-up telling your parents what might have happened to them you know within within a game within an online environment and bad things can happen um majority of majority of kids who block a report say the people they blocked and reported they find them again you know they come in with a different identity a different account boom and

they kind of know where they you know what they are where they were and they find them again clearly you know these are now these are behaviors that are just well you know they're heinous and some like child grooming in particular these are heinous behaviors and it's clear to me and i think it should be to everyone that we have a moral responsibility to do something about it particularly in games because it's going on in online multiplayer games right um kids who identify as lgbtq this is shocking right they experience harm at even higher rates than non-lgbtq uh players do and yet and again here's the great side of online online games online environments um the lgbtq

kids and players they find joy and strength in video games right going online and playing games um you know because they can be good at they'd be good at it they can excel at it and and goodness knows heck they might even find kindred spirits online who they can share both their german the game um you know but also what they might be going through as you know as kids growing up you know trying to find their identity and so forth so i think um it's important it's important it's a key it's important um let's talk about all right so so far we've you know we've we've talked about um you know the the existence of you know how how important voice chat is uh both to games and just to us as persons

um we've talked about you know some of the pros and certainly many of the cons right but let's talk about money right because money money is tends to get people's attention right it tends to get everyone's attention um at the very top levels of management in companies and right down to you know the baseline the uh the anti-defamation league does tremendous work and studies and reporting on you know any kind of toxic disruptive behavior in society in general and online as well the 2020 report is a very good one um it's very informative i urge everyone to go you know check it out if and when you have an opportunity but um for example 68 of players

um 68 to 80 actually facing serious toxicity in their game and nearly in 50 nearly 50 percent of players experienced that via voice chat and the big news almost 30 percent of players leave games because of it right they just leave um they leave your game because they don't need it and they just don't want it so let's take a a just a um example game right and talk about maybe some of the numbers uh so if you take a 50 million player game sure that's a big game but you know there are there are way bigger games out there as we know 50 million would do easy math right 50 million players you say 61 68 of the players facing toxicity divided again by the 48 percent um who who experience certain voice chat and then a third of those players leave

28 right that's four and a half million on a 50 million player game that's again in my apologies to my to my friends who are ua specialists out there there are way more um complex and interesting ways to to do this um i welcome anyone who wants to really take a look at it but you know these are this is directionally correct i don't think we're off by i don't think we're offering an order of magnitude by any stretch of the imagination on the low side we might be approaching you know being off on the high side but even with this quick and dirty map you know have uh uh it's you know at ten ten dollars per player revenue and big games you know it can be at least twice that right um you're talking 50 million dollars a year 50 million dollars a year again that's for a 50 million player game but that's that's a lot of money that's a lot of money at least i think

so and i think it's you know it behooves and and then well and then leave that aside for a minute think about the human side right four and a half million players experienced had a very very negative experience in in potentially in your game right because there's nothing being done about about the toxic environment if you know for those players who are talking you know you had four and a half million players you know they had a they had a crappy time because of that there's a human side uh just to just add to that and again this is these you know this is a v box study that was just done in 2019. um vivx obviously very involved in voice chat as we know um voice chat players spend twice the time in game as non-voice chat players boom right

how does that translate to revenue i'm certain it does it has to right and then voice chat players players who use voice chat five times as likely to be playing um in week number five versus non-voice chat players so again retention right voice chat contributes remarkably to for those games that you know that uh utilize voice chat it contributes from market leader to game retention uh so it's you know it really behooves us not just ethically again but financially to do something about voice chat in our games and the toxicity therein um just to sort of finish up here um you know voice check technology it's evolving it's changing it's growing it's getting you know it's getting better and better enabled all the time um and you know some of the big

streaming platforms are giving players more control over you know kind of the voice interactions between them streamers and so forth um there's technology where folks can you know recognize and adjust for for dialogue even even you know even language difference between speakers which is you know more on the cohesive bring people together side there's dynamic dynamic volume basis um proximity chat you know as far as you know you can telling where other players and even where enemies are you know online um so that's all great stuff but there is you know as far as voice chat and toxicity and moderation there there are today autonomous moderation dressing technologies that can be used in games

uh by game runners by platforms to to moderate and cut way down on toxic chat in our games right um you know uh we modulate we you know the top i have my talks my web page signal there but um if any if you're interested in this by all means go to modulate.ai you can check out the kind of things we're doing there are other companies doing it as well um and i think um i think it uses all to to to recognize the issue acknowledge it and do something about it uh and with that uh i'm gonna let you all go um i hope you uh i hope you found this at least someone informative and interesting and i want you all to have a have a great

day stay well i hope you enjoyed mario my bluefang swag there's not much of this left i don't know anymore anyway um you all stay safe out there be well and uh you know enjoy enjoy game playing online right it's fun thank you very much take care