In-game voice communication

Project Massive, a Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute study led by Dr. A. Fleming Seay, has spent the past three years tracking the behavioral and social impact of massively multiplayer gaming on the average citizen by polling over 4000 people in the online community. A. Fleming Seay, driven by a desire to participate in the creation of the future, believes that multi-person experiences are the future of interactive entertainment. His studies found that social interaction was one of the most common motivations for MMORPG participation.
In an paper analyzing the study’s results entitled Project Massive 1.0 : Organizational Commitment, Sociability and Extraversion in Massively Multiplayer Online Games, Seay found that the reason for 77% of in-game communication is for the exchange of support and advice. The primary tools used included email, instant messenger, web forums, and standard telephony. In-game voice communication was identified as a feature that many would be interested in using.
Educators on the Second Life Campus appear to be aware of this expressed interest because last week I noticed that a little red phone booth showed up on campus. Apparently Vivox, a leader in integrated online voice communications, is giving away one million free phone minutes to Second Life residents who sign up. The free promotional minutes are good from October 4 until November 1, 2006, allowing Second Life residents to talk in real-time to other Second Life residents as well as to make phone calls from any of the Vivox Phone Booths within Second Life to any phone in North America. Also, residents can engage in live group voice chat on specially located Vivox microphones, supporting up to 5 users at a time.