I’ve been mulling over weather to let players talk to each other in the game.
My game is not like a war game but quite like Pixar graphics. Family friendly. So I think it would be bad if kids were playing it and they heard swearing over the airways.
I thought about just text messaging but then I’d have to bother about filtering words etc.
So I thought a compromise would be to allow a set of predefined messages or even just emoticons. Emoticons would be good because they wouldn’t need localization.
I’m sure even then someone could swear in morse code. What if terrorists used my game to communicate in morse code using emoticons?!
What do you think is a good solution? Especially in the lobby.
Personally I think this is becoming a legal grey area as more & more countries enact legislation for cyber bullying, harassment etc. will developers need to store all conversations in case of legal ramifications later on? Will all conversations need to be monitored in real time so preventative action can be taken? Etc. this will be potentially a compounding problem as countries have different requirements. If you meet one counties requirements are you failing to meet another’s? Or breaching another’s as it impedes the right to free speech etc.
I’ve been playing a multiplayer iPad game with in battle & general global chat. They implemented an auto censor that people started bypassing from day 1. Reporting users took about 2 weeks before action was taken (usually a 24hr ban) so it was so late players had quit because of the abuse & others saw that no action was being taken so they joined in. The censor was progressively updated to cater for the common bypasses to the point where it started blocking normal words, phrases etc. last few times I checked the chat it was full of comments about 10 characters long saying nothing intelligible due to the censor.
Predefined comments work well in hearthstone & world of tanks (I’ve only played Xbox version) to convey the core messages for gameplay.
If you are aimed at kids then predefined messages are they way to go.
For family friendly I would simply use a high level of moderation. Implement auto filters and bans for common curse words. Your filter should be able to ban any repeat offenders automatically.
Also allow users to ignore other users. Make the ignore process easy. And do detailed scans on anyone who builds up a lot of ignores. Kind of like a reputation system.
As to ISIS communicating on your game via encrypted messages forget about it. Cooperate with the authorities if it happens. Report to the authorities if you suspect it. But it’s hardly a significant concern.
Actually, this reminded me of a simple mobile/Facebook game I used to play. They had a global chat that was heavily moderated with strict enforcement of the chat rules meaning a 24hr ban. Players could contact support to dispute the ban & the employees (the mods weren’t employees, just gamers that were voted in by players) would investigate the chat logs & make a decision. The system recorded how many bans the player had so the mods just pressed the button to ban & the system determined the length of punishment based on how many bans were recorded. The 3rd time the mod pressed ban the system automatically made it a permanent ban.
All bans updated the players profile to show that they had a chat ban.
Simply accept that someone will find a way to misuse the features of your game. I would create a lobby system that is flexible and easy to use, most likely a text-based chat with emoticon support, while providing an easy way to report and discipline those who misuse it.
I think that chat is vastly over rated, but also completely necessary.
Just make sure that players can mute other players. I won’t even play a game if they don’t let you do that. That’s a guarantee that some kid will be blasting his crappy “muzak” the whole time.
That said, I personally love quick commands.
Tribes does a great job of this where the dialog options are in a tree. Then once you memorize a few quick commands you can shout out things like “Great shot! Our base is under attack! I’m going to defend our base!” in less than a second.
In the very least a simple call out adds a lot too.
Dungeon Defenders has a one button call out that gets a lot of mileage. All it does is yell out “A-yo!” and has a indicator over the player. But with that people manage to say a lot like “This item is for you! We need to go this way! Lets build a turret here!” and so on. All from “A-yo!”.
Also, spamming the commands is amusing in small doses.
It’s a fascinating topic. For example I might decide to just have random sounds. But then you get to about 10 sounds and find you’ve accidentally provided enough phonemes to construct a language. And then a year later you might find that people are swearing at each other in Klingon.
I wish I did linguistics and AI at university. It is fascinating. I think my next game will be a language based game.
But, anyway, I would be interested in seeing some of these predefined sentences. Just to see what sort of minimum set you might need for a cooperative or indeed competitive game. I’m guessing…
Competitive:
“Ha ha!”
“I win!”
“Can’t catch me!”
“I’m on your tail!”
“Got you!”
Cooperative
“This way!”
“Watch out!”
“Go left/right/up/down!”
“I’m going left/right/p/down”
“Take this”
“Meet you back here in…”
“He’s over there”
And you tie it to a tree so it all makes sense. Like you put them on a d-pad. Press up opens the dialog tree and turns the four directions into branches (taunt, team, exclaim, general). You then press the direction for the branch, so let’s say left for taunt and it opens the taunt branch. Then you pick one of four taunts (again one for each direction). So you press down and your player goes “Mwa-ha-ha-ha!!!” at the other team.
At first players may take a second to look through the options, but soon the player just goes up, left, down in less than a second to go “Mwa-ha-ha-ha!!!”
No screeching kids, no more hate slurs, no crappy “muzak”…
Just bliss.
Oh, and I would make up, up, up something common like “Yo!”, or maybe something you’d need in an emergency like “Medic!”.
I was considering a game where the language is close enough to English that people sort of understand it but far enough away to be alien, sort of like in Elvissey by jack Womack but it would definitely need a linguist to make sure it all hung together well.
I’m sure the interweb has a list of the preset comments available for games like hearthstone, WoT & all the others. It’s a case of checking what they decided were important because they would’ve had the time & $ to play test them thoroughly & then map common elements to your game. I’d also let players set favourites so they can hot key them because from experience in WoT on Xbox I have trouble navigating the tree quick & accurately enough while also trying to drive & shoot.
Preset comments, done well, lets players communicate in a common language without the risk of abuse. I also think that that common element in multiplayer can add to the flow.
But maybe I should use an emoji language which would help people with different languages talk to each other.
So go left would be: ⇦:)
and danger left: ⇦:hushed:
I’ll do some research see what other games do. I see in the Journey game people have evolved their own language just with chirps. But different people interpret it differently.
I played a game called Phantasy Star Online where you could create custom greeting cards using simple shapes. There were also predefined features for messages that translated into all different localisations, just like what’s above. People used the simple shapes on the greeting cards to create elaborate, highly inappropriate images. In some games, you can crouch. You may have seen this particular victory dance where a person repeatedly crouches and stands up near someone’s face.
People like to express themselves. Anyone can throw anything out there and it can be seen by anyone at any time. That’s the inherent risk and appeal of the web. My only question is, is multiplayer chat a good idea… or just about the greatest idea ever?
Also people under 13 can’t play your online game without parental consent anyway. You should be asking them if they’re over 13 and if they’re not, prompt them if they want to hide the chat.
I’m not against creating a whole new language out of emoji’s and sound effects, though. That stuff is sweet.
But as I said at the start, the potential legal problems with chat are increasing as governments implement cyber bullying etc laws & push the responsibility to system owners to ensure their users are complying. Plus the technological & financial cost of possibly having to store all that data for x-years to protect against potential legal cases will add complexity. This risk could eventually extend to being considered when seeking 3rd party financing.
E.g. Some countries have very strict racial & sexual discrimination laws plus the common ones of defamation & these protections are extending into electronic media (look at countries enacting legislation against Facebook, Twitter etc). Games won’t be exempt from these laws, I think they’ve just been lucky not to be targeted yet.
These aren’t big issues right now but they are increasing & should be factored into the design of chat systems.
