Motivations behind region restrictions in games

by kapowaz, Tuesday, March 26, 2013, 13:28 (4039 days ago) @ Mr Daax

I have no idea if this is at all possible, but I wonder if Bungie figured out a way for players to communicate without actually voice-chatting with one another.

Well, it certainly wouldn't be without precedent if they did; over a decade ago Phantasy Star Online allowed players armed only with a joypad to communicate using a basic symbol chat system (not a million miles from emoji or emoticons). There are often pictorial ways to express the most commonly-used expressions you'd find in a game setting - Blizzard's Hearthstone TCG announced at PAX lets players do exactly this, sending simple messages from a predefined list.

I'm still thinking about those last few lines. In a multiplayer game, how do you avoid the douchebaggery if there isn't some sort of fundamental difference between your game and every other multiplayer game out there? Perhaps change the way the players communicate with one another? Rather than having voice chatting between players, players can only communicate within the context of the game and its story. You have options of what to say to another player, eg, "I'm doing X mission," or, "I'm just shooting up some of the local fauna today," or, "Would you care to join me, fellow Guardian, on my journey to save the solar system?" And since these are pre-programmed conversation options, language barriers wouldn't be an issue. The game already has the French version of that conversation option you chose, and it displays that to the French guy you just came across in the game. This communication restriction feels a lot like limiting player choice, in which case I think there would be an personal option to allow other players to chat with you.

Totally feasible, but I have to wonder if they weren't more talking about competitive play rather than cooperative; I can't recall any really bad incidents with teammates in (say) Firefight, and in fact my best ever spontaneous co-op gameplay moment came playing with complete strangers when we had a shared goal, in a game of Left 4 Dead. I think so long as players are immersed and their goals align, behaving well is more than possible. Competitive gameplay is another story entirely, though. I'm interested to see what they come up with.