Is Voice Chat Necessary?

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I am doing a school project and for my topic i decided to research wether voice chat in video games is a good or bad thing. For games like Counterstrike, i get that voice chat is essential for competitive mode, but in the case of most other games, for example Call Of Duty..... does voice chat need to exist? about 2 months back i used to play COD every day, and at some point or another i would hear two or more people errupt into argument, slinging the most upsetting of insults back and forth at eachother. There hasn't been a single day in which i haven't seen people argue, and it seems that 99% of times voice chat is used, it's used for completely the wrong purpose. It was built for teamwork and it's really sad that it's going into misuse. Another game for example is Team Fortress 2, as this one seems to be a bit of a mixed bag. It's a free to play game, so anyone with a working computer can run it (except if your specs are truly horrific) there are a lot of objective based gamemodes in Team Fortress 2, meaning comunication can pay off in most scenarios, although i find that its (quite frankly) 'elitist' community can be a tad unforgiving, all it takes is for me to die once and some pubescent teenager starts to hate on me saying 'free to play noob'. Really this ties into cyberbullying a bit, but i won't go into that here.

So the point of this post is me asking you for your opinion, is it really nessecary for voice chat to be a working feature in almost all multiplayer AAA games? Post your opinion down below and let me hear your thoughts.

[Satoru]

Depends on what you deem as 'necessary'.

Note that voice chat is convenient compared to other methods of communiation (non-verbal, typing, etc).

LoL a highly competitve highly strategic game only JUST added a voice chat option available in-game. Obviously many people play LoL using 3rd party tools.

Ulitmately this issue is about team communication dynamics. Aka is ANY form of communication used being used appropriately for team communication that is designed to improve your chances of winning. That problem isn't really just a prolem with voice chat. Its easier to verbally abuse yo uon voice chat, but it can be done on text chat as well. Or you can have individuals that don't communicate at all which for some people is worse.

Thus from my persepctive its not so much a problem of HOW you are communicating, but WHAT you are communicating that is the problem.

[Dakota]

Voice chat isn't necessary, in any game, but it is a valuable thing to have. Maybe switch your project up a bit and focus on the various types of ways players can go about communicating in games compare and contrast what each have to offer and what impact they can have on a player's experience and the development of a game/round/etc.

Three I would definitely start comparing would be voice chat, text chat, and visual markers, like Rainbow Six's pin marks that can be placed by players which require no form of verbal or text based communication

Also, drop the AAA focus, as AAA generally means nothing more than money, and money isn't something that should matter in such a topic.

Seriously though, switch it up a bit and you should have a great project, worthy of a high grade

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thanks for the comments so far, they've really helped

[GyroSolo]

nah the voice isnt necessary.

[Ryuu.]

In my opinion it is, while a lot of players abuse voicechat with abusing others, it also was source of a lot of fun times with friends, joining lobbies and singing random ♥♥♥♥, and then others join in and stuff, doing rap battles, telling jokes and so on. Good Times.

[ME TROLL THE MATCH]

I would say it's good for communication, but you got the chat for that...not necessary...but it improves the communication

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wow, i didnt expect such a varied general opinion from all of you! youre helping so much

[Albcatmastercat]

It can be troublesome and some games treat children who use it as "Squeakers", and they sometimes forget it's even on until it's too late and they are listening to loud music, annoying everyone. My opinion is a little "On The Fence". I think it can be useful, but I wouldn't use it.

[Mr Sinister]

For the most part ingame voicechat is utterly pointless. Only get a small handful of words (things that can loosely be described as words) bleated across it anyway. (NOOB,GIT GUD,***** ***** ****** GIT GUD,OWNED,PWNED, HACKER NOOB, GIT WRECKED).

People who use voice comms in a organized and decent manner, will always use 3rd party voice comms and steam itself to do so.

Ingame voice comms are a waste of space, as most gamers are a waste of your ear canal's.
Degenerates.

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I also forgot to add that a few years back a teenager was playing COD in the same lobby as this man, and the teenager was spouting insults towards the man for no apparent reason, and the man took it upon himself to find his IP adress, then from that his REAL adress and decided to drive out to his house. Im not sure wether the boy was killed or badly beaten up. Either of those two. There have been plenty of incidents like this over the years.

[Fostin4]

NO.

[Goblin]

Voice chat is great, where else can I scream in pain about getting shot without being called a lunatic?