Interview with Vivox’s Monty Sharma
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Vivox has been on the news lately with their voice communications technology beign used in games such as EVE Online and virtual worlds such as Second Life as well as being incorporated into middleware solutions provided by companies Icarus Studios and BigWorld Technology. Staff writer Simon Austin conducted an interview with VP Product and Marketing Management Monty Sharma.
The MMO Gamer: Tell us a little about Vivox and your product.
Monty Sharma: Vivox delivers superior quality IP voice services on a global scale for game and virtual world communities. Users are able to talk one-to-one and in groups via an integrated application and game controlled UI. Carrier-grade infrastructure and advanced architecture, server side voice mixing, full service hosting, professional management and a dedicated 24×7 operations team with years of large-scale experience ensure the most reliable service available to MMOGs, leaving game designers and publishers free to focus on the development and growth of their world.
The MMO Gamer: Where does Vivox stand in the voice/gaming market?
Monty Sharma: Integrating voice into an online game or world helps developers retain, convert and recover players with enhanced features and extended their brand identity. Vivox is a partner in the game market in helping create stronger, longer lasting communities around game titles by creating communications experiences that embrace users and complement the game and player universe with high quality, integrated and massively scalable voice. We are not there to tell developers how to make the games. We give them the tools they need to offer robust communications.
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The MMO Gamer: Do MMOs pose different problems for voice communication from more conventional multi-player games?
Monty Sharma: MMO are the most complex environment to work in for communications companies. The combination of a large player base and tiered social structure we need to make sure that users only have access to certain channels. In addition to access rights and security we need to deal with player moderation – the ability to mute/kick/ban others in a channel. All of these elements need to be mapped to the games UI and society. Luckily we have the experience the granular controls to allow us to do it well.
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The MMO Gamer: Can you tell us about any upcoming MMOs you’re working with?
Monty Sharma: If I did, I would have to kill you. Presently we are working with EVE Online, Ragnesis, Fallen Earth, K2 Network, and Second Life.
The MMO Gamer: What does the average gamer need to use the Vivox service?
Monty Sharma: All gamers need is a sound card, headphones or speakers and a microphone.
The MMO Gamer: How does the service work?
Monty Sharma: It is designed to be as simple as possible for users. The voice communications are integrated along side the IM features presently found in games. Depending on the game you just need to join voice and you are automatically placed in the right channel.
It is almost as simple as that for the game developers to add voice. Vivox provides game developers with the Vivox Precision Studio SDK that includes Communications and Administrative APIs which enable game developers to tightly integrate the Vivox managed voice solution into their games. The Communications API is generally integrated into the game client while the Administrative API is generally integrated into the game server.
The Vivox Communications API integrates easily and is capable of managing all aspects of users’ voice communications. The Communications API allows game players to create, control and participate in voice sessions with other users or groups of users. It also provides management tools for developers to control and oversee user behavior.
The MMO Gamer: What are the pros and cons of providing the infrastructure and bandwidth rather than letting clients provide those?
Monty Sharma: There are really no cons in Vivox providing the infrastructure. The Vivox team has extensive communications experience and the system has been designed with this expertise and the intent of supporting thousands of users at any given time. Communication APIs make calls out to our network, not impacting the game servers. In addition, designers and publishers do not need to allocate resources to operate the network, they can concentrate on the game, not the communications.
This translates to the users as well. Quality exponentially improves with audio and operations with a team of specialists running the network. Plus, users do not have to be IT managers to use it. It is designed to be simple for them. As part of the game experience we map the channels so that users do not have to spend hours setting up groups.
The MMO Gamer: What tools do you provide for players to deal with abuses by other players?
Monty Sharma: We offer a set of moderator tools that players have access to so that they can self-manage and self-police communication activity. This includes the ability to mute, kick, and ban. These tools allow group leaders and moderators to control their channel participants. Users can be muted for talking too much and distracting from a mission, or a player may be kicked and/or banned from the channel for violating guild rules or harassment.
These player level tools also assist the game company to securely manage harassment complaints with the help of players successfully self-policing.
The MMO Gamer: Does your service integrate with a game’s existing blocks and filters?
Monty Sharma: Yes, the Vivox solution seamlessly integrates into the game infrastructure. To the end user there is no delineation between the game and our services. On the back end all connections are coordinated to work openly and with massive scalability.
The MMO Gamer: Can voice communication completely replace the text inputs in use today?
Monty Sharma: There is a place for both methods of communications; I do not see one replacing the other. Both are effective in communicating and it often comes down to a matter of personal preference for what is used. We are not looking to displace text, just offer the next innovation in communication so that it is a richer and truer experience for the user.
The MMO Gamer: Text chat can easily be ‘filtered’ to different windows, can something similar be achieved with voice?
Monty Sharma: Yes, it all depends on how the game would like to design the solution… The simplest example would be to break the stream that is coming in into spatial coordinates. So my healers would sound like they are on my right, DPS straight ahead and scouts on the left. The volume of these sources can also be modified to make sure key information gets through.
The MMO Gamer: Is inter-game communication possible?
Monty Sharma: Absolutely. We are presently developing an out of game client that will allow players to stay connected while in different games.
We’d like to thank Monty Sharma for taking the time to answer our questions.
Im hoping that voice recognition technology will soon be added to this middleware solution. There’s something clean and tangible about the written word that voice chat just can’t attain. It would be cool, though, if each user configured their clients to their voice, and you could have a speech-to-text interpreter writing what is said to the screen. It would take some keen game design and interface development, but that could finally bridge the gap between gamers who just can’t type fast and purists like me who prefer text.
Further to that Nic, I have a friend who plays MMOGs who is deaf, which is another good reason to introduce voice>text interpreting as voice communication of any type are generally of no use whatsoever for him.
Its frustrating to me when I see a developer add some fancy feature that they think enhances experiences, when in fact it only limits accessibility. The argument for games being a positive thing — uniting players in a community online — can become a very slippery slope if a game creates standards of practice that exclude anyone at all.
[...] spoken to both Vivox about their VOIP technology and Icarus Studios about their middleware solution we had a quick chat [...]
[...] spoken to both Vivox about their VOIP technology and Icarus Studios about their middleware solution we had a quick chat [...]