Oh boy... Riot are adding voice chat to League *giggle*

The moment I saw that Riot are examining adding built-in voice chat to League, I couldn’t help but pull a wry grin. I wonder how this will affect the toxic landscape that is so synonymous with the game.

Honestly, I can’t wait for this, because it will remove a layer of anonymity which I strongly believe is the root and key to players being toxic (apart from, suffice to say, those who've been raised badly or have genuine behavioral problems). To illustrate this point, I’ve had plenty ‘people’ (probably mostly young teens) tell me to ‘kill myself’, ‘shut the f*** up pu%y’, ‘be quiet, child’… Almost always, the toxic player is on my own team, berating another fellow teammate for screwing up in some way (as if that’s going to help), so I tend to stand up for these people, purely because it bothers me that people hide behind their computer screens and act this way. I’d wager that, of the 1000s of toxic players I’ve seen, only a very, very small handful would actually behave this way to our faces. Anyway, I digress slightly…

I imagine, at this stage, that adding voice chat would simply widen the window, both on the lower and more volatile ends of the spectrum. I think that many of the younger players will think twice before opening their mouth with something unpleasant to say because their pubescent voice will undermine the impact of their message, providing they have already established verbal contact with the team(many will avoid speaking exactly for this exact reason). On the other end of the scale, no doubt you will hear keyboards being smashed, and yet more pubescent cries of anguish.

One point that stands out to me, in light of this, is: how much work would it create for Riot to monitor spoken chat? If someone makes an allegation that someone said ‘KYS racist word’, for example, Riot’s gonna have to listen through that match. Incredibly time consuming, inevitably.

Implementation of this system would represent a step towards the CSGO atmosphere – with people playing music down the mic (smaller teams in League, at least…), and the slightly more mature community laughing at the squeaky kids telling them to STFU.

At least, for the most part, this would be quite beneficial to League, and rack it up a notch, since team coordination will be more vocalized. For example, a ganking jungler and target lane can coordinate abilities better, or at least try. As an ex-WoW player, I can’t think how much easier voice chat made raids; no doubt the same concept applies here.

Bring on in-built chat. [darius-angry]