Viewer 2’s Basic Mode gains a new feature today – that of Voice.
While I don’t use Voice myself – I have nothing against it, I just move largely in the world of role -play in SL, and Voice can be illusion-shattering in that regard – I think it’s a pretty good option to have within Second Life, and adding it to the Basic Mode makes sense. To a point.
The problem is, a lot of things are “coming” to the Basic Mode (or have been indicated at coming) – currency, for example. To be fair, I’ve suggested some additions myself, although they appear to be fewer than those LL are contemplating. Which leads to a problem I’ve touched on before.
If LL keep adding to the Basic Mode, how long until it ceases being the “Basic Mode” and becomes “The Viewer”? The function of a Basic Mode, I thought, was to ease new users into the Second Life / Viewer experience. Ergo, it makes sense to keep the Basic Mode relatively simple and clean. While things like Voice are very useful to have, the fact remains that if things keep getting added to the Basic Mode, then it won’t be long before any advantages gained in introducing it are going to be washed away.
In discussing this with Rodvik a while ago, I pointed out the need to provide a better transitional experience between the Basic and Advanced modes of the Viewer. It’s something he apparently generally agreed with, although he also appeared to imply that Basic might be more to do with making Viewer development more iterative, and that at some point in the future, Basic may merge with Advanced – presumably because the code base has been overhauled and made somewhat more modular, making future Viewer maintenance a lot easier. If so, this throws the purpose of the Basic Mode into a whole different category than “simply” being a tool to help new users – and it’s future becomes somewhat more intriguing.
Personally, while I’m all in favour of making the Viewer a lot more modular (something I understand Bagman Linden (Jeff Petersen) is quite keen on) to the point of potentially making elements of the Viewer “optional” / “installable as required” where users are concerned, I still think that the Basic Mode holds a lot of potential where new users are concerned, providing LL address its current shortfalls without overloading it with features and providing they add the means to bridge the gap between it and the Advance Mode smoothly.
It’ll be interesting to see which direction they do opt to take.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 
There are quite a lot of things to be said against voice, aside of the often quoted (with an undertone of rightousness) end-of-genderbending argument. For me, the main argument is that voice leads to segmentation.
I am not an English native speaker. However, my primary language in SL is English, and my graps of the language allows me to participate in sophisticated conversations without being lost. Actually, for the most part I pass as an English native speaker (much to my pride). The nature of the text-based communication is that it allows me to READ, to UNDERSTAND and to THINK, before I compose my answer.
FOLLOWING a spoken conversation is a whole different ballgame. We have the issue of ACCENTS: imagine someone from Brisbane, from Yorkshire and from Texas in a voice conversation with a non-English native speaker. Understanding is much more difficult, plus a voice convo is much more fast paced. You can’t reread what was said, and speakers cut into each other. And even if one would manage to follow that, PARTICIPATING in the conversation will be tough too. Inevitably your answers would lag behind, and you add a whole new accent to the convo.
Another issue is privacy: even without the aspect of genderbending, you can easily participate in text chat while other people are in the same room with you. For a voice conversation, you need some privacy though.
I don’t have a problem with people using voice. I have a problem would it became the predominant means of communication.
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There are pros and cons to all things; SL included. Voice, when introduced, was a controversial subject as many took it to mean that it was *compulsory*, rather than *optional*.
While I don’t deny the issues you mention, particularly given that English is the predominant language used on SL, and thus comprehension among people where it is not their native language can very much be an issue, the fact remains that there are many instances where Voice simply does offer considerable advantages over text based chat. Whether “new” users would actually be exposed to such situation prior to making the switch to the Advanced mode, however, is very much debatable – on many counts.
So long as Voice remains as option, I don’t see it ever becoming a substantial barrier to using SL. It’s been around for a good while now (getting on for four years), and there have been no serious moves towards making it compulsory. Given that doing so would lead to the exclusion of broad swathes of the user community, I very much doubt that LL would move to make it so in the future. As such, I still feel that is it a useful tool in given situations, and there is substantial support for its presence and use in SL; as such, its inclusion in the Basic mode has as many advantages as it does disadvantages. Which present much makes its inclusion par for the course when compared to other elements of the Viewer.
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Basic mode needs inventory, voice seems a very odd addition ahead of inventory.
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On the other hand, why have inventory when you cannot purchase anything or build anything or take pictures, etc?
Voice is pretty-much a “stand-alone” addition to the Basic Mode that doesn’t require a lot of other goodies. Inventory isn’t in the same category in that regard, and while I’m not saying inventory isn’t needed, Voice is potentially the easier add.
Inventory is promised, I understand, but it need more of a coordinated release with other features.
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