There are cases where I ask someone to play something like TF2 and don’t wanna voice chat and I don’t get that, like it makes me feel like we’re not even interacting at all.
Public VC can be pretty awful (in my experience as a woman). But even with friends, sometimes I wanna play with them while still recharging my introvert battery lol!
This has been my experience too. When I speak outside of friend groups, the response is either guys getting gross and overtly sexual or talking shit about because woman.
I always just use the text chat, no desire to have a conference call to just play a game. Have never owned a headset for gaming.
Pub games are unpleasant. People talk shit, leave mics open, leave music playing over the mic, shout whenever they want to say anything, make stupid demands. That doesn’t even include how frequently people are abusive.
I don’t play multiplayer games much anymore. But even games that need heavy teamwork aren’t worth keeping voice chat on for (e.g. Apex Legends).
The only exception would be when I played with members of a closed community with full pre-made teams.
Private voice chat I’d have to be in the mood for it.
Public voice chat I’m just not gonna do.
But text chat? Or just playing, no chat? That’s chill as hell, can do that anytime.
You want me to SPEAK to people?
Some people are very shy and socially anxious, so there ya go. 🤷
[For public voice chat]Because I’m a transfeminine person and I don’t know which one is worse between dealing with people hearing my voice and thinking I’m a dude or dealing with people hearing that I’m a woman.I do that a lot lol :3 for me there’s a lot of reasons (anxiety, drained social battery, feeling extra dysphoric about my voice etc.) but I still like hanging out with friends together even if im not necessarily talking :3 I guess it’s kinda like parallel play… though I do usually interact more when playing games online than one would do with that, just not verbally. But there’s text chat, or helping my friends/working on a task together etc.
Oh man I’d never play games where voice was a requirement, other than couch co-op.
My early online gaming was with wow and guild or pug vent servers and that was mostly ok because if you knew what you were doing as a support character you didn’t need to participate in the chats (and my main was a holy priest). My guild was accommodating, and had several deaf members, so voice wasn’t a big push for us.
I was a raid leader and the main healer of my guild and I did not ever talk on voice chat because I couldn’t be bothered to set up my mic and nobody cared. We were casual, but I mean yeah, it’s a game for fun.
I have absolutely no interest in exposing myself to public servers, or even anything less curated than guild servers or temporary as pug chats. I don’t play online games if voice chat is needed.
It might be a you problem if you don’t feel connected with someone making the time to play with you because it’s not your preferred way.
I love playing games and I hate voice chat.
