WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.190 --> 00:00:04.850 A fair warning: the following video is about survival horror games, and it will feature 00:00:04.850 --> 00:00:06.691 some creepy themes. 00:00:06.691 --> 00:00:08.950 {What I Love!} 00:00:09.632 --> 00:00:10.700 Hello! 00:00:10.700 --> 00:00:14.670 I’m Scruffy, and today, I’m really glad to have you here. 00:00:14.670 --> 00:00:18.400 Because we’re talking about horror games once again, and if there’s one thing that 00:00:18.400 --> 00:00:23.590 helps alleviate the dread of a horror experience, it’s sharing it with others. 00:00:23.590 --> 00:00:24.660 Braving it together. 00:00:24.660 --> 00:00:29.240 Whether you’re playing with friends online, or showing a solo horror game to a friend 00:00:29.240 --> 00:00:34.809 in the same room, or streaming to a chat of anyone, you don’t feel so alone the way 00:00:34.809 --> 00:00:36.480 the game would have you feel. 00:00:36.480 --> 00:00:42.579 What’s more, others can offer suggestions, help, or reactions, that can actively combat 00:00:42.579 --> 00:00:49.019 two pillars that most horror games seek to instill: absence of information, the inability 00:00:49.019 --> 00:00:54.800 to plan for what comes next, and absence of action, the inability to change your current 00:00:54.800 --> 00:00:56.789 situation in the game. 00:00:56.789 --> 00:01:01.440 Now it’s great to bond over these games by diluting your fears that way… but if 00:01:01.440 --> 00:01:06.000 you’re a horror game developer, who wants to make something spooky, but multiplayer 00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:08.790 co-op, how would you account for this? 00:01:08.790 --> 00:01:13.950 How do you keep players on their toes, when you’re sure they’ll be together, communicating 00:01:13.950 --> 00:01:16.590 and mitigating the horror? 00:01:16.590 --> 00:01:21.840 Two games, Phasmophobia and In Silence, took on that challenge by specifically messing 00:01:21.840 --> 00:01:25.080 with multiplayer communication in a unique way. 00:01:25.080 --> 00:01:30.280 It’s called “proximity voice chat,” and it occurs in plenty of simulation games, 00:01:30.280 --> 00:01:32.250 not just horror ones. 00:01:32.250 --> 00:01:37.070 In an online multiplayer game, voice chat is a really quick and effective way to inform 00:01:37.070 --> 00:01:41.160 one another about what one player might be doing that others can’t see. 00:01:41.160 --> 00:01:45.560 And while you may have plenty of voice chat options outside a game, building an in-game 00:01:45.560 --> 00:01:48.890 voice chat is rather useful, and simple! 00:01:48.890 --> 00:01:53.240 Just have a player set their microphone as an input, and then make the output a sound 00:01:53.240 --> 00:01:55.660 effect for all other players. 00:01:55.660 --> 00:02:00.980 The advantage of making it in-game is that you can make the sound a “3D sound,” tying 00:02:00.980 --> 00:02:04.340 it to the location of that player’s character. 00:02:04.340 --> 00:02:09.810 So if another player moves away from that sound source, the sound attenuates for them. 00:02:09.810 --> 00:02:14.140 All of a sudden, this “proximity” voice chat feels a bit more like it occurs within 00:02:14.140 --> 00:02:17.970 the game world, instead of hovering outside it. 00:02:17.970 --> 00:02:23.060 And in a horror game like Phasmophobia, it encourages your team of ghost-hunters to stick 00:02:23.060 --> 00:02:28.310 together, because not only are you more vulnerable on your own, you can’t hear your teammates 00:02:28.310 --> 00:02:30.230 and plan things out together. 00:02:30.230 --> 00:02:34.970 In this game, a group of up to four online players needs to conduct various tests for 00:02:34.970 --> 00:02:39.170 signs of a ghost haunting some large building or site. 00:02:39.170 --> 00:02:43.319 All players have to agree on what type of ghost is haunting this place, and mark it 00:02:43.319 --> 00:02:47.069 down in their individual journals, to complete a mission. 00:02:47.069 --> 00:02:52.320 And one player can only hold so many of these tests, so you need to delegate who’s testing 00:02:52.320 --> 00:02:57.530 what, and split resources like lights, and sanity pills, and… 00:02:57.530 --> 00:03:00.700 Ah, I forgot, walkie-talkies. 00:03:00.700 --> 00:03:05.620 This is a way to beat the proximity part of the voice chat, you can talk to your teammates 00:03:05.620 --> 00:03:07.070 from anywhere on a walkie-talkie. 00:03:07.070 --> 00:03:11.990 But, Phasmophobia does something neat with your microphone input when you use a walkie-talkie: 00:03:11.990 --> 00:03:20.950 they filter the sound through a high-pass EQ before the output, simulating the tiny 00:03:20.950 --> 00:03:21.950 speakers from which others would hear you. 00:03:21.950 --> 00:03:25.600 Similarly, you can often hear other players even if they’re in an adjacent room to you, 00:03:25.600 --> 00:03:30.680 but their input gets filtered through a low-pass EQ before outputting to you, so they sound 00:03:30.680 --> 00:03:33.540 muffled like they would in real life. 00:03:33.540 --> 00:03:36.790 But it seems like you still have the advantage here, right? 00:03:36.790 --> 00:03:41.130 If you can radio your teammates and vice versa, you can still go anywhere and have their help 00:03:41.130 --> 00:03:43.090 beside you, right? 00:03:43.090 --> 00:03:48.959 Well, that is true, up until your in-game sanity starts dropping, and your group has 00:03:48.959 --> 00:03:53.740 split up to cover more ground, and suddenly the ghost you’re after starts hunting the 00:03:53.740 --> 00:04:02.180 living, and you attract their attention by accidentally speaking during the hunt— 00:04:02.180 --> 00:04:04.410 And the ghost gets you. 00:04:04.410 --> 00:04:09.379 Here is the pivotal twist that Phasmophobia puts on proximity voice chat. 00:04:09.379 --> 00:04:14.210 If a ghost successfully hunts you down, you enter the afterlife, where you can see and 00:04:14.210 --> 00:04:18.710 hear the other teammates, but they cannot see or hear you. 00:04:18.710 --> 00:04:23.449 You’re cut out of the voice chat, and because this game is online and the other players 00:04:23.449 --> 00:04:27.560 are remote, you’re cut out of the lifeline of communicating with them. 00:04:27.560 --> 00:04:32.720 They have one less member to coordinate actions and give verbal feedback. 00:04:32.720 --> 00:04:36.090 And yet, you can still mark things down in your journal… 00:04:36.090 --> 00:04:40.900 so it’s possible to finish the mission, if you basically… 00:04:40.900 --> 00:04:46.130 haunt your teammates silently and come to a consensus with them about what type of ghost 00:04:46.130 --> 00:04:47.610 you’re tracking. 00:04:47.610 --> 00:04:51.949 You may not be able to speak with them, but you can still pick up and drop objects in 00:04:51.949 --> 00:04:57.590 the environment, which actually became a form of communication for me the first time I became 00:04:57.590 --> 00:04:58.920 a ghost in this game. 00:04:58.920 --> 00:05:04.151 My teammates would tell me to “give us a sign” for certain yes-or-no questions, and 00:05:04.151 --> 00:05:07.490 I would pick up and throw a basketball to respond. 00:05:07.490 --> 00:05:10.300 With that system, we could still complete the mission. 00:05:10.300 --> 00:05:14.510 So, I suppose while this setup certainly hinders the information you can exchange with your 00:05:14.510 --> 00:05:19.870 fellow voice-chatters, it’s not a total absence of information. 00:05:19.870 --> 00:05:24.630 Then there’s In Silence, which approaches its twist on proximity voice chat a little 00:05:24.630 --> 00:05:25.970 differently. 00:05:25.970 --> 00:05:31.870 In this game, two to five players are trying to hunt or escape from a horrific monsterm, 00:05:31.870 --> 00:05:34.850 the Rake, played by a sixth player. 00:05:34.850 --> 00:05:41.310 The monster can barely see anything, but it can hear extremely well across long distances, 00:05:41.310 --> 00:05:44.650 and it can outrun and dispatch the other players. 00:05:44.650 --> 00:05:49.979 And in addition to in-game sound effects attracting its attention, you guessed it, proximity voice 00:05:49.979 --> 00:05:55.100 chat between the five-person team can also be heard by the monster. 00:05:55.100 --> 00:05:59.550 Any messages to teammates will give away your location to the monster player. 00:05:59.550 --> 00:06:04.900 So from the team’s perspective, voice chat almost becomes a last resort, or perhaps part 00:06:04.900 --> 00:06:11.330 of a larger diversion plan, but not the relieving action it was in Phasmophobia. 00:06:11.330 --> 00:06:16.460 From the monster’s perspective, voice chat becomes the most effective means of finding 00:06:16.460 --> 00:06:21.710 players, as your vision while playing is darkened and blurred: you can only really see players 00:06:21.710 --> 00:06:25.680 well if they’re nearby with a flashlight on. 00:06:25.680 --> 00:06:30.610 This approach to voice chat is more about absence of action: limiting your options for 00:06:30.610 --> 00:06:33.950 communication by giving them major consequences. 00:06:33.950 --> 00:06:39.650 That’s why this game relies so heavily on its in-game voice chat, otherwise the game 00:06:39.650 --> 00:06:42.900 would be heavily balanced against the monster player. 00:06:42.900 --> 00:06:46.200 Now, a couple interesting details here. 00:06:46.200 --> 00:06:50.360 Like Phasmophobia, team members who are killed in this game will become an entity that can 00:06:50.360 --> 00:06:55.900 see but not interact with voice chat: in this case, a mouse. 00:06:55.900 --> 00:07:00.550 You can’t do nearly as much in this state, but you can still find items for other players 00:07:00.550 --> 00:07:03.560 and distract the monster with your sounds. 00:07:03.560 --> 00:07:08.949 And a more interesting design choice to me is that the monster is also a member of the 00:07:08.949 --> 00:07:10.950 proximity voice chat. 00:07:10.950 --> 00:07:16.000 They can hear players who are nearby, and they can speak with players who are nearby! 00:07:16.000 --> 00:07:20.850 I’m not quite sure what it does for the fear factor of this game. 00:07:20.850 --> 00:07:26.740 Here you have this horrific and fearsome creature of urban legend, talking to you or to no one 00:07:26.740 --> 00:07:31.009 in particular with the microphone-fidelity voice of whoever joined this game session 00:07:31.009 --> 00:07:32.199 with you. 00:07:32.199 --> 00:07:36.370 Initially that seems like a recipe to take you out of the experience. 00:07:36.370 --> 00:07:41.470 Then again, perhaps the monster player could use voice chat to play mind games on another 00:07:41.470 --> 00:07:46.960 player, make them feel more isolated, or even just act unusually silent. 00:07:46.960 --> 00:07:53.229 I’d say, to re-immerse us in this experience, the monster player could perhaps be encouraged 00:07:53.229 --> 00:07:56.479 to toy with other players this way. 00:07:56.479 --> 00:08:01.230 Perhaps in another version of this game, they could even be awarded small recorded voice 00:08:01.230 --> 00:08:07.130 clips of a player they already defeated, and use those to trick and lure other players 00:08:07.130 --> 00:08:11.660 with the sound of their teammate, until they’re discarded at the end of a play session. 00:08:11.660 --> 00:08:16.970 I suppose that’s getting into the possibilities of proximity voice chat: it becomes such an 00:08:16.970 --> 00:08:22.730 indispensable form of communication in otherwise dark, foreboding environments like this, that 00:08:22.730 --> 00:08:27.440 it’s the perfect target for horror games to manipulate and suddenly alter it. 00:08:27.440 --> 00:08:33.080 That simultaneously imbues us further in the world, and makes us feel more helpless in 00:08:33.080 --> 00:08:34.349 the dark. 00:08:34.349 --> 00:08:39.979 And if you and your cooperators survive it, well, that’s testament to our ability to 00:08:39.979 --> 00:08:45.570 counteract absence of action, and figure out alternative ways to work as a team, even under 00:08:45.570 --> 00:08:47.820 great deals of stress. 00:08:47.820 --> 00:08:51.600 And that’s my chat about proximity voice chat in horror games. 00:08:51.600 --> 00:08:55.850 I’d like to thank my friend Wolfgang for helping me with this script. 00:08:55.850 --> 00:09:00.390 And as always, I'd like to thank my patrons on Patreon, who help keep my video-making 00:09:00.390 --> 00:09:01.960 process sustainable. 00:09:01.960 --> 00:09:07.029 If you'd like to support my work directly, and get perks like your credit here, seeing 00:09:07.029 --> 00:09:12.260 videos early, a vote on what music I arrange, and more behind-the-scenes content, you can 00:09:12.260 --> 00:09:14.620 visit my Patreon link in this video's description. 00:09:14.620 --> 00:09:18.330 And with that, I'm Scruffy, and thank you very much for watching.