My original reason for contacting Valve was to pick their brains about Team Fortress 2. Learning quickly that the terms, "Go away," and "Stop sending us cases of vodka," meant I wasn't going to get any information about TF2, I asked about Voice and Spectator. Erik Johnson, Project Manager at Valve, was kind enough to fill in the A's to our Q's. Read on!

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Voice and Spectator Q&A with Valve's Erik Johnson

Conducted by Omni

September 3, 2001

Explain, in detail, exactly what Voice and Spectator are just so we're all on the same page.

[Erik Johnson] Voice is something we've integrated into the Half-Life engine. This allows all multiplayer Half-Life Mods to make use of voice in the game. The spectator is a method that a player can connect to a Half-Life server via a proxy and watch and listen to a game in progress. There are bunches of different ways to view the game while you are in the spectator. You can watch the game as a normal spectator and free-roam around the world, you can view the game from a top down RTS style view, or you can allow the 'director' to automatically pick the best action for you to watch.

With so many trash-typing players out there, is voice communication in a FPS such a good idea? At least when something's typed you can ignore it, but if someone's blaring in your ears that you're a nasty son of a so-and-so that likes to fornicate with donkeys, don't you think it will drive people away? And is there any way to combat this?

[Erik Johnson] Muting another player is really easy. You will be able to bring up the scoreboard, click to bring up a mouse cursor, and click on the name of the player you want to mute.

Valve has built its empire on Half-Life (whose own half-life is yet to be determined) in all its various forms (Counter-Strike, The Hunger, TFC) and has a huge number of fans around the world. Are they being used as Beta Testers to see how well Voice works before its implemented in Team Fortress 2 or Counter-Strike 2?

[Erik Johnson] Continuing to support our game is more of a customer service issue than a testing issue. We've learned a lot from the last 2 ½ years about how to work with a developer (Mod) community and how to create content for our games, but it's really more of an exercise in customer support. We want to make sure that people are getting a lot of value from the game they bought. It's also really fun to see new Mods come out and start to build a new community segment out of the existing user base. For example, Day of Defeat and The Opera have really been gaining in popularity recently. It's great to see what mod makers do with the SDK.

Is Voice technology going to eventually reshape the way we play on-line games?

[Erik Johnson] It's one of the pieces of the puzzle, and it does have a pretty major impact on our internal playtest. It tends to make it easier for a team of players to work together better, but the underlying gameplay is still the most important thing.

Will Spectators be able to verbally communicate too? If you're shooting fora real spectator sport, you should be able to make comments to other Spectators or at least hurl abuse at players.

[Erik Johnson] There have been some ideas tossed around about allowing spectators to interact with players in the game, but for the first release they will just be watching the game in progress. We want to build up the notion that the players are in a stadium with fans watching them play. It would be pretty interesting to come up with a way for players to cheer, boo, applaud, etc., with the players in the match.

In the broader picture, how can a computer game be considered a sport? For something that doesn't require any fitness quotient, other than moving the mouse and hitting the keyboard, why should it be considered a sport?

[Erik Johnson] I guess that's just a question of semantics. Go to a CPL event and see how some of the top Counter-Strike Clans play together and I think you'll be convinced that it's a sport.

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Say I'm a Luddite that is still playing via a 56K modem - am I going to be able to use Spectator?

[Erik Johnson] Absolutely. There are still tons of people that use modem connections, so we're not planning on adding a feature that they aren't going to be able to use.

Will we be allowed to record matches via Spectator? (Maybe eventually compile a tape of "Counter-Strike's Greatest Headshots.")

[Erik Johnson] This is definitely something we're looking into for the future.

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We know how things are theoretically supposed to work, but what practical and technical problems have you encountered implementing Voice and Spectator? (Compression, bandwidth, etc.)

[Erik Johnson] There really haven't been too many technical hurdles. Most of the work has been focused on getting the UI easy to use. Making sure it's easy for players to mute other players, reworking the scoreboard so we have enough room to fit the new UI elements, etc.

Could Voice and Spectator be used in an exclusively two-player game? One person going through the level, while another acts as a guide warning of hidden foes or advising on building defenses?

[Erik Johnson] Sounds like a great idea for a mod.

Thanks for your time, Erik!

Valve's Site.