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Tyler Cooper
Professor Greene
UWRT 1102-091
14 November 2016
Inquiry Project Final Draft
In many aspects of life communication between party members is crucial for success. In
soccer you cannot win a game without communicating to your team members that you want the
ball, they cant assume that you want them to pass you the ball. In math class your professor isnt
able to read your mind, knowing you need him to repeat the problem on the board because you
dont grasp the concept yet. Communication is also vital in many videogames. World of Warcraft
and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive are both entirely different genres but both still desperately
require communication in order to succeed. These particular games both offer text oriented and
speech oriented communication methods in-game but many players are resorting to third party
communication programs while playing the game. Why are players going outside of these video
games in order to communicate with friends and other players? As a result of players going out
of the game to these third party communication programs an entirely new community is being
built between friends.
World of Warcraft is a massive multiplayer online role playing game or MMORPG for
short. The game was published on November 23rd 2004 and since then has seen six popular
expansion packs adding on to the original model. World of Warcraft or WoW, as its popularly
called between players is the highest subscribed videogame in the world. At its peak WoW had
over 12 million subscribers (Companies). Since then subscriber numbers have fallen off and have
the occasional spike when a new expansion comes out. The goal of the game is to explore the

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universe of Azeorth as a hero. You can choose to do this solo or party up with friends. As your
exploring the game youll level up, gain new skills, find new armor, learn new professions, and
complete more feats of the strength. At its core WoW is a progression based game, which means
getting to level cap and progressively becoming stronger through dungeons, raids, and player vs
player environments. At end game content its important to use communication between team
members in order to defeat difficult tasks such as killing bosses in raids, or killing enemy players
in competitive areas of player vs player.
Players can use in game text, or voice chat. In many casual instances the text
conversations will suffice but as the difficulty progresses text alone will not suffice, the human
voice is needed. It would seem obvious that players would use the in-game voice communication
system to coordinate tactics but thats not the case, the reason most players dont use it because
its restricted to in game parties and its poor design and wasnt implemented until after many
players were already using third party programs. Thus resulting in the massive popularity of
programs such as Skype and Ventrillo
Many players resort to programs such as Skype, Discord, and one of the older models
Ventrillo. As a previous of player of WoW it was always assumed that you had to use these
programs in order to have voice to voice communication. Ventrillo was mainly used in the early
expansions of WoW since it didnt take much up bandwidth and Skype hadnt been popularized.
Today players can choose between Skype, Discord, Ventrillo, Mumble, and several other
programs or they can use the barren in game voice-chat.
WoW, much like other MMOS face content droughts. This is a period where the game
developers are in-between releasing new patches for players. In WoW these droughts happen
normally in between expansions and can lost as long up to a year. Most players quit the game

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after completing all of the content in an expansion, and will re-subscribe right before the new
expansion comes out again. Most WoW players are commuter players. For example, they go to
classes during the week but they go home every weekend and leave campus because there isnt a
reason keeping them there. There is a still a good amount of players that remain subscribed and
continue to play the game every day. The reason these players stay is because theyre either
completely infatuated with the game or they come back every day to talk and play with friends.
Any video game is 100 times better when youre playing with some of your closest buddies.
Playing with your friends is great but being able to hear their voice while they play is
basically like being in the same room with them. Using programs such as Discord, Ventrillo and
Skype more specifically Discord because it allows you to build servers to host with friends and
have specific chat rooms. Personally Im in over 6 Discord servers each different and having
multiple members. Some of the servers are for friends that live in the same region while other
servers are for specific games only.
Ventrillo is one of the older 3rd party programs used by gamers to communicate with their
friends and groupmates. The benefits of using Ventrillo are that it allows you to communicate
with multiple people, has access to cross channel communications, user to user private
conversations, sub channels, individual channels, text to speech voice generation, multiple
platform support for clients and servers, and password protected server login and channels.
Skype was founded in 2003 and its goal was to connect people that werent near each
other, together. Its used by friends, family, business partners, and other sorts of relationships. Its
focus was to be easily accessible for the user and to have good call quality between long
distances. Skype can be used across many platforms, such as the PC, Mac, most phones, and even

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gaming consoles. The program is free but has extra benefits for users that pay. You can make
phone calls, access Wi-Fi, and send texts.
Discord has become one of the more popular programs to choose from simply because it
was made specifically for gamers. Its a free voice and text chat app for gaming. Discord was
made due to the frustrations from other voice programs being used for games. It has the ability
for users to make multiple servers, have protected servers or just have personal calls with friends.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a competitive first person shooter that was published
on August 21st 2012 (Gamespot). Its based off its earlier models, source and 1.6. Counter-Strike
was initially a mod based off the game Half-Life and eventually became a standalone model on
November 1st 2004 using the source game engine (Counter-Strike). The game has always been
known for its extreme skill gap in players and its difficult resulting in a massive pro-scene and
cult like player following. Today its considered one of the leading games in the world of ESports. The game modes are very simple. There is competitive which is the most iconic mode,
has 10 players split onto two teams, the terrorists and the counter-terrorists. The goal for the
terrorists to eliminate all CTs or detonate a bomb at one of the two bomb sites, A or B. The goal
for the counter-terrorists to eliminate all Ts or defuse the bomb if its planted. Both sides rely
heavily on team communication through callouts.
A callout can simply be I saw a guy over in middle, or there is one t-spawn, although a
simple concept its crucial to a teams chance of winning. Ideally the team with the most accurate
call-outs ends up winning. Information is extremely important to defeat your opponents, if you
know where they are before they find your location its give you the upper hand in killing them.
The current model CS:GO has in game communication models. There is a voice speech that
allows players to talk to teammates in game. A text model that you can use to talk to teammates

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or to everyone in the server. There is another option called radio commands, you press a button
with a command and your in game character will speak the command and type in chat. Most
players that dont have mics use this feature.
If playing with friends most players will be communicating with these friends in Skype
and Discord while still giving in game callouts to the players not in the call. Players do this so
they can freely talk to their friends without having to include their other teammates. It creates a
sense of privacy and comfort as most players in this game can be toxic at times. The game itself
is very completive even out of the pro-scene, there is trash talking between teams, which creates
many emotions in players! Many players get very involved into a game so its not uncommon to
hear a player get angry and yell or blame someone on their team. Its common courteously for
players in a third party call to still give vital callouts/information to their teammates so they can
work together to win the game!
The benefits of playing with friends in a Discord server you can give callouts to your
friends instantly without having to push the push to talk button in game. I would give my friends
riskier callouts rather than a random player. Im much more comfortable giving them this risky
callout, sometime it plays off big and sometime it gets them killed. This comfort comes from the
bond of our friendship, that was creating from playing CS:GO countless hours and talking to
each other daily in Skype and Discord. I havent met those friends on counter strike I probably
wouldnt be playing the game still today. Our friendships wouldnt have been as strong if we
didnt talk to each other every day on Skype. I consider those guys some of my closest friends,
even if weve never met in person before or that they dont live in North Carolina.
Reflecting on the two mentioned games its clear to see that the environments are
complete opposites. WoW being a more casual laid back game base while CS:GO is very

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competitive emotional scene with its ups and downs much like League of Legends, Halo, and
Call of Duty. Although the genres and communities are different the reasons very leaving the
games to find communication programs are very much similar. These calls/servers create a
community between friends, teammates, and guild mates making a sense of connection and
comfort. It separates the player from the game and connects them to a part of the real-world.
Through these connections, players will constantly want to return back to the game to play with
friends. Companies like Blizzard and Valve should encourage players use to these programs, so
that players will continue to build separate communities that connect to the games they play.
This concept doesnt only relate to video games, take any activity the you can complete
with a group of people. For instance, you might not enjoy playing basketball anymore but if
youre friends call you to go play a pickup game youre probably going to because you dont
want to disappoint your friends. It brings up the question, are we to blame human friendship for
the continuation of activities we normally wouldnt or dont want to do anymore? Game
companies like Blizzard have realized and have entered a number of in game rewards for players
who recruit friends to the game.
In conclusion, videogames are responsible for the formation of many lasting
relationships. Friendships, relationships, and even marriages have been created because of them.
For example, Jaryd summit1g Lazar, a popular twitch.tv streamer, met his wife Desirae Lazar
through Counter-Strike. The two are still happily married and continue to play video games
together. People play videogames to have fun, and along the way they can meet people that they
like and want to play those games with them. These relationships between friends become
stronger when you involve the human voice. Talking through a keyboard is one thing but hearing

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the other persons voice is entirely different, its more vulnerable and open. Most games have ingame communication programs but the third party ones are much more popular and efficient.

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Works Cited
About Skype. What Is Skype. N.p.m n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2016
https://www.skype.com/en/about/
Companies, By Betting. WoW Subscribers/players | Statistica. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2016.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/276601/number-of-world-of-warcraft-subscribers-byquarter/
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. About. N.p.m n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2016. http://blog.counterstrike.net/index.php/about/
@GameSpot. Dust to Dust: The History of Counter-Strike. Gamespot. N.p., 17 May 2014.
Web. 17 Oct. 2016. http://www.gamespot.com/articles/dust-to-dust-the-history-ofcounter-strike/1100-6419676
What Is Discord? Discord. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2016.
https://support.discordapp.com/hc/en-us/articles/204229718-What-is-DiscordVentrillo About. Ventrillo About. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2016.
http://www.ventrilo.com/about.php