Rehab

I played my first two-way voice enabled online game yesterday. It's quite a different experience to playing with just text, and one a lot of people should argue, that should become standard. Microsoft certainly think so. Their included mike has been a major factor in Live's success, and Xbox2 is rumored to come with a web cam right out of the box.

What this means could be a major shift in how games and gamers are perceived in terms social disfunction, (or nerdiness). Would a match of Unreal Championship or Halo 3 on the new console - harnessing technology that allow interactions between players to be almost as detailed as real ones - be considered as lonely and inward as a session of the original Zork in a darkened room?

There could be some really interesting implementations for a camera as a function of gameplay. The only one I can think of right now would be a kind of Poker-ish scenario, where the player would have to try and minimize or bluff their expressions for multiplayer trickery.
Of course, this opens up a whole host of options for the kinds of morons who disconnect out of RTS matches, team-kill, cheat, and generally ruin everyone's experiences.

Or would it? With a large part of the anonymity removed, would cheaters still get the same kick, knowing that all the people that were quickly learning to hate them with the kind of deep, passionate fury usually reserved only for right wing American presidents may well remember them?

Perhaps a more concrete consequence system could be implemented. Portraits of the accused nailed to virtual telegraph masts around the server. Maybe even a kind of virtual Hell, where all the perpetrators are incarcerated together in a map of whatever game, forced to play only with their own kind. Rehab?

Whatever the effects of these developments, I can't help but agree that this will a be part of it.