Roblox will take its first steps to promote voice chat by turning on a feature it calls "Spatial Voice" in an invite-only beta, the company announced on Thursday.
“With Spatial Voice, Roblox creators will begin to test experiences where conversations can take place realistically, reflecting on how we listen to and respond to the world around us every day,” said Manuel Bronstein, Roblox chief product officer, in a blog post. Based on this limited description, it looks like Spatial Voice will try to mirror the real-world way of sounds and require you to be close to another player to talk to that player.
Adding voice chats of any kind to Roblox is especially relevant to how the company will manage conversations, given Roblox's huge popularity among kids.
raises concerns. However, according to TechCrunch, Roblox plans to roll out the feature gradually, initially giving access to 5.000 players, all of whom will be 13 or older. In an interview with TechCrunch, Bronstein suggested that the company may never make this feature available to children.
As for moderation, it will allow users to self-report issues. “Our community will be able to self-flag a user who does not comply with community standards and that user may lose their speaking privileges,” Bronstein wrote on his blog. This can be a useful tool for rooting out bad people, but users shouldn't be tasking the reporting system.
According to TechCrunch, Roblox is also planning a voice chat experience in the game that will allow you to chat with your friends wherever they are. With this experience, you will be able to play different games with your friends but still be able to hang out on the same audio channel just like Discord.
Voice chat will apparently be supported by Roblox's acquisition of the Guilded chat platform, which it acquired in August. According to TechCrunch, “While Roblox's audio work predates the acquisition, Guilded will form the basis for the game's future sound plans.”
The addition of voice chat could make the game a more popular place to hang out and help it compete better with other metaverse-y games like Fortnite. However, this cautious approach of Roblox seems to be on the side of wanting to avoid the difficulties and problems that voice chat can bring to the platform.