Casual Conversation

I love playing games and I hate voice chat.

Public VC can be pretty awful (in my experience as a woman). But even with friends, sometimes I wanna play with them while still recharging my introvert battery lol!

Pub games are unpleasant. People talk shit, leave mics open, leave music playing over the mic, shout whenever they want to say anything, make stupid demands. That doesn't even include how frequently people are abusive.

I don't play multiplayer games much anymore. But even games that need heavy teamwork aren't worth keeping voice chat on for (e.g. Apex Legends).

The only exception would be when I played with members of a closed community with full pre-made teams.

I always just use the text chat, no desire to have a conference call to just play a game. Have never owned a headset for gaming.

I do that a lot lol :3 for me there's a lot of reasons (anxiety, drained social battery, feeling extra dysphoric about my voice etc.) but I still like hanging out with friends together even if im not necessarily talking :3 I guess it's kinda like parallel play.. though I do usually interact more when playing games online than one would do with that, just not verbally. But there's text chat, or helping my friends/working on a task together etc.

You want me to SPEAK to people?

Private voice chat I'd have to be in the mood for it.

Public voice chat I'm just not gonna do.

But text chat? Or just playing, no chat? That's chill as hell, can do that anytime.

[For public voice chat] Because I'm a transfeminine person and I don't know which one is worse between dealing with people hearing my voice and thinking I'm a dude or dealing with people hearing that I'm a woman.

Oh man I’d never play games where voice was a requirement, other than couch co-op.

My early mmo gaming in my 20s was with wow and guild or pug vent servers and that was mostly ok because if you knew what you were doing as a support character you didn’t need to participate in the chats (my main was a holy priest, so as long as nobody died I didn’t need vent at all). My guild was accommodating, and had several deaf members, so voice wasn’t a big push for us.

I was a raid leader and the main healer of my guild and I did not ever talk on voice chat because I couldn’t be bothered to set up my mic and nobody cared. We were casual, but I mean yeah, it’s a game for fun.

I have absolutely no interest in exposing myself to public servers, or even anything less curated than guild servers, even as temporary as pug chats. I don’t play online games if voice chat is needed.

It might be a you problem if you don’t feel connected with someone making the time to play with you because it’s not your preferred way.

Some people are very shy and socially anxious, so there ya go. 🤷

Probably: They don't want to buy a Microphone or they don't want to speak to random.

There's a lot of ways to play games. There's a lot of ways to interact.

Lots of good answers, but you'll learn the most from asking the person you play with.

I played TF2 since the orange box came out in the mid 2000s. When I found a great clan, I voiced with my small and intimate group. Time with them was life giving. Outside that, I texted and used the team commands instead.

After years of hiatus and the clan fading, I disabled voice altogether in the game when i've played recently. Gamers can be unpleasant and it's only become worse over the years. Especially towards females. Nah. I'm not interested in talking with immature children. I like pwning quietly without assturds being their unpleasant selves in my ears holes. In fact, I haven't used voice in a long, long while.

Ironically, I hate texting and use speech to text nearly all the time. So I'm still voicing, but not directly. 🙃

I'm not trying to talk to people when I play games. Then again, you said TF2 and "Team" is right there in the name. So I guess you have to. I just never got into those games.

Closest I get is when my nephew wants to play Fortnite. But he'll be right there next to me playing on his phone or his Switch, and I'll be on the Xbox. Personally I think it's kind of a stupid game, but it's free, you don't have to pay shit, and it's basically the latest version of Unreal Tournament (in its shittiest form, but damn, I can fucking dance in Unreal Tournament). So he does the stupid dances and the big splashy moves, and I sneak around and flank the people who shoot at him, and double tap them in the head. I stay low, stick to cover, and make my shots count. He gets attention. We win matches like that. Kinda thankfully, he's moved onto Roblox and that's on the other side of a line I won't cross with gaming. (And I say this as an Animal Crossing player.)