Voxli (YC W09) Targets Gamers With Browser-Based Group Voice Chat(techcrunch.com)
techcrunch.com
Voxli (YC W09) Targets Gamers With Browser-Based Group Voice Chat
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/09/y-combinators-voxli-targets-gamers-with-browser-based-group-voice-chat/
16 comments
Congrats on getting techcrunch coverage, you guys should do something with the heyzap guys, there are plenty of multiplayer flash games out there, and this would work together perfectly.
Cool! Congratulations, Voxli!
If any Hacker News people want to hang out, go here: https://voxli.com/hackernews
If any Hacker News people want to hang out, go here: https://voxli.com/hackernews
There are a couple of us in there now =)
Having to install a plugin is kind of annoying, but Voxli is one of the simplest-to-setup, easiest-to-use voice chats I've ever used. Inviting someone to a chat via a URL is really convenient and I could really see this taking off.
Glad you find it simple. We don't like installing plugins easier, but gamers need certain features that we couldn't provide with what's built into Flash--like push-to-talk from any application.
Here's my advice as someone who used to play a number of MMOGs. There are three very important aspects to a voice communication system which vary in importance based on the particular game:
1. Latency and quality. These factors affect whether other players can hear you in time, and whether they can understand what they heard. These are very important for fast-paced situations where you can't afford to repeat yourself, a simple example being arena combat in WoW. Ventrilo is almost always used over Teamspeak for these situations. These sort of high-tension situations rarely have more than ~40 people involved, since once a group reaches a certain size the latency of the entire groups' action becomes higher than the latency of any voice chat.
2. Management. Can you mute people who are causing problems? Can you have a "commander-only" voice system to communicate between a few people in a channel without the others hearing? Can you kick people and ban spies? Is this all easy to do?
3. Scale. While Ventrilo is widely used in WoW, Teamspeak is used in EVE Online almost exclusively. Why? The reason is scale--there are often fleets of 100, 200, 500, or more players and the voice chat system needs to handle at the minimum a broadcast from a single commander to all of them.
Without the appropriate level of effectiveness in these categories, you won't be able to compete with existing apps.
1. Latency and quality. These factors affect whether other players can hear you in time, and whether they can understand what they heard. These are very important for fast-paced situations where you can't afford to repeat yourself, a simple example being arena combat in WoW. Ventrilo is almost always used over Teamspeak for these situations. These sort of high-tension situations rarely have more than ~40 people involved, since once a group reaches a certain size the latency of the entire groups' action becomes higher than the latency of any voice chat.
2. Management. Can you mute people who are causing problems? Can you have a "commander-only" voice system to communicate between a few people in a channel without the others hearing? Can you kick people and ban spies? Is this all easy to do?
3. Scale. While Ventrilo is widely used in WoW, Teamspeak is used in EVE Online almost exclusively. Why? The reason is scale--there are often fleets of 100, 200, 500, or more players and the voice chat system needs to handle at the minimum a broadcast from a single commander to all of them.
Without the appropriate level of effectiveness in these categories, you won't be able to compete with existing apps.
Why are you using an install program? Why not sign an applet and do something from there? Or use flash? Having a .msi file to install is a bit annoying. Also, your install should show some notification that it's complete. Currently, the install just disappears, making it tough to know if it even started.
Also, there is no background noise, so it's difficult to know if the program is working at all if nobody is talking (like in the HN room).
Furthermore, pushing the push-to-talk button causes behaviour I don't understand. The button pops up, then disappears again. What does that mean? Is it now on? I can't tell.
And finally, clicking the "Add room" button causes a strange message about the room that is not clear at all what it means. Am I now in multiple rooms? Do I own the room? If so, where is the list of rooms I'm in.
Also, there is no background noise, so it's difficult to know if the program is working at all if nobody is talking (like in the HN room).
Furthermore, pushing the push-to-talk button causes behaviour I don't understand. The button pops up, then disappears again. What does that mean? Is it now on? I can't tell.
And finally, clicking the "Add room" button causes a strange message about the room that is not clear at all what it means. Am I now in multiple rooms? Do I own the room? If so, where is the list of rooms I'm in.
Making a plugin or a separate install program enables the user to use Push-To-Talk functionality while their browser is not in focus. AFAIK, there isn't a solid way around that. I'm sure if you or someone else had an brilliant solution, they'd make use of it at voxli.
Thank you very much for trying Voxli!
We require an install program because gamers require push-to-talk outside the browser. This cannot be accomplished with any amount of Javascript or Flash coding. The only way to break out of the browser sandbox is to write a piece of native code and install it as a browser plugin. This is why we have separate mac and windows plugins, for instance.
I agree that the MSI is pretty annoying. I don't really like to install random binaries either. At the end of the install, the browser should take you into your room without any user interaction -- which is why we don't show a "install done" dialog. But as it is confusing and not how most other apps do it, we'll look into making it more clear. The only other alternative for Windows was to use the Mozilla plugin installer as we do on Mac -- but that requires a browser restart and it was very confusing to users in our user tests. Overall I agree our install process has a lot of room for improvement and continued user feedback such as yours will help us refine it going forward.
You must hold down the push to talk button to talk. While you are holding it down, it says "ON AIR" and shows the waveform of your microphone recording. Agreed, we should probably add some help text to say that it is a push-hold button like a walkie-talkie and not a toggle button you click once.
If you want background noise, just click the 'always on' checkbox and the mic will stay on, giving you all the background noise you want. We don't default to this state because we are tailored for large groups. The background noise from 20 people would be pretty distracting, so we default to radio silence. Sometimes we think of it more as a walkie-talkie system for groups than a conference call.
The "Add Rooms" feature is definitely a work-in-progress. To clarify, people who aren't in the same "room" can't hear each other. This way, large gaming guilds can all be in the same channel and know who's online and what's going on, but still be broken up into smaller teams for communicating on specific tasks. One way we are working on improving this feature is to allow string names for rooms: for example, "PVP Group 1" or "Room for Bored People" instead of just a number. Also, you can only be in one room per browser tab. If you want to be in multiple rooms, open another tab to the same page.
Thanks again for the feedback! Seems I should start a FAQ on the website, or maybe add some help tips to the interface.
We require an install program because gamers require push-to-talk outside the browser. This cannot be accomplished with any amount of Javascript or Flash coding. The only way to break out of the browser sandbox is to write a piece of native code and install it as a browser plugin. This is why we have separate mac and windows plugins, for instance.
I agree that the MSI is pretty annoying. I don't really like to install random binaries either. At the end of the install, the browser should take you into your room without any user interaction -- which is why we don't show a "install done" dialog. But as it is confusing and not how most other apps do it, we'll look into making it more clear. The only other alternative for Windows was to use the Mozilla plugin installer as we do on Mac -- but that requires a browser restart and it was very confusing to users in our user tests. Overall I agree our install process has a lot of room for improvement and continued user feedback such as yours will help us refine it going forward.
You must hold down the push to talk button to talk. While you are holding it down, it says "ON AIR" and shows the waveform of your microphone recording. Agreed, we should probably add some help text to say that it is a push-hold button like a walkie-talkie and not a toggle button you click once.
If you want background noise, just click the 'always on' checkbox and the mic will stay on, giving you all the background noise you want. We don't default to this state because we are tailored for large groups. The background noise from 20 people would be pretty distracting, so we default to radio silence. Sometimes we think of it more as a walkie-talkie system for groups than a conference call.
The "Add Rooms" feature is definitely a work-in-progress. To clarify, people who aren't in the same "room" can't hear each other. This way, large gaming guilds can all be in the same channel and know who's online and what's going on, but still be broken up into smaller teams for communicating on specific tasks. One way we are working on improving this feature is to allow string names for rooms: for example, "PVP Group 1" or "Room for Bored People" instead of just a number. Also, you can only be in one room per browser tab. If you want to be in multiple rooms, open another tab to the same page.
Thanks again for the feedback! Seems I should start a FAQ on the website, or maybe add some help tips to the interface.
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I'll be very impressed if they can peel a particular segment of gamers away from Ventrilo.
World of Warcraft has voice chat built right in to the game but no one uses it. You would think Blizzard doing voice chat would wipe out third party competitors; the precise opposite is true.
Also, dealing with whiny teenage gamers as users is enough to make anyone want to kill themselves. Exhibit A: the WoW forums, which are actually stupider than YouTube comments.
World of Warcraft has voice chat built right in to the game but no one uses it. You would think Blizzard doing voice chat would wipe out third party competitors; the precise opposite is true.
Also, dealing with whiny teenage gamers as users is enough to make anyone want to kill themselves. Exhibit A: the WoW forums, which are actually stupider than YouTube comments.
There are a lot of games that need voice chat that do not have it. Most other MMOs come to mind - there is plenty of starving market before you even get to the behemoth that is WoW.
Our team applied to YC with this idea so we know there are a lot of prickly issues that come up along the way. Best of luck to you guys!
Verdict:"Made something USEFUL"
If the hotkey could be restricted to work only when the window/tab is active, I can see several people using it to communicate within an office environment (or for remote teams).
Frankly that will countless IM pings or having to walk to the next office.
If the hotkey could be restricted to work only when the window/tab is active, I can see several people using it to communicate within an office environment (or for remote teams).
Frankly that will countless IM pings or having to walk to the next office.
Glad to hear you find it useful! I would recommending binding it to a key you rarely use, like the right control key on Windows, or a weird combo like Control-Shift-A on Mac.
Fun fact: Control-Shift-A activates the subversion menu from TextMate on OSX, which I use all the time. It is a pretty random key sequence though :-)
IDEA: Let me tell it to connect to an existing Ventrillo/TeamSpeak server.
I'm sure they're working on it. Ventrilo uses a proprietary protocol that, afaik, has not been broken down yet completely.
Would really love this for live video. I know that it doesn't really make sense for gamers but I think their is a nice market in impromptu virtual conference rooms created by sharing a URL.
Looks like an excellent product, what is the plan to generate revenue?
Why is it calling me RoyalPerson?
When you join, you get a randomly generated name (we thought it would be more interesting than "Guest1234")
firefox 3 is slow enough as it is, so i never install plugins.
voxli popped by firefox cherry.
voxli popped by firefox cherry.
congrats on launch
Congratulations, and good luck. It looks very interesting.
You are using flash. Can you please use SwfObject, so users with high security in their browsers, don't have to click on the flash to activate it? I hope you understand what I mean.
SwfObject project is here: http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/
Thanks in advance.
You are using flash. Can you please use SwfObject, so users with high security in their browsers, don't have to click on the flash to activate it? I hope you understand what I mean.
SwfObject project is here: http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/
Thanks in advance.
We in fact are using swfobject.... Could you please file a bug report from inside any chat room by clicking on "feedback" so we can capture your browser information? Thanks. I'll double-check to make sure we've got the latest code.
When I visited the website's homepage, I had to click on the flash to activate it.
Anyway I will report it.
EDIT: I am using Internet explorer 7, on windows XP.
EDIT: [It works fine in Google Chrome, whatever... maybe the problem happens because you move the user to https link? I am not sure, but could this be a reason?]
EDIT: I am using Internet explorer 7, on windows XP.
EDIT: [It works fine in Google Chrome, whatever... maybe the problem happens because you move the user to https link? I am not sure, but could this be a reason?]
A question. If I have to install an external program ANYWAY, why not just.. use something outside of the browser?
Making in the browser makes it a little bit easier to support all the various operating systems not to mention form factors (e.g. smart phones too.).