Re: Voice-Powered Games Question
Okay so first of all this Skype call style seems like a really neat idea, it reminds me of a voice version of those "Lifeline" mobile games where your linked to a person in some way and you advise them.
They try to make it like a realistic chat messaging experience in some titles (such as "A normal lost phone") and that's what this reminds me of.
I am a bit confused as to weather you will be using the system voice or a recorded voice actor to read lines to the player. If it's the latter, than no, most people wouldn't want to speed that up unless it was particularly slow because it messes with the natural flow of things, (though I know some people who like speeding up audio books).
In that case, it may also be worth doing an "audio description" type setup for visual moments, such as we have for movies and TV shows, something that you may even be able to use the system voice to achieve.
here's an example of what I mean.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT5AsjzgIC4
But if it's the former than yes, customization options are important.
It's a bit hard to explain this, but essentially, think of the difference between skim reading a textbook VS listening to a professor. If you are able to take in the info, than logically both would be equal, but for many, listening to someone explain it is allot more engaging.
The reason allot of us have our speech rate high is because it blends into our own internal thoughts. Much as a proficient reader can let their eyes drift across each line and comprehend the words so quickly that the story flows naturally in their mind's eye and the individual characters tend to fade away, we do the same with electronic speech.
This is why most of us also prefer more computerized rather than human voices (though that is changing as of late do to improvements in human like speech) because we are so used to it and it is so generic that there is no personality, tone, or accent to color the input.
When how ever, someone is talking naturally, or reading a story in a dramatic way, we tend to just listen to it as you would enjoy a play or poem, because that's what we want in that type of medium.
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