Monday, July 2, 2007

Vox Humana

The car, that most mechanical of devices, brought on a sexual revolution. The VCR another. It is no surprise that "tech" brings "touch." This is why it should not surprise anyone that the newest trend sweeping sl's escorting industry, is voice.

Voice is touch.

In the last week, several escorts I know who swore they would not do voice ever, have started offering voice. At least two club owners I know are offering voice to best customers. Another escort that swore she would die before doing voice, told me about her travails setting up a team speak server. Voice is showing up on more and more escort ads. Voice is hot. How hot? One "sl real girls" provider has started "verifying" girls based only on voice contact, instead of requiring cam.

Voice has hit the sl sex industry. Voice is part of the new sl that is coming, and displacing old sl.

From the escort's side, the big incentive for voice is price and demand. Men who say "I am not paying real money for Linden," with a smirk the echoes across the screen, when asked about sl sex, will pull out the credit card for voice. Or offer to send to pay pal. The standard rate for voice is 1500L for :15. No menu this or that, no haggle, and no quibble. People pay for real in an entirely different way and with different money than they pay for virtual. When virtual is another giant step forward, we will see if the gap closes. More money, more customers, more control.

The weakness is that it is a huge crack of light in the escort's wall between SL and RL. It is also something that ties them to particular working conditions. I have sl escorted in public places, a bookstore, a college coffee shop, anywhere there is wireless is a fertile field for escorting. It doesn't matter if there are other people in the next room over, or at the next table over. In fact, one client got rock hard as I just described how I was doing what we were doing in plain view of so many people. That isn't happening with voice.

The other weakness for the escort is the very upside the client wants: voice is your full attention. I know a player who claims to be able to run 5 cheap hookers at once: 300L for :15, four at a time. She said she can work two hours of this, no ads, no clubs, just red light zones, and clear over 3K per hour consistently. That is a rate that most escorts would envy as an all together rate. Think of what she does as cattle class sex, to use an airline industry term. People are shopping for sl sex more and more on price, price and price. Which means that they no longer get the full attention of the customer service people.

So while voice cuts out the ability to multi-task, quickly duck away for something to drink, or even wait and day dream, the big a plus is the length of sessions. Many sl only sex sessions are :15, and :30 is normal. Vox sessions, an hour is far more common, and :30 is what :15 is to sl sex. Double the rate, double the time, and less trouble finding clients. This means that making 20K per day is something that is not out of reach for a good vox escort. Think about it 6K per hour is 24 USD per hour of escorting. It is very seductive. It is also the kind of money that starts putting income taxes as a real possibility, after paying for play. Even one hour a day, is enough to pay for a great deal of play, and more than that, starts to make paying tier a breeze.

We now touch on a topic which is either very very hot, or a non-issue, depending on which slice of sl you are from. Namely, men who present as women and escort. In the red light drop zones, this is a hot issue. It is not a paradox, but an obvious insight that the less a man is willing to pay, but still pay, for sl sex, the more devalued the product, the more likely he is to really need to feel there is a rl woman on the other side. He's not willing to pay for this mind you, for him, it is a demand. I asked one, who I had serviced once: he said he was against it because it was deception. I asked him if it would be ok for me to call up his wife and chat to her about what he did with his spare time. He was not amused.

Voice may or may not assure you are talking to a woman now, in six to nine months it will mean exactly nothing. I'll leave it to others who know the state of the shelf better than I do as to what various voice altering programs do. The only thing that runs on my Mac that I know of is "Voice Candy", and that is a toy. No one not really super into mechanical furries would pay anything to make it with that mouse voice. However, a sound friend of mine showed me a series of high end audio "plug ins" for either PC or the Macintosh. They do not run in real time now, but will do so rather soon, he said less than a year possibly. The result was startling, there was no trace of the original voice.

These strip the overtones from a voice, the signature if you will, and then run it through a "throat model." The result is what the person would sound like, with a different body, even one that is non human. While the hardware to run this in real time is beyond the reach of many people, it is not an unbearable amount. In short, voice is only going to be an answer to real identity for, at most, another year. After that, what you hear is all there is.

But the bigger issue for escorts is that many of us do not have sexy voices that match our avatars. Many, many, many of us are 45 year old married women. With children who demand attention.

The age is a problem, however, that is already easily fixable with some software that is commonly available, I've had the same sound friend show me how a bit of mixing, a bit of pitch alteration, not a dramatic amount, but a small amount, and some judicious use of a graphic equalizer can, in skilled hands, freshen up and disguise the overt flaws of a voice. Particularly too much smoking. Perhaps you would be surprised at how many people here, smoke, and smoke more playing sl than they would rl.

But the rl demands. Well the solution is that voice sex on sl tends to be scheduled, rather than the walk in norm of sl only sex.

In short while voice is in, voice also opens another wall for the escort: she has to talk about her rl, and the scheduling problems of rl, in a way that for sl sex, she did not. Hence prices are firmer and schedules stricter. As long as demand is high, this will stay the case.

It also means that sudden we have to make the choice: vox escort as our rl selves, or find a way to "talk in character." This problem, of having a character who lives with a particular voice, is not strange, but rather normal.

For the customer the real advantage of voice is that it opens up an entirely new avenue of interaction. As phone sex, the product we are talking about has been around, well, since before I innocently asked about 1-900 numbers from staying up late and sneaking some extra television in. My parents knew that no such ads ran on any time slot when I was supposed to be watching television.

However the combination of voice and sl is different, because it is reinforcing existing action. Phone sex of old is a kind of "this is what I would do if I were here." Cam sex is phone sex with more demonstrative bits. However, vox sl sex is not the same thing, because the action on the screen is doing it for you. You never say "I would kiss your cock," because your avatar already is kissing his cock. What does disappear is emoting. You emote with voice. Hands drop away from the keyboard, there is the occasional mouse click to shift bed position, or drive excite. But other than that, it is voice emotes that make sl vox sex its peculiar thing. I'll provide a kind of free fantasy transcript of a sample session over on Raise the Red Lantern when I can pull one together.

In fact, while I have been typing up this article, I've had two requests for vox, and scheduled two sessions.

With crumbling prices for sl only sex, and the need to break through to a higher level of touch, expect vox sex to continue to explode. The old rites of text sl sex, will continue onward, but, I think, as technology and acceptance grows, one on one vox will probably be accepted in the sl sex community before voice chat is even rolled out, let alone "debugged" and degriefered.

22 comments:

  1. You'd be surprised how good "voice morphing" already is. I'm not talking about industrial/military grade voice morphing - it comes in hardware and at a price tag not even the best escort is able to pay, IF it is commercially available to the public at all.

    But since the introduction of voice into MMORPG's like World of Warcraft (where female players playing male characters often had the demand to alter their voice), there has been quite some development (especially for PC's), and the software gets better and better each day. Admittedly female->male is easier, but I have also seen progress the other way around.

    And it does not stop there. There's also webcam-morphing-software already available. Still rather clumsy, and still face-only. But given demand and time it will get better and might eventually include other "areas of interest" on the human body as well.

    Your 6 months from now might be optimistic, though admittedly SL brings quite a lot of demand, but I guess in 12-18 months we will see a huge leap in quality and availability of voice morphing software.

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  2. I have short bit: when i first came to sl, someone used the abbreviation MMORPG and I didn't recognize it. He explained. I had heard of World of Warcraft, but not the abbreviation "WoW" either.

    The software I was shown wasn't aimed at game players, but music producers wanting to be able to take one voice, and match the "voice they hear in their head" for a track. So it is more demanding than just speech, it not only makes it possible to talk and sound like someone else, but to sing and sound like someone else. The cost for the software itself was around 600 US Dollars altogether. He gave an estimate of six months before the "home studio" would be able to do it in real time well. So I think that your estimate of a year to a year and a half for the consumer market may be on the mark.

    Last, while gender morphing is the hot topic, for men that want to be clients, for women escorts the hot topic is the simpler question of voice masking: enough voice alteration to make it so that it is difficult to "run the tape backwards" and get you, and enough control to airbrush out the effects of time and tide. Remember we are selling a fantasy that the client might, just might, be able to wean us of our wicked ways and settle down with him on a full time basis. That's a much more powerful product if the voice on the other end sounds sexy, rather than... well the way most of us sound, flaws and all.

    Cam morphing? No that isn't going to fly any time soon as a product in my world.

    That takes a good deal less than morphing: some graphic equalizer adjustment, a bit higher or lower pitch.

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  3. Sorry went back and added a bit and made hash of the meaning. What I mean is that it takes less to disguise a voice than to morph it, and morphing it a little is something one can do with VST plug ins that change the pitch a little bit and have a graphic equalizer like on a music player.

    The cam paragraph should have been at the end, not between the other two.

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  4. My voice is something I hate and always have... It's why I refuse to go voice no matter what I'm doing... I also hate the telephone...

    I have one of those ever so lovely, 'could be a guy, could be a woman' voices that brings me nothing but mixed salutations... Even at those rates I'm barely tempted to go voice due to how much crap I'd have to go through... & my forte has been typing for nearly a decade now... I was one of those rare women online before the '.com bubble' burst...

    Just for the heck of it I did a search and found real time voice changers with all the bells and whistles (even came with fun ads like 'sound like Mel Gibson!'), but for $100 it's way to steep for something that right now nets 6000L/hour... Maybe if escorting was enough money to make me rethink doing other things in SL right now, but it's not...

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  5. Wonderfull post, as usual... logic and right to the point, as usual.

    I was getting one post ready for this weekend that, as usual (:-p), is the opposite, maybe complementary, point of wiew of yours. I'll post it tomorrow.

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  6. For me folding higher touch into SL is the larger story, how is our interaction with this world going to change based on the increasing interpenetration of character and player. Regardless of the state of voice morphing, acting with voice is different from text and gesture acting.

    Regardless of player gender, speaking as another person is a challenge of a different kind. It also presents rewards of a different kind...

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  7. "Just for the heck of it I did a search and found real time voice changers with all the bells and whistles (even came with fun ads like 'sound like Mel Gibson!'), but for $100 it's way to steep for something that right now nets 6000L/hour... Maybe if escorting was enough money to make me rethink doing other things in SL right now, but it's not..."

    Can you fill us in Michael? This seems to be what you are talking about.

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  8. Great Post, I can't wait for voice on the main grid, and I'm still voting for Karaoke night at 22nd Century Yedo lol

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  9. Voice Chat in SL I think is a different thing than calling people in skype

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  10. yeah from what I hear it's all open chat based on distance, much like a crowded bar in RL

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  11. Lillie,

    Voice morphing technology is included on the Mac, here's a post about it:

    http://tinyurl.com/25x44r

    You can use GarageBand, which comes with the Mac, together with SoundFlower to do it and it should work fine. What people have to realize is that the morphing only goes so far. If you train your voice to meet the software halfway, the results can be astounding.

    I would like to hear more about the technologies your friend talked about. I run a blog here... http://slidentity.wordpress.com which deals with the problems of identity on SL.

    Voice was rushed, no, slammed into SL for two reasons:

    1) Business - it's easier to have a meeting if everyone is talking to each other... so basically... SL will become one big conference call. Congratulations, welcome to the future.

    2) To compete with There.com. There.com has been touting their superiority over SL because they have voice.

    In truth, about 80% of the people on there.com don't use it. That being said There.com is no comparison to SL... it's economy is dead, everything that people make has to be "approved" by the company and there's no scripting language to speak of. And the world is very limited... but this is all a topic for another post. ;)

    As an aside, most polls taken on this subject indicate that most people in SL feel the same way... about 80% of people on SL don't want to use it.

    Part of the issue with voice is that many people bought into the idea of SL as a literal *SECOND LIFE.* A chance to change and perhaps to assume a persona of one's own making. Voice shatters this. Philip Rosedale previously promised not to release voice in SL unless it was possible to disguise your voice. Unfortunately, because of Mitch Kapor, Philip R. has broken that promise.

    People entered Second Life under the assumption that their first life identity was safe from discovery and they took the opportunity to create a persona that is different from their RL self. Linden Lab has betrayed their trust.

    While some might dismiss such people as "role players" or "frauds" I can assure that these people don't see themselves that way. They are more true to the original spirit of SL than people who think otherwise.

    What this really gets down to the old debate of "augmentationism" vs. "immersionism". You, pardon my assumption, seem like a staunch augmentationist. I dislike your assumption that the old SL will be swept away. I take that to mean that you assume that anyone who doesn't use voice will be "swept aside"

    I don't agree with the assertion that the old SL will "give way" to the "new" SL. I'm actually not even entirely sure what that means. You need to remember that most of the people who made SL what is are immersionists. They are some of the most creative people in SL and they will continue to be the ones who make it thrive.

    My voice button will be off. And if I do use it, it will be through a voice changer. While I may never work as an escort with this setup, I, honestly, have no desire to do so.

    I would appreciate any input you might have regarding the technologies you mentioned as I believe that it's important for people to maintain their anonymity and preserve themselves as they are on SL.

    Thank you for your time...

    Regards,
    Anony Mouse
    "Catch me if you can."

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  12. Admittedly I did not even think about the "disguising" aspect at all. In RL one aspect of my job is to create short video and animation presentations. And I can assure you what a huge difference a trained speaker makes in contrast to a normal person.
    So yes - if the voice is already the right gender, it should be fairly easy to make it more full, sexy, seductive, vibrant via realtime signal processing - and disguise it during that process as well.

    My initial response was more aimed at the (me thinks) large portion of RL-male but SL-female players of which (me thinks) many work as escorts as well. I do not cast judgement, after all - as you said correctly - it's a fantasy being offered. And if those players put some dedication and talent into it, they might actually be better Escorts than some of the true female Escorts. So what do those guys do? Right now, I assume they settle for cheap clients, or clients who don't care for voice chat (e.g. due to language barriers). For this group, voice MORPHING will be essential to continue to do high profile work.

    The 100 US$ software you mentioned in a later post was the software type I was referring to. I investigated into this type of software, as well as text-to-speech (another area grossly neglected but actually pretty advanced in the meantime), about a year ago. What I found then was not very convincing for male->female. But since I had some insight into industrial grade voice morphing, I know where it will eventually lead.

    I personally dislike voice: I'm not an English native speaker so I'll always have an accent. My home situation forbids voice as well - my family would be surprised if I'd start talking to the PC. Also voice is instantaneous - typing gives you always that little extra second to think and (re)phrase. Accent and instant replies is something voice escorts need to consider as well.

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  13. The reason you found it "not convincing" is because of the fact that men and women have a different affect and cadence to their respective voices.

    A man speaks in a relatively flat, monotone way, while women, for the most part are somewhat sing-song... that it to say... the pitch of a woman's voice varies more during speech than a man's does.

    I assume that you were trying it out when you tried the software and that you simply spoke into it as you normally would. All you heard was you with a higher pitched voice.

    People's voices are shaped by a lifetime of experiences. Adding software to the mix will not hide this. This is one of the issues I find with it. Male or female, everyone has a specific identifiable cadence and rythym to their voice and nothing but years of training can hide that.

    Just because Bob (or, indeed, Jane) from accounting is on and talking to me, doesn't mean that I want them to recognize me.

    Voice is not for everyone, and it's certainly not for me. I may have it on to listen to what others are saying, but I will most likely have it off most of the time.

    Voice is, indeed, a boon for some, but it's ultimately a tragedy for most.

    Anony Mouse
    "Catch Me If You Can"

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  14. I know there is a strong demand for voice, and a belief among people who want sl to be a "meeting space," replacing costly and hard to arrange meetings, but with more "3d" than a conference call, that voice chat is a major item on their wish list.

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  15. Lillie,

    The facts speak (pardon the pun) differently:

    1) The fact that only 200 votes were ever recieved for this feature and

    2) the fact that the polls indicate that voice was not wanted by 60%-80% of the populace (slpixelpulse.com and others).

    3) the fact that every time voice has been mentioned in the past on the Linden blog it has met with a bitter reception.

    Also, if you check here, voice caused lots of problems in WoW:

    http://tinyurl.com/3ykmtv

    Social issues will abound because of this ill-conceived feature. So, simply repeating "there was a great demand" over and over (especially when you do it without backing it up with data) doesn't convince me. LL put it in, as far as I am concerned, for the reasons I outlined in my previous post.

    I believe that it destroys the magic. It will be a lever for social pressure on people.

    The refrain "Why won't you use it with me? I thought you were my friend!" comes to mind in this circumstance. The consequences will be heartbreaking for many.

    So, with that in mind, please enjoy voice at the expense of all those who have everything to lose in SL because of it and at the expense of all of those who wanted to keep their anonymity.

    I'm sorry, but, to voice. I say, "No thanks."

    Kind Regards,
    Anony Mouse
    "Catch me if you can."

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  16. Oooh... again here is a good article about how voice chat takes the magic away:

    http://tinyurl.com/27gsg5

    It's a tiny url link pointing to the Wired article about WoW's issues after voice was implemented.

    We can sit around and debate all day long and for a good part of the next couple of weeks about this issue.

    It's been bandied about for the last six months to no avail.

    Ultimately, the utter failure of voice in SL or it's resounding success or perhaps even something in between will spell vilification, vindication or just more of the same for both side.

    Respectfully,
    Anony Mouse
    "Catch me if you can."

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  17. Yet another article...

    http://tinyurl.com/2lom6v

    (BTW.. have I mentioned lately that blogger.com sucks at URLs?)

    You see... most people know and understand that voice isn't a good thing in what is essentially a world of fantasy. While I don't consider SL a game, I do consider it to be a work of altered reality.

    I shouldn't be forced to be myself, when I *CAN* be someone else.

    Respectfully,
    Anony Mouse
    "Catch me if you can."

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  18. Maybe the "Moral Majority" asked for it? 200 votes? Sounds about right :-)

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  19. I think your stance on this issue is making you confuse two things. Voice does not just include "voice chat" the sl tool but voice contact of all kinds in sl. Many people who do not do sl voice chat, and probably never will, have no problems with skyping people they know. This includes people who are hetrogendered sl and rl.

    The other thing I think you are missing is that there is a large difference between what the current playing population of sl wants, and what people who want to join sl want. And one of those large differences is voice chat. People who want sl to be a complete extension of rl, want voice chat. The value proposition is huge in favor of voice chat. People who are here often came because this is "text with pictures," not "voice with animation." Hence voice chat, particularly voice orgy chat, is not high on their list. They can already talk to anyone they want to talk to with skype.

    This being said, voice chat as sl has it and as ll seems to be bent on implementing it, namely forcing the orgy chat model on all of us, is less than useless. It has a clunky interface, and none of the community management tools. If I didn't know about the outside world demand for voice in sl, I would be as opposed to it as you are. Voice chat, as it exists, and as it seems to be progressing, is only useful in very controlled circumstances. Which is why it looks like such an insult to the user base. The user base is, essentially, testing a feature which is being implemented in a way which is only useful for corporate clients, who are not being forced to beta test it. That is indeed, objectionable.

    However, that outside demand does exist, and money that is pouring into sl for sims from corporations is contingent on making progress on voice.

    I am not a lawyer, I am not a doctor, and I am not an economist. But I do know that demand isn't just the desire, but the willingness to pay for something. Clients are willing to pay for vox escorting from me, even those who will not pay for sl sex. That's demand for voice. Corporations are willing to pay for "meetings with animation," that is demand.

    So please anony, we welcome you into the conversation, but please listen and read what other people are saying, and not just push the fire button back when a world triggers one of your hot buttons. Maybe on the LL blog "voice" is equal to "Linden Lab's voice chat feature," but in the wider world, it is not, but instead equal to all of the ways in which voice is being connected into sl. Right now, the most powerful of these, by far, is skype, not linden lab's voice chat.

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  20. Lillie,

    "I think your stance on this issue is making you confuse two things. Voice does not just include "voice chat" the sl tool but voice contact of all kinds in sl."

    I see what you mean... I assumed that when you mentioned voice you were talking about the feature.

    "However, that outside demand does exist, and money that is pouring into sl for sims from corporations is contingent on making progress on voice."

    Yes, this backs up my point #1 with respect to it being large corporations that are behind it. No doubt, you wont get an argument from me because you've all but proven my point there. Thanks. :)

    "People who want sl to be a complete extension of rl, want voice chat."

    Yes, but this group has always existed. The problem is that, now... they will exist at the expense of those who don't feel the same.

    Voice chat as LL has implemented it is destructive to SL. It needs to be implemented with both augmentationists and immersionists in mind to be effective, otherwise LL will lose many of the people who made SL what it is.

    I have a big problem believing that the type of people who are going to be joining SL will suddenly change... what is more likely is that the presence of voice will filter out the more imaginative people and leave us with the augmentationists who have no more imagination than it takes to look at themselves in the mirror and copy what they see.

    The next thing you know we're going to have a full body scanner to import your true shape into SL as the avatar mesh. Wait, perhaps I should be quiet, I don't want to give LL any ideas. :)

    'I am not a lawyer, I am not a doctor, and I am not an economist. But I do know that demand isn't just the desire, but the willingness to pay for something. Clients are willing to pay for vox escorting from me, even those who will not pay for sl sex. That's demand for voice. Corporations are willing to pay for "meetings with animation," that is demand.'

    Yes... and this is good for you as an augmentationist and good for the companies, but, by and large bad for everyone else. You keep stressing that corporations want it, and, indeed, I know this.

    "So please anony, we welcome you into the conversation, but please listen and read what other people are saying, and not just push the fire button back when a world triggers one of your hot buttons. Maybe on the LL blog "voice" is equal to "Linden Lab's voice chat feature," but in the wider world, it is not, but instead equal to all of the ways in which voice is being connected into sl. Right now, the most powerful of these, by far, is skype, not linden lab's voice chat."

    I am guilty of misunderstanding you, and, for that, I humbly beg your pardon. However... I'm not sorry nor do I back down from any of the things that I said regarding SL's voice feature.

    Kind regards,
    Anony Mouse
    "Catch me if you can."

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  21. Let me start a thread on the voice chat ... feature ... and let's look at those issues. It's a post I've wanted to write for sometime, because like many, I feel a haunting connection to a world I call "old sl."

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  22. Since you stress the corporate aspect of voice meetings so much: is there a way to "block" voice like a thick insulated wall would block voice? I hope there is, because I'm sure the corporate guys would not be amused if their "worldwide strategy meeting" could be easily listened to by anyone within range.

    Voice with animations? For corporate meetings? I work in a small technology company. We're cutting edge and worldwide market leader with what we do. But our executives (all younger than 50) are even reluctant to do a webinar. It's usually 1-on-1 phonecalls, and very seldom phone conferences with more than 3. Our execs, and the rest of our staff who is involved in outside communications, simply would not have TIME to learn how to do meetings in SL. And if everyone is sitting on their respective chairs in a SL meeting room, there's not that much animation which would amke it worthwhile in the first place.

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