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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   2598 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 17, 2023

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For those of you who play video games in the same room as someone else, how do you communicate with each other over the sound of the game itself? My wife and I like to play video games together, but we haven't figured out a good solution to the sound problem. Some obvious possibilities and their downsides:

  1. We both wear headphones. The problem with this is that we would have to lower our volumes so much to hear each other past the game sounds and the headphones' partial external sound dampening.
  2. We use microphones and join a voice chat together on Discord or something. The problem with this is that we can still hear each other's voices in the physical world, so then the microphones' delay causes a double perception which is quite confusing and jarring. And even if we had sufficiently soundproof headphones (which cost money we don't really have), microphone delays are just so goddamn annoying because of the unintentional interruption of someone who started speaking a second earlier than you (likewise on Zoom meetings).
  3. We use speakers. Obviously this is a problem because we're not necessarily in the same location in the game, so each of our game's sound would bleed into each other messily and confusingly.

I've visited computer clubs to play games back in a day and somehow with 20-40 people sitting in a giant room all playing games I've never had the problem you describe.

Just lower volume, enable subtitles so not to miss out on dialog if you get distracted or add headphones that your partner can shout over if you're about to get dunked under t1 tower. What exactly are you playing that you have this......issue?

I imagine lowering the volume gets in the way of enjoying the sound design of the game, which isn't so important when you're playing your 1000th match of DotA or CS:S with the boys.

That is true, yet thinking about the games I played recently there were only few that I enjoyed/appreciated the sound design(they were mostly single player games, so full headphones and no distractions, or something like 2018 GoW with one person playing and other just along for the ride on a couch).

Looking back at this year with Remnant 2, Diablo 4, BG3 coop games - for me audio is not even top 20 reason why I played them...

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