Topic: Online Game Chatting With Random People

Are you for or against micing up and talking to random gamers all over the world online that you do not know in real life? I ask because I was playing in a 1 on 1 endless lobby in super SFIV with some person who is now on my friends list as a sparing partner. I originally saw he had his mic on and was talking so I turned mine on and started talking too. This caused my parents to eventually ask who I'm talking to and upon hearing it was some guy I was just playing with for fun that I did not know my parents seems rather disapporving of my choice to talk to this person and were giving me the silent stare whnecrr I responded to things he said which made talking to this guy very awkward.

This all got me thinking though, should it have been awkward before I even started talking to the guy? Should I not have micd up at all? Do many of you agree that talking to random gamers online is not something ideal or sensible? Are you for or against talking to people you don't know online in your games? I have personally battled with this in my mind many times whether it is ok or not ok.

Awkward, certainly, but disapproving is another matter entirely. Unless you're very young and impressionable, talking to strangers is far from harmful, and you'll know when to mute and block someone if they turn out to be a creep.

Age does matter. It makes sense for parents to want to know (at least to some degree) who young children are interacting with, because some people are straight up bad influences and a few are actually dangerous. As children grow up and have the experience and maturity to better frame what other people might tell them, not to mention better decision making skill in general, this become less of an issue... but I guess it depends on the person (and probably the parents too) to decide what age voice chat is appropriate for.

That said, I'm generally not a fan of random voice chat. Occasionally you meet someone really cool, but all too often it's a waste. That said, I'd also rather play with friends in the same room than online whenever possible so take this opinion with a grain of salt.

Two other thoughts:

• I do like voice chat, even with random people, when you play cooperative games... the question then becomes do you want to play with that person at all, not just if you want to talk with them.
• In many ways, random voice chat isn't that different than posting in online forums. You are communicating with someone who (apparently) has a common interest. The only difference is that communication is in real-time instead of text. --

I was playing Uno one time with a co-worker on Xbox. Some girl pops on and starts chatting with us. She claimed she was 14 and she started talking about the "boy shorts" she was wearing. We both have kids nearing her age.

We moved on...