He Believes Voice Controls Can Actually Work In A Video Game

When I first saw There Came An Echo, the Wil Wheaton-supported Kickstarter project whose creators want $90,000 to make a voice-controlled real-time strategy game, I thought it was kind of absurd.

Voice commands? Who wants to use some sort of gimmick to play an RTS? What's wrong with a mouse and keyboard?

So while chatting with Jason Wishnov, the man behind There Came An Echo whose last game,

Moreover, though, I simply think they haven't been used correctly yet. 2004's Lifeline is a perfect example of this. Voice commands should *never* be designed to replace the press of the button...they'll never be perfectly accurate, and they're much slower. Having to tell a character to fire their gun, reload, get out of the line of fire...this would be utterly frustrating. Instead, the player should be using voice *in a manner that reflects an actual usage of voice*...in this particular case, directing a small squad of units. It's how it would actually be done. The minutia, the small stuff, is handled intelligently by the AI. And the speech isn't just one-way: the characters ask you questions, they talk back, it becomes a dialogue. It's a very immersive experience, and helps to tie the player emotionally to the characters. Using generic "army dudes" in a game like this is severely limiting its potential, which is why we've been sure to write a script that takes full advantage.