Even before COVID-19 forced us all to stay inside our homes, social interaction was becoming virtual. Old-school hangout spots like malls, bowling alleys, and movie theaters have been slowly but surely finding themselves replaced with Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, and RecRoom. These new platforms, once “mere” games, have rapidly taken on a greater significance, as a new generation of players discovers that online environments offer greater freedom for self-expression, easier connectivity with friends across the globe, and a wider variety of diversions to keep themselves entertained.
Unfortunately, online interaction isn’t perfect. In particular, it’s painfully clear that people socialize differently online…
Voice changing has been around for a long time, but always with telltale indications of distortion, which prevent both the speaker and the listener from experiencing the transformed voice as the speaker’s ‘true’ voice.
Modulate’s VoiceWear service changes this by introducing truly authentic voice skins, which allow a speaker to maintain nuanced control over emotion and prosody while effectively trying on a new set of vocal cords. The result, which can be heard here, is a new voice that avoids any artifacts or ‘giveaways,’ allowing the speaker to project a new identity.
There are a number of fun applications for…
<Cross-posted from our blog here.>
Modulate’s mission statement is to make social voice chat better for everyone. But this raises an obvious question — better compared to what, exactly?
There are many anecdotal examples of (frankly horrifying) instances of toxicity and disruption online, but game studios tend to be tight-lipped about statistics. After all, no individual studio has an incentive to share just how toxic their game is for fear of a social backlash, especially knowing that the initial numbers likely won’t be great. …
<Cross-posted from our blog here.>
Solving toxicity and disruptive behavior in gaming isn’t a problem that can be overcome by any single organization on their own. That’s why Modulate is proud to be a member of the Fair Play Alliance (FPA), a group of gaming-related companies committed to improving the experience of online gaming for all. …
As a society, we generally agree that children should be protected from certain extreme dangers. For instance, children aren’t allowed to gamble in casinos, nor are they allowed to drink alcohol. If they attempt to sneak into a casino or a bar, even with an excellent disguise or fake ID, we’ve all agreed to penalize the institution they fooled. Even if a doorman made a good-faith effort to check the ID, we still penalize the bar. Pragmatically, this is because we want to incentivize these institutions to always be on the lookout for underage people, but there’s also a deeper…
<Cross-posted from our blog here.>
In 2019, Modulate introduced the concept of “voice skins” to the world. Transcending old-school voice changers, our VoiceWear service enabled players to take on the authentic voice of their chosen character. As we began to bring that technology to the world of gaming, we were blown away by the positive reception — both from game studios seeing the potential in a unique new customizable asset, and from players experiencing a new level of immersion and fun in voice chat.
Of all the feedback we received about voice skins, one comment intrigued us the most. Many…
Mike at Modulate
CEO and cofounder at Modulate.ai, building crazy cool machine learning tools to make online voice chat more immersive and inclusive.
