Astonish Steam group

Voice Chat

We will use Skype voice chat since everybody has Skype and everybody likes to have things conveniently placed in one location.

However, in the event we cannot use Skype for voice chatting, we have plenty of backup options. The following list will contain the alternatives, starting with most viable to least viable:

• Dolby Axon: After looking for a while, I found this little gem from the makers of that popular sound quality. This is a high-quality group voice chat software that me and many others have tested out extensively. Not only is the sound input and output great, but we don't need to have anybody or a dedicated server to host a group voice chat; we just make a room (that seems to be persistent) and it'll be hosted by the developers themselves for free.
  
  Website to download Dolby Axon from: https://axon.dolby.com/
  
  
• Mumble, hosted by ASH guild: The Guild Wars 2 guild I'm in has a Mumble server that they host, and they do not mind at all if their guild members play other games, but use their Mumble server to voice chat in. I listed this as the second alternative, as while it is convenient, I'll have to talk about it with some officers first, and I'd rather we host a voice chat for ourselves instead of having other people host for us. Plus, if we host, we guarantee our privacy. However, we will take what we can get, and this is more beneficial than not to have this option.
  
  Website to download Mumble from: http://mumble.sourceforge.net/
  
  
• Steam: Least convenient option, as Steam voice chat itself is hosted by a client instead of a server, with no option around it unless it's a Source game with a dedicated server hosting it. At this point, we will only resort to Steam if for some reason we just can't use Skype and have someone host a voice chat there.

While I know some of us can be anxious at the idea of voice chat, please join us anyway. You don't have to speak, but we would like you to join our voice chats just so you can hear us. There are many gameplay benefits to speaking things at the moment, rather than just waiting for a while to type it out. Not only that, but there are some hilarious moments you can't get with just typing. Sure, there will be times when voice chat will be silent, but that happens with text chat too. It's awkward either way, but does that matter when it's just us?

Don't be shy! We're all close to each other, so it'll be fun!