Have only recently joined Zwift, really liking it. But I’d like to see it be less male-centric in a particular way: every “Ride On!” I hear is in that generic Midwestern white dude voice. Speaking as a generic Midwestern white dude, I’d like to hear other voices represented. How about some female sounded voices? Voices with accents? “Ride On” in different languages? (Fiets door?)
Maybe I’m only hearing the English speaking white dude because of my profile settings, and other people are hearing other voices, don’t know. But I’d like to hear other voices. It’d be nice to have the diversity of users I’m seeing around me in the game represented in the audio.
I wouldn’t think it would be hard either. Just more sound files, set them to random, and we’re good (I don’t mind if my own Ride Ons sound different each time, that’d be cool.) Representation
FWIW, the voice you hear is gender-specific to the identified gender of the person pressing that button. Pressed by a man: male voice; pressed by a woman: female voice. So, what you are really experiencing is that dudes are pressing the ‘Ride On’ button significantly more than the ladies.
That’s good to know, I wasn’t sure about that. I still wouldn’t mind some further alternatives, as I’m pretty sure a lot of people riding don’t use English as their first language. Or don’t sound Midwestern when they do Even a dozen more sound files in different languages would go a long way towards less homogeneity in the experience.
And also maybe a voice that’s less gender specific at all. The male voice is a significantly male sounding voice. If the female voice also sounds very female, it’s less useful to someone who is nonbinary. I know people in that community who are very conscious about what their voice sounds like, and take steps to sound less male for example if they don’t identify that way.
This is a big issue in speech synthesizers for people with speaking difficulties, and it turns out as well that the sound of someone’s digital voice can be very important to their experience in something like this.
Hmm not sure that’s right. When my daughter (who is female and has a female Zwift profile) presses the ride on button, we still hear the American dude. Could be that’s due to child profile privacy?
I did find another post from a while ago in a different part of the forum talking about this same issue. Seems like there is a female voice as Nigel mentioned.
To the point of more voices, adding them wouldn’t be hard–literally just more sound files. And you could make them something selectable in your settings, or just randomized.
Here’s how I’d do it if I were Zwift–run a contest. People could record themselves saying “Ride On” and submit their recordings (could have requirements for sound quality of course). Zwift users could vote on their favorites, and those favorites would be added to the game, maybe along with some voices chosen by the staff as well. Give the users whose voices get selected a free year membership or, even better, a cool custom jersey.
It would be a promotional event, it would demonstrate a commitment to diversity and representation, and honestly it shouldn’t be all that hard to add those sounds to the game. And then we wouldn’t just hear the Bro-On sound all the time. Win-win-win.
Also tagging @James_Zwift here for the actual serious bit above–I do think different voices is more important than maybe many people think if they happen to sound like the stock voice themselves
I’m sure they could be screened for content first, lol.