I don't think it'll happen, video chat in general was a big web prediction that never materialized. I think the big thing is that people like to talk eye to eye, and that would be good for web Diplomacy, but video conferencing doesn't give you that

I agree. I think that by the time it becomes realistic to make a video internet diplomacy game there will be far more impressive things that can be made instead, and so it won't actually happen.
Also, it still wouldn't be diplomacy would it? Diplomacy is all about those little things that a non-player wouldn't even notice. Like how far away you go for your conversation, how quickly you write your orders etc!

Not enough demand.

i think at least voice over internet protocols(voip) could be implemented.

most systems just require the user's computer to do the communicating with each other so it should be too hard.

of course a youtube-like site dedicated to uploading video messages to your dip players would also be cool.

shouldn't be too hard to implement (live video chat should also be possible)

I think the biggest issue with adding it would be that most of the time, the advantage of the internet is not having to match times with oneanother. For video chat you would both have to be here at the same time...

well you could do it right now, no? if you organized a live game and everyone had gchat or ichat or skype (with video) and then you exchanged those with each other. you'd just have to make it obvious when you need to talk to someone else by closing out the window.

It would be like a live-game varient. I'm surprised that no one has tried anything like that before. A live game where everyone has a webcam.

Your making the group too small, you need:

Everyone to be free at the same time (in diplomacy)
Everyone to have a webcam
Everyone happy to use a webcam with strangers
etc.

Setting up live games is hard here- this makes it nearly impossible, I'd have thought.

We can hardly set up a live game as it is...

The technology is here, so if we wanted to do it, we could. I don't think there would be enough interest as to make it actually happen.

What mnakes you think I actually want to look at some of the pondlife on here anyway?

good points. it is very hard to set up a live game anyway. and concerns about privacy are very real.

uploading your video to youtube might result in some one-sided conversations but removes the need to be live.

having someone to talk to live when they happen to be online would be cool. (even if it was voice only, which includes those without webcam, or uncomfortable with webcams - for whatever privacy reasons)

You probably want to do this Peer to Peer. And for that we have to wait for IPv6. Most people have a router with some NAT on IPv4, which makes connecting from outside difficult.

Well, if your tech savvy enough, most routers can handle P2P connections via routing tables so, with a custom app, you could tell it to always send data coming from a specific port number to a specific internal IP. But, you have to use fixed IPs or a router that can refer to UNRs and name your computer.

I'm up for a live game with Skype :P so instead of supposing why doesn't someone try to make a game with skype or something akin be a requirement and see what the demand is? I don't have the points to justify the test.

This can already be done... you just need seven dedicated people with webcams and almost any instant messaging software. Video calls are pretty easy to set up.

The real annoying thing is that when you talk, you are talking to anyone that your mic and cam is set up for, so if you want to talk to anyone in private, you have to mute your voice for everyone else, do your talking, then switch persons. It's not that much of a hassle but I expect if a game was setup there would be a lot of mistakes made because of people forgetting this.

Or setup six microphones if you somputer can handle six different audio streams. Put them on stands in front of you and you'll look like your part of the UN!

grrrr computer. Speeeeeeellllll check, Rob!

can you actually have a video conference with Skype? I thought you could only have conference calls with audio only, while webcam was limited to one-to-one only?

I do multiple connections all the time with Live Messenger. I even set up our company president and the remote sales offices so they can have meetings "in his office" and everyone can see everyone else using a normal webcame at each point and Live Messenger.

before this happens I imagine embedded realtime chat will. I think that's the next natural step from something like phpdiplomacy.

Well, you could have the video and voice be the "global" and type the private chat in the chat windows on Live.

But for people like me who mouth what they are typing, a lip reader could still figure it out.

Chalks - the ingame messages were for a while near-instantaneous. However even with the much smaller community back then it was still too much for the server and Kestas had to disable it.

yeah, having the players host the messaging on their own machines is a much better and scalable solution.

But then I'd have to wear pants. I expect.

Not necessarily. The webcam only shows you from shoulders up, I suspect.

but your expression may hint your intention, i expect

depends on the players, i'm sure there is space in the world for nudist-internet-diplomacy, i conject.