9th February 2006, 3:53 PM
If there was a text-based alternative I'd say "sure", but that's not the case, so absolutely not. Being able to communicate with the other people in a randomly put together game is an essential, central part of online gaming and playing anything without it is odd and dissattaching from the whole point of online gaming... I've done it before, with MS's little boardgames where you could just send canned messages... it just does not work on any level. Terrible, terrible idea born out of paranoia over protecting children, mainly, but that (admirable) goal doesn't excuse them going to these lengths to cut off players from any sort of online network that is truly relevant...