Emotes
Also said as Limited communication, Ping system, Quick chat, Pings
Giving players a small, fixed way to communicate: a wave, a canned phrase, a mark on the map, a single note. You can say only what the designers let you say.
Open chat invites abuse, and many players avoid voice chat altogether. A small vocabulary keeps strangers useful to each other, and because abuse needs words, it removes most of that as well.
Say it
“No voice or text with strangers. Add a ping wheel with four marks: go here, enemy, loot, and danger. Each ping says its meaning aloud, in the character's own voice.”
Where you’ve seen it
Journey's strangers cannot speak or type, and have only a musical note, because the team feared text or voice would bring biases along. Apex Legends' ping system was refined by play-testing for a month without voice chat.
Not to be confused with chat
Chat can say anything, including the worst things. Emotes can say only what was put there, which is the limit and the whole point.