Slashdot Mirror
Giving Voice to Video Games
The New York Times (registration required) has an article up on the process and attention that Voicing Video Games is now getting. From the Article: "My role, as a psychotic talk-show caller, seemed straightforward. But struggling through a dozen takes to perfect that one line one day in early August impressed upon me the high expectations levied on today's video game voice actors."
All those takes to get the line right? I've been playing videogames with the sound off for months now.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
More and more games are being subtitled: Final Fantasy always has been, Metal Gear Solid certainly is, as are broken sword... possibly GTA San Andreas (not sure on that one). Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic. These are the major releases. I see that things like FPS games, sports sims etc. don't have sound so much; but the voices are (in these games,) far from essential for the story to progress (if there is a story)
I did character voiceovers for a smaller (and sadly still unpublished) video game a couple years ago.
The sound studio we went to was actually in the back of some guy's suburban home. Once we were inside, it was a very interesting experience, putting the headphones on and talking into the microphone in the sound booth all by yourself while a few people sit ouside and fiddle with the computers. Oh yeah, and every so often you hear "(click) ok, let's try it again, but this time..."
Initially I thought that it was going to be easy - just say the line, right? After you try it, you begin to realize that there are a _ton_ of subtleties for every word you say. I would do a line a half dozen times, and only one of those would be even halfway decent. Every so often, I would say a line and know I had it, but most of the time it was just trial and error.
After being in the recording booth for an hour or so, I had quite a headache, but was excited to see what it would sound like in-game. Turns out that it's odd to hear your own voice coming out of a computer paired with a person who looks nothing like you.
We were a small time studio, so everyone who did voices for the title already worked at the company (I was a programmer) in some capacity, but, IMHO, the resulting voice overs were far better than a lot of the laughable, flat performances I've seen in other games recently.
All in all, It was facinating to see how much equipment, time, and effort goes into even small-time game voiceovers.
Yeah, I have a webcomic...
The quick and dirty answer:
It's just one more thing to worry about. They're avoiding it because they don't want to have to search though thousands of lines of text in five languages every time a voice over changes, or do the same thing correct obscure spelling errors.
Oh the other hand, In lower budget games, there are subtitles there because it's a lot easier to and cheaper just have the voices in one language, and provide for the others with translated subtitles.
I personally think more games should have them, particularly Halo, but working at a game studio, I can understand why they often don't.
Yeah, I have a webcomic...
Look at Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on the PSX, THOSE GUYS WERE PRO!
I bet they got their lines right the first time they said it, because, it sounds like it.
Hence the Doom3[cc] project. A fair bit of the story comes through audio logs, with no text transcription at all.
-ReK
md5sum -c reality.md5
reality: FAILED
md5sum: WARNING: 1 of 1 computed checksum did NOT match
Another reason voiceovers are frequently bad is that often times the one with the resources to setup a voice recording session, hire talent, and get everything running for a one-day session is the publisher, who frequently hasn't the slightest clue who the characters are or what they are supposed to be doing. Many a game development team put their faith in the publisher that vetting good voice actors was enough, only to have things come back completely flat, unemotionative, too emotive, or just plain wrong.
I don't think I've ever seen a VO go less than three iterations before being right (Stand-in, first totally wrong take, second livable take).
The ______ Agenda