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."

Comments

Doing voiceovers

[plagioclase]

I did character voiceovers for a smaller (and sadly still unpublished) video game a couple years ago.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.