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The Problems With Video Game Voice Acting
The Guardian's Games blog explores the tendency of modern video games to suffer from poor voice acting, a flaw made all the more glaring by increasingly precise and impressive graphics. Quoting:
"Due to the interactive nature of games, actors can't be given a standard film script from which they're able to gauge the throughline of their character and a feel for the dramatic development of the narrative. Instead, lines of dialogue need to be isolated into chunks so they can be accessed and triggered within the game in line with the actions of each individual player. Consequently, the performer will usually be presented with a spreadsheet jammed with hundreds of single lines of dialogue, with little sense of context or interaction. ... But according to David Sobolov, one of the most experienced videogame voice actors in the world (just check out his website), the significant time pressures mean that close, in-depth direction is not always possible. 'Often, there's a need to record a great number of lines, so to keep the session moving, once we've established the tone of the character we're performing, the director will silently direct us using the spreadsheet on the screen by simply moving the cursor down the page to indicate if he/she liked what we did. Or they'll make up a code, like typing an 'x' to ask us to give them another take.' It sounds, in effect, like a sort of acting battery farm, a grinding, dehumanizing production line of disembodied phrases, delivered for hours on end. Hardly conducive to Oscar-winning performances."
As the legendary tape of Orson Welles walking out of the 'All Your Base' recording proves.
Then why do the Japanese manage to get it right in every single hentai game?
What is the problem with reading the sub-titles on the screen? I remember silent film characters "sounding" a lot better in my head before voice acting started. This is especially relevant for the teletubbies. I guess I don't mind in an action movie if the characters are voice acted so that it doesn't tear you away from the action but for the teletubbies and slower programs I'd much prefer to just read the script.
Time zone converter
Or better even: claiming that someone is British and then letting them refer to someone's butt as her "fanny". That doesn't mean what you think it means, Americans.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Or better even: claiming that someone is British and then letting them refer to someone's butt as her "fanny". That doesn't mean what you think it means, Americans.
It's where you might keep a pack of fags, right?
It's where you might keep a pack of fags, right?
If you're Bill Clinton.
Yup. There's nothing stopping developers from doing it well - look at the GTA3+ series games. Even after completing San Andreas multiple times, I still laughed milk out my nose when CJ unexpectedly blurted out "I hate gravity!" on what must have been the thousandth time I cycled him off a cliff. Sheer class.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
i checked the wikipedia entry for fanny (as Brit slang), which linked to vulva. i've forgotten which part was the vulva so i clicked.
That page is NSfW!
And not a bookmark.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
i've forgotten which part was the vulva
Only on Slashdot...
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Now now, to be fair... he could just be married.
Yes, blast you, you've got me. I have a funny accent and carry around a teddy bear. I'm humbled by the biting criticism of a man who sits around on /. all day trading Star Wars witticisms and computer tips with other girlfriendless basement-dwellers. Well played, sir.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Of course I also don't understand people who say "Babylon 5 has lousy acting"
With coaching even those with Asperger's can learn to read other human's emotions.
And apparently in Britain they say "case and point" rather than "case in point" like we do in the US.
The wife keeps checking in on me playing FFXIII because Vanilla ;) sounds like she's constantly having sex... Worst acting ever.... or best depending on the mood...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-