Voiceover in your game(s)!

Are YOU going to use voices in-game? Voice acting (VA), Voiceover (VO), Voice talent, whatever you decide to call it.

I personally AM.  I am scouting the forums FIRST so I can find local talent to do it (unpaid of course), and then I'm going to the Voice Acting Alliance, as McTricky suggested.

(I may search for a way to turn VO's on or off at any time during a game. Vocals turned ON by default. This could be a thing!)

If you're going to add voices to your game(s), how do you intend on doing it? Will you go with full voice acting? Light, where only key phrases are said?

Or what I zall "zelda style", where certain characters grunt, moan or do nonverbal stuff. (Except in Wind Waker where Link CLEARLY says "C'MON!" when you call for Medli/Makar )

Why or why not?

Keep in mind that your opinions and suggestions are just that, and not hard fast rules. :)

As a VO Artist myself, I'm interested to hear what others might have to say.

The previous discussion was in preventing a player from skipping lines.  Some people thought of that as "a cheap move", even in key cutscenes.  I personally don't. I digress. A solution was found: erasing SE's so antsy, speedy players could skip ahead. :)

For those trying to get VO in their game(s), keep in mind that voice talent is NOT cheap. It's in fact VERY VERY expensive. (some charge $100 an hour, and THAT'S on the CHEAP end!)

There is a way to do it for very cheap to nothing, though...

(And it's perfectly legal.)

The Voice Acting Alliance

Full voice acting in our game would cost thousands and thousands of dollars.  So no, but it is a good idea to find some way to prevent text skipping

Skipping dialogues is a player choice. Some players may don't give a about the game dialogues, skip them all, and lets try the gameplays. Preventing player to speeding through the dialogues is a bad design in my opinion. 

Text to speech does the trick. Kinda robotic though..

True, just a bit aggravating you'd spend 2,000 hours writing your game's dialogue for it to get skipped.

Lol never. . .

This is something I have thought of, but of course it's far from feasible for me right now.

But I wanted my future games to have more of a "cinematic" feel to them, with illustrated cutscenes and such (not full-blown animation, unless I get filthy rich that is :unsure: ), and I think voice acting would be a nice complement to that.

Of course, it would have to be spot-on. Bad voice acting is FAR worse than no voice acting. And the player should be given the option to turn it off if they so choose (well, in my opinion).

Also, it wouldn't have to be the full game that has voice acting. If you ever played the remake of Final Fantasy IV on the DS, they hand-picked certain important scenes throughout the story and added improved lighting/shadows and voice acting to them. That's probably what I would do (relegating voice acting to specific scenes, rather than the entire game, I mean).

There are all sorts of other issues about using voices which, imo, aren't taken into account enough.

First off: which accent?  Given that probably a very high percentage (majority even?) of players, especially paying payers, are from the US and (judging by reactions to movies) expect to hear US accents, that seems to suggest that it has to be US accents.  This leads to several problems.

1)  Some US accents seem to be highly unpopular outside their area of origin.  I have, for example, seen a couple of games trashed because the protagonist speaks with a particular Boston accent. 

2) Some US accents are very difficult for non-US hearers to understand properly.  I speak as a Brit - I have real difficulties at times, and I know I'm not the only one.

3) For people whose first language is not English, spoken dialogue is either difficult to understand, or at least it is easy to misunderstand some of the words.

4) For devs not based in the US - where do we get our voice actors from?  Even more difficult if you are living in a country which does not use English as the main/official language.  Yet another barrier for people to overcome, or risk being shut out of the market.

Secondly: voice acting is not easy.  You don't just "speak the lines".  Amateurs are likely to sound just that - amateur.  I have heard some dreadful voice acting and, imo, this takes away a lot from the game, it does not add.  On the other hand, professionals are expensive, probably way beyond anything that most of us could afford.

The game I'm working on is pretty much fully voice acted (except for scenes that don't require it). I don't understand that the whole accent bashing thing. Unless specified, I welcome all accents, especially if I want to portray different regions of a world. Remember how Fang and Vanille from Final Fantasy XIII and Australian accents because they were from Pulse?

You can also find plenty of voice actors willing to voice in your game over on the Voice Acting Alliance, by making a casting call, and most of them will be willing to do it for free as long as your game isn't being sold. This, along with networking (and being able to scout talent directly) is how I've done it.

Also, addressing the skipping text thing, using "Stop SE" after every text line that's voice works. Without this, a player that skips text will hear louds of voices and dialouge playing on top of each other which is a bad thing.

I will vouch for this xD

Briefly thought about it. It didn't take long for me to decide that I'd rather have no voice acting. Playing through the game and imagining what the characters' voices might sound like is part of the fun in going through the story of the game. I am instantly bought back to FFVI and reminded of how much fun I had playing it while someone else was watching me. She provided all of the female voices, and I did all of the males. It proved to be insanely entertaining. Having established voices for those characters removes that element. There are other reasons, but for me, no voice acting in my games. ^_^

It depends on the game, if your game has a lot of characters then it's not really worth it I think (too much work).

Personally, one of my games follows a first-person narrative, so yes, it will be fully voiced hopefully.

I'm considering hiring Randommerade here because she's pretty good and her voice fits with my character incredibly well.

The protagonist of this game I'm talking about is the only person who's actually talking in the whole thing, so I only need 1 good voice actor to accomplish my goal.

I believe that the player can get even more immersed into the plot if the voice acting is good (and the writing too ofc), at least it happened to me with games like Bastion and Transistor. It's an optional thing at the end (I mean it's not absolutely necessary to add voice acting in a game) but as I hinted it can help a lot to make the game more appealing.

Overall I totally vote for (good) voice acting in games because I like it.

Good voice acting is a must.

But it costs:

- money, of course

- and a lot more megabytes to download, which can be an issue for some people.

There's also the possibility of a bad voice acting... and this is terrible. Actually, it's better not to have voices at all rather than bad acting.

I see your point, and to someone with little to no experience you're right.  Now, I'll answer your points:


1)  Some US accents seem to be highly unpopular outside their area of origin.  I have, for example, seen a couple of games trashed because the protagonist speaks with a particular Boston accent. 

If the main character has an accent, so be it. EVERYONE has an accent and if it doesn't suit their fancy, so be it! :D

2) Some US accents are very difficult for non-US hearers to understand properly.  I speak as a Brit - I have real difficulties at times, and I know I'm not the only one.

Well, since I'm from So Cal, most of the accents will be So Cal "American". Of course, I can (and do) throw my voice for other accents, but only when the role calls for it.

3) For people whose first language is not English, spoken dialogue is either difficult to understand, or at least it is easy to misunderstand some of the words.

haven't thought of that... maybe I'll work on subtitles in certain languages or something. Good thinking there!

4) For devs not based in the US - where do we get our voice actors from?

Beats me. :) Sorry.

Secondly: voice acting is not easy.  You don't just "speak the lines".  

As a trained (Trained novice, not pro! Yet. :D ) voice actor I know this all too well.  A lot of people who claim to be VO's sound like they're just talking in front of a mic. 

The hardest role for someone is to be themselves, when you put yourself out there it means more. :D

Solid voice acting there.  Still wouldn't be able to do it myself outside of cinematics.  The game will be sold so voice actors would be costly.

The grunt things sounds fine for whenever they cast a skill and stuff, otherwise no. Its not some openworld RPG with lots of inmersion.

Mine is :D

Thanks for the input!

Not too shabyyy! I love it! The voices match their faces very well, IMO. :D

Nvm Ive changed my mind. This guy's scene is very cool. The voice acting just improves it. Can you PM me a link to the game/thread or something? Id be great.

Nvm its apparently this 

http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/3207-palasiel-quest-episode-i-start-believing-in-rpgs/

Everyone is going to have their opinions on these things.

As disappointing as it may be, I have some friends that absolutely HATE VO in games with a  fiery passion and will not play your game ever if you have it. 

DON'T do that. If you stop a player from skipping/speeding through and they want to, you're not going to force them to listen to and read all the dialogue you put so much work into. You'll just piss them off, and they'll stop playing your game and possibly tell all their friends it sucks and they can't stand it.

Furthermore, I would recommend having the option to turn them off entirely.

Yes, it's very frustrating to put a lot of work and effort into a feature and then allow players to ignore it, but players who enjoy voice acting will still appreciate the game all the more for it.

Giving players the option only increases the audience for your game, but forcing them to play it the "right" way will alienate many people.