Chaos Wars for the PS2

Some people are still under the impression that it’s easy to do the voice acting for a video game. You just read some dialog and head home and call it an early day. One of these people seems to be the President and CEO of O~3 Entertainment, Chris Jelinek.

Their latest outing, a tactical role playing game (RPG) for the PlayStation 2, Chaos Wars, has been making the internet rounds lately for it’s sub-par performances in the English translation of the game. The video below in particular has been making the rounds on video game blogs for a little while.

A quick read of the game’s manual shows that the voice acting is credited to Quest Jelinek and Tyler Jelinek, with special thanks to Kay Jelinek and Lee Jelinek. Interesting to say the least.

Even though O~3 isn’t a powerhouse of a publisher they still could hired some professionals, or even semi-professional at a scale. I know I sure was available for the gig. But Mr. Jelinek either decided to hire his voice talent based solely off the criterion that they have the same last name as himself, or he just raided his own living room and got his family to do it.

Chaos Wars character inconsistency, employs CEO’s family [Insert Credit]

God of War 2 by SCEA

Greg deBeer, the Dialog Manager for Sony Computer Entertainment of America Foster City, sat down with Gamasutra and gave a very candid interview on the state of dialog and voice over’s in the video game industry. In this six page interview deBeer’s speaks of finding that original voice for a game, casting actors for their range, and most interestingly his thoughts on celebrities doing voice over for video games.

… In general, my recommendation is to stay away from celebrity talent. My personal reasoning for that — which I’ve discussed with a lot of people, and a lot of people disagree with me — is for me, hearing an identifiable celebrity voice takes you away from the game. Instead of being immersed in this environment with these characters who are supposed to be a part of whatever world you’re playing, you say, “Oh, I recognize that voice,” and it brings you back into the real world. It’s a very disruptive experience for me personally.

Reading more on his thoughts, and with out him actually stating this, but the reasoning seems to be that the high-paid celebrities are just pains to work with.

I also find, in many cases, celebrities are used to a very specific way of being dealt with and dealing with production, and voice over is very different from that. And game voice over is different from just straight animation or ADR or something in a film setting. There are some actors that can handle it very well, but I’ve found that more often than not, the more exposure they’ve had in the film world, the less they are able to cope in these situations.

The rest of the interview gives a wonderful insight into the world of video game voice acting and what is required of you if you choose to pursue this career avenue. If you’ve got a few minutes to read the entire interview I can guarantee that you won’t be disappointed.

Giving Games A Voice: Sony’s Dialog Manager Greg deBeer Speaks [Gamasutra]

Image Credit: Michael Nagle for The New York Times

Michael Hollick has voiced the most well-known character in the year’s biggest blockbuster game when he took on the role of Niko Bellic in Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto 4. Now Michael was paid for his work and at a little over union scale he took home roughly $100,000. Not nearly as much as a famous-faced screen actor would have netted for a large role such as this, and Mr. Hollick will most likely never see another dime for his work. No residuals or royalties will come his way at all even after his voice will be heard by millions in online campaign and television commercials due to the current structure between union contracts and the game developers and publishers themselves.

In our time of ultra-fast broadband connections and the flood of voiced media that we take in everyday the Screen Actors Guild will use this discrepancy in royalties as a central issue in negotiations that are set to take place this summer. The result may end up being an actor’s strike which parallel’s the writer’s strike of last summer.

“Obviously I’m incredibly thankful to Rockstar for the opportunity to be in this game when I was just a nobody, an unknown quantity,” Said Hollick, “But it’s tough, when you see Grand Theft Auto IV out there as the biggest thing going right now, when they’re making hundreds of millions of dollars, and we don’t see any of it. I don’t blame Rockstar. I blame our union for not having the agreements in place to protect the creative people who drive the sales of these games. Yes, the technology is important, but it’s the human performances within them that people really connect to, and I hope actors will get more respect for the work they do within those technologies.”

To the actor this is an issue getting paid equally for the same work done across the many mediums. To the games industry it’s also an argument of equality. If the actor performing the character’s voice is to get royalties then why couldn’t the designer who created the character receive them as well, or the programmer who created the character’s AI. When a movie or television show is created does the camera operating pull in a portion of the back-end?

“For instance, our contracts say nothing about the use of voices for promotional purposes over the Internet,” Mr. Hollick said. “The first G.T.A. IV trailer generated something like 40 million hits online, and that’s my voice all over it, and I get nothing. If that were a radio spot, I would have. Same thing for the TV ads. I recorded those lines for the game, but now they’re all over television. It’s another gray area.”

After this summer’s negotiations this may be a non-issue, but it may also take another work stoppage for it to come to fruition. Bringing these issues to light will hopefully be eye opening for those in the industries, the voice over industry and the gaming industry, but I hope it doesn’t discourage great talent from working in the electronic media. Video games offer an entirely new level of performance for the voice actors that you just won’t find in commercials or even some animated television.

“So we would have the 50 pages of screaming, 10 pages of being shot, 10 pages of being thrown off a roof, 20 pages of being burnt alive, just screaming,” Hollick said. “The ones being burnt alive were the best. And I’d just be like: ‘Bring me more hot tea and honey and lemon. Earl Grey.’ “

A Video Game Star and His Less-Than-Stellar Pay [New York Times]

This weekend brought Stephanie from Vox Daily to the Voice Coaches Marketing Expo down in New York and with it came great voice over panels and discussions. Now a days you can’t have a proper discussion about the future of voice over without mentioning the huge potential in the video game industry.

At the Expo Evan Skolnick, VO Producer at Vicarious Visions, put on an interesting panel about the state of voice over in the gaming sector today and Stephanie has a nice write-up about it and some facts and tips about the industry as a whole. Of course, one of the most important tips is still to play the games!

Some of the more interesting aspects of the article is just the shear volume of dialogue that goes into a video game as opposed to a movie. Your standard movie averages out at about 2,000 lines of dialogue as opposed to a video game which average tops out at roughly 8,000 lines! But it doesn’t end there as your blockbuster, voice-heavy games such as Mass Effect and Fallout 3 can have as many as 70,000 lines of dialogue! Try imagining reading 70,000 lines. You may need a glass of water after that session.

The article as a whole is a concise, handy guide to the seemingly wide open world that is video game voice acting and a recommended bookmark for all interested.

Game On : Gaming Voiceovers - via Vox Daily

With such lackluster average scores how could developer Reality Pump even think to make a sequel to 2007’s worst voice acted game of the year, Two Worlds? Seemingly redemption.

Two Worlds: The Temptation

Even the developers’ themselves realize that Two Worlds not only suffered from the overt problems, like regular lock-ups, mind-numbingly buggy and terrible voice acting;

“We did all the scripting and voice over recording ourselves for the original Two Worlds, which I’m proud we accomplished but the end results show that it’s not exactly our forte.”

But, underlying internal issues also hampered the game;

“The main lesson we learned is to be more realistic with our goals. With the original idea, we were all so excited to be working on an RPG, that we tried to fit in every idea we had, even the ones that came late in the process.”

Two Worlds: The Temptation hopes to help the series and the developer regain face with gamers and the industry, and what is one of the glaring errors they will first correct? Reality Pump is going to hire professional voice actors for the sequel.

“As for the voiceovers, we’re hiring a very high profile recording studio to hire the actors and lay the tracks. We’ll reveal who these teams are soon enough, but suffice to say that the games they’ve done in the past are very well known.”

Ooh, a mysterious high profile recording studio. The suspense is maddening. It is great to hear them admit their mistakes and to try and fix them which has ultimately made me want to play The Temptation that much more. Also, to be honest, the atrocious voice acting in Two Worlds kind of makes me want to play that game as well.

-

Read the full interview with Two Worlds: The Temptation developer Reality Pump HERE.

With Grand Theft Auto IV being released on April 29th it stands to be the largest game in the series with help from its extensive music and audio tracks. With that in mind I thought it would be fun to take a look at some past GTA voice over recording sessions.

This video takes us all the way back to the turn of the century when recording for GTA Vice City began. Vice City is known for its enormous cast of big name actors providing voices for the game and developer RockStar just happen to have a camera rolling as they recorded their characters. Please keep in mind that this was an M Rated game and the language may not be suitable for everyone.

The weekend of April 18th through the 20th brings the NY Comic-Con to the mean streets of Gotham City. That is if you want to call the streets around the Jacob Javits Center mean. The annual comic book convention brings together the triumvirate of geek culture with comic, movie and video games coming together in booth and panel form for the paying public.

If you happen to be going to the convention or just in the New York area and have some time and money to blow you may want to head over to the Activision booth (booth number 1048) as they have an interesting contest lined-up for their next Spider-Man game. For the three days they are there at the Javits Center they will be recording grunts, screams and your best irritated cabbie voice acting for the newest Marvel comic video game.

This may not be the most exciting proposition for the experienced professional voice over artist, but if you know someone who’s been thinking about getting into the industry this may be a fun starting point for them.

Video Game Highlights - NY Comic-Con

GameVideos.com - fine purveyors of, well, video game video’s - has posted a behind-the-scenes look at the voice over recording sessions of Sega and Monolith Production’s newly released game, Condemned 2: Bloodshot. See the video after the jump.

The fourth time since 2004 that Duty has been Called

Mix Magazine, a fine purveyor of professional audio topics, has just released their February issue chock full of excellent information on all aspects of video game audio. The following is a wrap-up of five of the featured articles highlighted in this months print issue.

Answering the Call of Duty
Infinity Ward’s fourth installment of the acclaimed Call of Duty series was released at the end of 2007 to much fanfare. Not only was the story-line intriguing, the graphics stunning and the controls butter smooth, but the audio was spectacular. To pull of such stunning sound effects the audio team atIW went out to the field to capture real-life audio from M1A Abraham and AK-47 and small arms. While this is not new to video game recording, their methods of multiple recording angles optimized for surround sound is.

The closest you’ll ever get to rock stardom

This being a voice over blog I can’t not talk about the over 170 hours spent recording for all the dialogue for the game. Not only is the game translated into six languages, but theIW team scoured the globe for authentic and professional Arabic and Russian voice over actors. With the teams focus on battle moment intensity to produce a lifelike experience to the player, these must have been some fun recording sessions.

Guitar Hero Rocks
WaveGroup Sound is the recording and production group responsible providing the music tracks for a majority of the Guitar Hero games. In this extensive write-upWaveGroup owner/president Will Littlejohn talks about the future plans of one of the most established video game audio recording studio in the business. The article chronicles the beginnings of the company and their methods all the way to the estimated 250 million Guitar Hero tracks thatWaveGroup has so graciously bestowed upon the gaming public.

RTS Games Still Going Strong
Big budget action/adventure and first person shooter games aren’t the game on the market. You can’t forget about the scrappy Real Time Strategy genre that has been around longer than just about any other genre type. DevinHurd, Audio Director of Big Huge Games, sure hasn’t forgotten about RTS’ and with the sounds that he brings to the games, we’re betting that you won’t forget about them or the RPG’s (role-playing games) that he works on. With over 10 years in the game audio business this article details the sights, sounds and technology thatHurd and Big Huge Games utilize to pull you in to the top-down world view of the Age of Empire series.

He’s actually a tender thoughtful man

Scoring Splinter Cell: Conviction
What is one of the best ways to get into the gaming industry, in every aspect of the field? Be a gamer yourself. That’s what Michael Nielsen and Kaveh Cohen are and after a seemingly lifetime-length audition process the two 33 year-old virtual new comers are scoring one of the most highly anticipated and epic games to released, the fifth installment in the Splinter Cell series, Conviction. The two themselves grew up playing the Splinter Cell games and use their intimate knowledge of the games to other an audio experience that rivals any other. If you only pick up one thing from this article it’s guaranteed to be a new found familiarization of layers.

Total Immersion Effects
Video games have gone next-gen. With graphics this means high-definition 1080p imagery. With audio this means shake-you-in-your-seat rumble 5.1 surround-sound. With the number of actual audio clippings used in games today it can be daunting and costly to recreate these sounds for each game. This is where high-def audio collection come into play and the final article in the video game edition of Mix Magazine chronicles some of the best of those collection for audio engineers to use in triple-A blockbuster titles. Or if you have the money, for use in your own home movies.

[h/t to Gregory Best]

Barry Pepper, lending his voice to Prototype

Sierra Entertainment’s latest blockbuster game, Prototype, now has a voice for it’s protagonist and other characters. Barry Pepper (The Green Mile, 61*, Saving Private Ryan) will take the lead role as the genetically mutated Alex Mercer. Other voices confirmed in the game are those of Gordon Clapp (The Game Plan. Ghost Whisperer) and Paul Guilfoyle (CSI).

Prototype has been label as one of the must-watch games being released in 2008 by gaming magazine giant Electronic Gaming Monthly. In the game the player assumes the role of Alex Mercer, a shape-shifting doppelganger with amnesia, who needs to kill to fuel his powers. Prototype is currently scheduled for a summer 2008 release.

From Press Release