Pro Voice Over in Game for Intrepid

ArchivedUser

Hey all! I heard Jeffery say on the 5/12 live stream that voice over is a big want in Ashes, but due to its cost, might not make it in. As a professional voice over talent, that makes me sad, though I completely understand. Then it dawned on me. Why not offer to do work for them for free to help give that extra dimension to the game? So I'm posting here in hopes of being seen and, maybe, finding other <strong>professional</strong> voice talents that might want to contribute their time.

Here's a sample, the Ashes themed story I'm doing on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PdCLDKvehA&t=3s

Thanks for spreading the word and discussing!

ArchivedUser

I dont even know this guy (only watched his little video), but his voice is magical.
Please Hire him - when you need Voice Actors.

ArchivedUser

I wish you good luck in getting interpid attention! Make your voice immortal in an epic game that will last a lifetime :)

PS: very nice voice.

ArchivedUser

I'd be very glad if voice acting never makes it into the game. There have been too many games that have been ruined by poor voice acting. I'd much prefer to just have some text to read instead.

ArchivedUser

I share your views towards poor voice acting, particularly for important NPCs. For some reason, it doesn't seem work well in MMOs. But how about narrations in some key plot points in the main story line? That would enhance the experience for me personally.

ArchivedUser

I might be in the minority, but I think besides the expense, fully voiced acting doesn't really belong in an MMO.

For some key cut scenes? Sure. But for the same reason books are generally better than the movies that come out of them, I'd rather read something and let my brain fill in the blanks about the character I'm interacting with.

And as said above, poor voice acting is worse than no voice acting.

ArchivedUser

My personal preference would be to pour all the resources and coordination effort that would go into voice over content into making the existing environments and systems of game larger, more robust, more seemlessly fluid, balanced, and responsive. The more expansive the world is, the greater the variety of locations there are to interact with, the better game systems are interconnected, the longer players will be retained.

Well done voice acting can add immersion and atmosphere to the immediate experience. It very much adds lasting player memories of their time in that game - but voice acting doesn't make up for a lack of content or keep players coming back after they've exhausted the available content or are unhappy with the mechanics of gameplay. Star Wars the Old Republic is a significant recent example of that. The exceeding and perhaps excessively expensive(in both time and money) fully voice acted storyline hook didn't keep the players around much past release. EA's recent release of the latest installment of Mass Effect(and now the last for the foreseeable future) shows how badly things can go when animation and voice acting are less than well done.

ArchivedUser

I like your work, Eternal, and I hope you find success with furthering your career in voice acting!

Personally, I find voice acting in MMO's, when done well, to be extremely engaging, and immersive. Games like WoW, EQ2, and others have done fantastic jobs, in that regard.

ArchivedUser

Being a longtime friend of the OP and being in tabletop games where he has been both a fellow PC as well as a GM, he's great at a variety of voices. His JoA series shows how well he can do in the genre. Sure hoping Intrepid gives him a chance as I know they're watching his youtube series :D

ArchivedUser

I thought people used artificial voices now ?
/cringes

ArchivedUser

Professional Voice over work isn't that expensive if you do not use the high priced named talent. I did non union VO work for commercials and radio when I lived in CA as a side job and for fun which probably changes the payout quite a bit. Intrepid is located in SD which is where most of the VO work is done so I am sure there is a happy medium if they wanted to add something to the game.

ArchivedUser

I say make one of the stretch goals go to voice acting! If there's one thing that the player base of Path of Exile has shown me, its that if a game's community likes the game and likes where it's going, they'll throw money at it. PoE is completely free-to-play, and the only things that can be bought are purely cosmetic, yet players will throw money at it anyway because the game itself is incredible and we feel its worth it. I think the kickstarter goes to show that there's a community on board with AoC's goals, who'd be willing to contribute to adding VO whether that's by offering funds, or VO talent.

ArchivedUser

Question:
1. Will you pay for the mouth tongue rigging on all vocal creatures ?
2. Will you pay for the mouth tongue animation on all vocal creatures ?
3. Will you pay for the voice to animation sync coding on all story scenes ?
4. Will you require full blown facial expressions to go with that ?
...that aside from the voice files.

ArchivedUser

[quote quote=22289]I’d be very glad if voice acting never makes it into the game. There have been too many games that have been ruined by poor voice acting. I’d much prefer to just have some text to read instead.

[/quote]

*In The Hall Of The Mountain King begins playing*


As for my personal thoughts on the matter, voice acting is just flair and I'm not sure that the upfront and long term costs justify it.

ArchivedUser

Thanks for your support and discussion. Still hoping!

ArchivedUser

I could do without voice acting tbh,
you either have to fully commit to it or not. After my ESO experience at launch knowing that dubledore and Cleese siphoned 1/4 mil out of that games buggy mess of a game then to approach a quest giver with the most inappropriate half arsed voice over was comical and the biggest immersion breaker.

I respect the spoken craft when done right.
But I also appreciate the ability to voice my own impression from reading text at my pace.

ArchivedUser

yeah....i'm not a fan....though i would love it if it's done right
the problem is you may get some good voice actors for the english version of the game. but then there are the other languages and believe me, from experience of over 20 years german gaming. voice overs which are praised for the english version can be utter crap for all the other languages

ArchivedUser

Personally, I would love a community built voice over, people register to do voice overs, are given a couple of scripts with character background info, and submit 5-10 voice overs, devs review and you are in or out.  then each person selected could log on a special website, and select various characters to voice over. (with NDA) They would then upload say 10% of the total number of voice lines for that character to this new site.  Then other members of the site could vote on who they like the best, up to a specific deadline, ties and characters without any votes would be decided by the devs.  the winner would then have X weeks to provide multiple takes of each Voice over line to the Devs for their selected character(s).  Post launch, any character not voiced could have lines submitted by these same selected people to get added in an upcoming patch.

Now contrary to everything I just said, I play games on mute 90% of the time, due to not having a room to play in, and having the necessity not being able to wear headphones so I can hear what is going on in my house. (two small kids and a wife that complains of the repetitive noises from gaming, easier to play without sound and be able to play more...  than to limit my gaming time to those times when I can have the speakers on).  And yes the same applies to mobile gaming, there are dozens if not more than 100 games I've never heard that I have put more than 30 hours into (and a good number that have over 200 hours in and I've never heard one sound out of them)

ArchivedUser

TruthEternal, just keep it up without even getting them to use it, great voice, great creativity. I'm a bit of a fantasy writer myself (and use to do professional voice acting - i voiced the Candy Rider in Heroes of Newerth). If you ever want to get together on discord and colab on some future fantasy content to voice, hit me up (Xantham#3659)

ArchivedUser

IMO some voice acting is nice but it's not why I play games just my 2 cents .. and BTW TureEternal GOOD game, nice voice acting !

ArchivedUser

TruthEternal said:

 Still hoping!

Now I'm not a fan myself, some times sure, but a character without a voice gives my imagination the chance to give it one, to choose the personality and how it's saying something.

That said.....
I can't remember exactly if Intrepid is for or against mods, most likely against, but for something such as this which isn't going to alter of affect any of the gameplay, they might be a little more open. 

If I were you.... and this is just out of my random brain, but  I'd email Intrepid directly and raise the subject of whether a voice over mod could be possible.

If they didn't have to worry about mouth tongue rigging/animation, syncing or faces, just helping to link the action clicked on screen to the audio, they might be more amenable.

And if they weren't too interested in paying for it, then volunteering your services to co-ordinate a community funded one might help them.

You do have to remember that they are here because they want a game to stay in for life themselves, I'm guessing that it's going to be more about persuading them it's not going to make the game worse for them, only better.

ArchivedUser

Will your Youtube channel be a weekly story thing or is it your application? If it's a weekly story thing I'd like to subscribe. You have a great voice. 

ArchivedUser

I think voice overs are really important for a modern game, and have become an expectation for a modern MMORPG since reading a bunch of text really is not going to appeal to the vast majority of people. I almost wish the 3 Million stretch goal had been for VO instead of a stock exchange, but idk. Hopefully it'll happen. I think there's a lot of potential talent among the community, and elsewhere that they could find that wouldn't be too costly. 

ArchivedUser

I would like to see Intrepid give auditions for voice actors willing to take part in this. Maybe they can offer things such as, free accounts, specialized mounts, etc. Anything that is mutually beneficial. Then later down the line, they could hire these people on board, if they like them, or hire different actors who don't even play the game.

Now, I won't cry if the game doesn't have voice overs, and honestly after listening to the same voice lines over and over, it gets boring ((Speaking as someone who has many alts.)) Still, it would be nice to see Intrepid think about these things. 

ArchivedUser

sunfrog said:

Will your Youtube channel be a weekly story thing or is it your application? If it's a weekly story thing I'd like to subscribe. You have a great voice. 

A weekly thing regardless.

ArchivedUser

TruthEternal said:

A weekly thing regardless.

Subscribed, and I see there is more than one episode.  

ArchivedUser

@TruthEternal I'm in your Discord channel. I know you're an upper tier backer, and it's cool to find out that you're more than just a Richy McRichface Nice creative work and great voice! Regardless of what Intrepid decides, keep doing what you're doing.

I'm a fast reader and I tend to read anything quest / story-related if it interests me (though I tend to skip the lore books in single player games), but I still prefer having VO. Done well = it's a luxury for me. Done decently = I still like it for the sake of that "immersion touch." It would have to be done extremely poorly for it to ruin the game for me. Maybe like some of the recent eastern ports that had weak English VO. 

If Intrepid goes with VO, they should consider an option to turn off voices for those who don't want them though. 

ArchivedUser

VO is nice at times but I don't find it all that necessary to a game.
It's nice to take text slowly at times to get a full understanding of what's going on.   Having a couple kids starting as toddlers on my lap years back enticed them to learn to read among other things.  I used to tell them once they learned to read they could play my games.  The boys learned fast!  lol   
Things are way too easy in todays world and leave little to imagination.

ArchivedUser

The problem is if they start on Voice Overs, all future content that they develop will require it as well. 

Great video btw.

ArchivedUser

Great video @TruthEternal but I'd be happy either way with what happens in Ashes.

ArchivedUser

He's offering to do it for FREE and he's pretty good.  What's the downside?

Bring him in. Throw it out there during alpha / closed beta.

If it works great; if it doesn't, take it out.

Problem?