Add voiceovers for player characters!

[LordKinoda]

A nobody charges over 800$/session. Which is about 4 hours. The 'nobody' that gave the voice to the main character of GTA4 (and by nobody, i mean a bartender, bagel shop employee and perfume hawker) charged 1000/day of work for 15 months; a week of this nobody is far more than what a programmer charges in a month.

 

There has to be TONS of voice actors out there who will always do it for less just to get a credit on their resume. I watched that video on YouTube as well where he said he worked on and off for 15 months. OFF being the key word there. He said the cut-scenes were about 8 hours of material, and he also had to do the cab destinations of course, and any other one liners (e.g. being hit in a car, or shot, or shooting people. etc.). So chock it up to 10 full hours of dialog. Let's also allow that he probably came back to re-record some lines. Let's even be seriously generous and allow that he re-recored EVERY line he did. 20 hours of dialog. $1,000 an hour=$20,000. Wasn't too far off from my estimate for Meer and Hale on Shepard. That's why I even allowed a whole nother 250k to account for fluctuations in the famous actors salaries.

 

Now if they pay a famous actor (Patrick Stewart as you suggested) 6 figures for that miniscule amount of dialog they're crazy. I could completely understand wanting to cut something like THAT out of the game to save money. But that doesen't account for unknown voice actors. Or actors who do nothing but voice overs (they wouldn't be super famous either would they ? Afterall, I'm betting if a poll was done on the Mass Effect website you'd be hard pressed to even get half the people to know the voice actors for Shepard without cheating and looking at the credits or wikipedia/google).

 

There is no need to have famous people to do voice overs. There are plenty of other actors who sole job is voice acting. Or people who are just trying to break into the business. Two people to do dialog for the main character. Two unknown "nobody" actors who are at least decent would have been better than a silent character anyday. Most especially with this toolset because it would have, presumably, been as easy as swapping out your own audio files with those of the character.

 

So I say again. Money is a seriously inadequate reason for not having dialog for the main character. There would probably be around the same dialog for the main character as Niko Bellic. 8-10 hours. Low end BioWare is looking at 20k to pay two voice actors for the main character. Tops, 50k.

 

Remember, we're talking about unknown actors here. They didn't have to do anything fancy. Afterall, I'm NOT going to buy Mass Effect 2 because Keith David, Seth Green, Martin Sheen, or Alec Baldwin is in it. I'd be just as happy if they used somebody I've never heard of. I AM buying the game because I know I'm going to have fun, and experience an awesome story along the way. Famous actors are not really big selling points for me in a video game. For a movie maybe. But not so much on a game. They're more of a, "Hey I've heard that voice before !", kind of moments than anything else.

[TGBlank]

Ehm. news article says he charged 100.000$, 1050$ a day over 15 months of work. That's not the 20k you where assuming, that's 5 times more.

 

Do i have to repeat that HE IS A NOBODY, he isn't a "i worked as a redshirt on an obscure sci-fi series and appeared for 2 seconds" nobody, he isn't even a "i did some theatre" nobody, he is the "the last time i acted was as a tree in school" nobody.

PER voice actor's guild the bare minimum for a total absolute nobody is 768$ per session, he was hired for a main character, so he got a slightly better deal. Somebody with a slightly better resume would charge on the mid 4 or even low 5 digits per session.

 

You also seem to have no clue on how many times each line must be re-read when voice acting. 2 times? are you kidding me?. If it gives you any idea, movies take anywhere from half a day to several days per scene, or did you thought movies where recorded in 2-4 hours too?.

 

And as you said, GTA4 barely got any greater amount of dialogue, and DAO is one of the voiced games with more dialogue. The costs of adding a single voice would have been impressively high, never mind 4 or 6.

 

As for mass effect 2, i am not expecting any high amount of dialogue (the original didn't had much either), all done with minimal conversation trees of "ask what is x, be a jerk, be nice", sometimes with repeated voiceovers.

[LordKinoda]

Ehm. news article says he charged 100.000$, 1050$ a day over 15 months of work. That's not the 20k you where assuming, that's 5 times more.

 

It is a little different with that game though. They predicted a huge success. And it was. Way more than enough to pay for that guys salary. But DAO ? Even though it's a BioWare game it's a new IP.

 

Somebody with a slightly better resume would charge on the mid 4 or even low 5 digits per session.

 

For a big time game like that, I can see yes. But DAO ?

 

You also seem to have no clue on how many times each line must be re-read when voice acting. 2 times? are you kidding me?

 

1. Never claimed to be an expert on who gets paid what and how long it takes. These are just estimations on my part. Never said they were fact.

 

2. I was assuming each and every line was read at least twice over. Which is unlikely. So that could be accounted and moved around. Some lines read 10 times. Others once. Others thrice. Etc.

 

And as you said, GTA4 barely got any greater amount of dialogue, and DAO is one of the voiced games with more dialogue. The costs of adding a single voice would have been impressively high, never mind 4 or 6.

 

You're assuming that they would pay an actor the same amount of money no matter what game they worked on. Some games are predicted to be bigger successes than others, so they get a larger budget no ? I'm sure they spent alot more money on GTA 4 than was spent on ME. For a bunch of different reasons, but that doesen't matter. Only thing that matters is the actors pay HAS to go up or down depending on the game's total budget.

 

As for mass effect 2, i am not expecting any high amount of dialogue (the original didn't had much either), all done with minimal conversation trees of "ask what is x, be a jerk, be nice", sometimes with repeated voiceovers.

 

And DAO's dialog was really largely different than ME ? A few more lines here and there. But only because they didn't do a voice over. Had they went with a voiced character, it would have been more like ME.

 

Like I mentioned before, at the very least, they could handle the technical stuff to make the character talk and throw it out on a DLC. That way the burden of the voice acting is left to the modding community.

[TGBlank]

It is a little different with that game though. They predicted a huge success. And it was. Way more than enough to pay for that guys salary. But DAO ? Even though it's a BioWare game it's a new IP.

 

For a big time game like that, I can see yes. But DAO ?

 

You seem to miss the point that there IS a Voice Actors Guild. You want to hire someone to voice over a commercial? you go to them. You are making a pixar-like movie? you go to them. That's what guilds are for.

They've set the price for voices in games for a complete and absolute nobody to be 800$/session, high 4 or low 5 digits for slightly more famous actors. GTA paid those prices, Oblivion paid those prices, Fallout paid those prices, Mass Effect paid those prices, the Godfather paid those prices (well, an exorbitant amount more due to who they hired), and yes, DAO paid those prices.

 

 

1. Never claimed to be an expert on who gets paid what and how long it takes. These are just estimations on my part. Never said they were fact.

 

To give you an idea, it is not unlike movie acting: you will not have to deal with actor synchronization, true, but the studio time constraints and the difficulty to portrait the mindspace of the character when the actor have no visual cues and no straight script increases the difficulty. You don't have, can't have rehersals, it's all under billed studio/actor time.

 

As you may well know, 1:30h flicks take anywhere between a week or two (without counting rehersals) and several months to be recorded (only the recording part, then comes editing and effects and all that etcetera). Dubbing a 20 min cartoon normally takes anywhere between 2 days and a week (and this is after the voice actors have spent a couple seasons to get in character).

 

And DAO's dialog was really largely different than ME ? A few more lines here and there. But only because they didn't do a voice over. Had they went with a voiced character, it would have been more like ME.

 

Exactly my point. The voiced part was rather similar, the unvoiced part was much more varied. They'd have cut the complexity of the dialogue tree and cut out as much as possible to reduce costs if they included a player voice.

 

Me? i like having dialogue options, just being able to say "If due to some random luck i stumble upon your kitty on the dragon cave, i'll bring it back" instead of "Yes citizen! i'll rescue the feline from the evil ferocious dragon!", even though they'd trigger the same response and the same events in the game and i'd still end up saving the kitten, having/not having that choice would make or break a game for me.

[LordKinoda]

You seem to miss the point that there IS a Voice Actors Guild. They've set the price for voices in games for a complete and absolute nobody to be 800$/session, high 4 or low 5 digits for slightly more famous actors.

 

And it's not possible to find somebody who's not affiliated with the guild ?

 

Even so, using that $800/session fee, it's not a gigantic amount of money in terms of the game's total budget. What consists of a session ? An hour ? So say there is 8-10 hours total dialog for the main character. And the voice actor does 20 sessions to get variations, fix errors, etc. 800x20= $16,000 So lets round up to 40k for two voice actors, one male, one female. In a game that has at least a 20 million dollar budget, is 40k that big of a hit that it needs to be one of the features that is cut ?

 

Not attacking you here. Just trying to understand why they did it for ME and not for DAO.

 

Exactly my point. The voiced part was rather similar, the unvoiced part was much more varied. They'd have cut the complexity of the dialogue tree and cut out as much as possible to reduce costs if they included a player voice.

 

Not so much. It's still not really a gigantic amount of dialog. No way it's more than 15 hours. No way.

 

Me? i like having dialogue options, just being able to say "If due to some random luck i stumble upon your kitty on the dragon cave, i'll bring it back" instead of "Yes citizen! i'll rescue the feline from the evil ferocious dragon!", even though they'd trigger the same response and the same events in the game and i'd still end up saving the kitten, having/not having that choice would make or break a game for me.

 

I like more options as well. There's no reason they couldn't of kept all the options and voiced them though. I was just saying it would have been more likely that it be closer to ME had they chose to do it. Can you honestly say that you prefer the silent character to a voiced one ? Suppose they voiced all the options. Would you still like the character to remain silent ?

 

I've read that DAO had 144 actors, while ME 2 has 90. Really ? They couldn't get at least 2 of those actors to do voices for the PC ? How does that make any logical sense ? They could of easily cut those actors down to 125 to pay at least 2 actors to do the main character's voice. All of the options too. Like I said, just trying to understand.

[TGBlank]

And it's not possible to find somebody who's not affiliated with the guild ?

:wallbash:

 

So say there is 8-10 hours total dialog for the main character. And the voice actor does 20 sessions to get variations..

And you still have no idea of what you're talking about and are grossly underestimating things.

For each line of dialogue, a director of sorts provides the voice actor with a background and information about it (you don't spoon-fed lines to the voice actor unless there's a plot reason to do so). The voice actor then gives several variations of it with different wording or intonation, then there's some feedback with the director and this is repeated a few times until they get the line right. Since dialogue is non-linear, the whole process must be repeated anew for each phrase.

So for a 1 second phrase you just spent 20 minutes or even 1 hour making it. THEN there's the time spent cleaning up the audio and balancing things, which the studio will also bill you.

This is also pretty late in the development cycle of a game, since you need to have the entire dialogue and plot designed. Once you start you can't just add/remove important characters or make any major plot change, or you face re-recording and paying again for a good chunk of dialogue.

And if you want your dialogue quality to be uniform, you now need to limit yourself to 1-2 studios or pay extra for more sound technicians to edit all voices afterwards, studios also have other clients and can't dedicate themselves 24/7 to your game project. So not only you're balancing money costs, but also time.

 

Not so much. It's still not really a gigantic amount of dialog.

 

*sigh*

In average, for every, say, 4 lines of dialogue response of an npc, there's roughly 1 of the pc (joining the several pc responses is roughly 1-2 lines). Adding a male voice? +25% voice acting. Female too?, now it's 50%. Want a different dwarf voice so they have USA accent instead of England english like every other dwarf?, +100% voice acting cost. Do you want your mage to more alof or wizened or calmed in its intonation? or an aggressive warrior?, or a calmed tactician?, gee now you'll be paying several times the original voice acting cost.

The variations are the main reason why you don't want voiced protagonists on 'custom' heroes. It's perfectly fine to have a single (or two) voice for a defined character (the gta4 guy, shephard, geralt of rivia, the assassin's creed guy...), they have a defined background and personality.

On a custom hero, where the game is in the customization itself, the voicing costs become prohibitive. Sure you can cut down options, but in the process you reduce customization and turn from the player being the hero of ferelden to the player watching the grey warden be the hero of ferelden.

[LordKinoda]

And you still have no idea of what you're talking about and are grossly underestimating things.

 

Heh. I was only spitballing. Evidently you know alot more about it than I do ;)

 

The voice actor then gives several variations of it with different wording or intonation, then there's some feedback with the director and this is repeated a few times until they get the line right.

 

Makes sense.

 

The variations are the main reason why you don't want voiced protagonists on 'custom' heroes. It's perfectly fine to have a single (or two) voice for a defined character (the gta4 guy, shephard, geralt of rivia, the assassin's creed guy...), they have a defined background and personality

 

Yeah...I can understand that. Starting to grasp the bigger picture why they would just say "forget it" because of too many annoying factors.

 

 

 

Still shouldn't eliminate the possibility of them releasing some DLC that takes care of the technical details for making the character speak. That way all voice acting is left to the modding community. Surely there would tons of mods with people adding there own unique spins on the characters. Alot of them would probably be bad, but I think there would be enough diamonds in the rough to warrant the technical effort by BioWare, or the modding community if they never released anything official. As I've said before, I know I would be more than happy to do my own recording if somebody did what I consider to be the heavy lifting ;)

[D3MONA]

You don't just have to voice act the race and sex but also the tone; For example, the 'violent' voice or the 'wise' voice.

[Aria C]

You don't just have to voice act the race and sex but also the tone; For example, the 'violent' voice or the 'wise' voice.

 

Yup and then they all need to be done in all of the supported languages.

[LordKinoda]

Okay let's scratch all the reasons why voices should of been added or why they weren't.

 

A simple question I want to pose. Maybe it's simple to answer, I don't know. Somebody who is pretty knowledgable in the toolset should be able to give an answer.

 

Are all the pieces there to make the PC speak ?

 

From what I've read about the the toolset I'm guessing yes. Forget the voicework, because it has nothing to do with what I'm asking. I just want to know if all the technical pieces are present to make it happen. Interested to know if I should bother holding out hope. Or take the time to try to learn how to do it myself.