With the exception of the hand held industry, the era of using text alone to convey dialog is ending. Voice acting in the video game industry is here to stay. Many games are trying (not always succeeding) to present more involved story lines with deeper characters. Character development is a particular interest of mine and I have some strong opinions about how to go about developing a good character. A problem I see a lot in games concerning character development is in how the game tries to get the player to connect with the character.
Here's a hint, elaborately absurd back stories only offer a cheap interest at best. Narratives about characters don't create connections. People get to know each other by listening to each other. That's the way we work in real life and thus, dialog (or internal monologue) is perhaps the most potent tool for creating emotional connections with characters. For games seeking to capture that connection, the portrayal of characters is of utmost importance. Obviously good writing would be a big help here, but even the best writing goes to waste if the voice actors can't portray their characters well.
So why is voice acting in video games often sub par? The knee jerk response might be “because game studios are cheap and hire crappy voice actors”. Well, yes, game studios are often cheap in this regard, but not in the way you might think.
The Brainy Gamer decided to delve into the problem of video game voice acting and in doing so, has revealed something pretty interesting. The problem with voice acting isn't one of talent but time and material (well okay, talent too as I'm sure some devs conscripted their voice crew from the programming department). No matter how good the actor; zero preparation time and zero knowledge of the character she's portraying is going to have a negative impact on the results. I actually had no idea myself that voice actors were typically given so little info to work with (I had always assumed the game industry followed the model set by the animation industry), and that revelation explains a lot of lackluster performances. Click on over, it's an enlightening read.
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