I hear voices: voice recording for game project
“Does the game need voice voice?” Is the main question for the sound engineer, almost as significant as “To be or not to be?” In the fate of Shakespeare's characters. Before you answer “Well, of course!”, Imagine thousands of lines of dialogues, slender rows of voice actors, among which one out of a thousand fits the role, tons of quality equipment and tears of happiness, when after 6 months of work you manage to record an acceptable piece.
If your left eye doesn’t twitch from these images, you most likely have never done video game dubbing before. Under the cut - a few tips for those who decided to make this feat.
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The main task of voice voice acting is to report on events in the game, plot advancement and key points of the gameplay. From the dialogues of the characters and the NPC, the user learns important information, understands how some of his actions will be regarded by the game environment. For example, in the Assassin's Creed series of games, the characters can actively respond to the actions of the main character — shouting, calling the guard, and just wondering why a person in a strange white suit jumps over the rooftops.
At the stage of developing the first Plarium strategy, we decided that all the characters should be voiced. The following projects are made according to this standard - each character in the games has its own character, voice and even favorite words. Voice acting adds another dimension to the game, making the product more interesting and multifaceted.
Types of voice acting in games
Voice in video games, as well as music and sounds, can be diegetic, extradiegetic or transdiegetic.
Diegetic voices are heard both to the character and to the player himself. These are dialogues, monologues, cries on the battlefield, songs in taverns, and even reflections of the main character.
Extradiegetic voices are heard only by the player. It is often the voiceover of the narrator, who tells about some events that occur before the start or during the game. He can also suggest what actions the user must take to successfully complete the mission.
Transdiegetic voices belong to the game world and at the same time are system notifications. “My inventory is full!” - on the one hand, we hear the voice of the hero and understand that it is he who says it, but at the same time such a message should convey to the player a thought: it’s time to run to the merchant and sell the loot.
Outsourcing or death
There are many studios that are engaged in voice acting video games. They will gladly offer you their services. And therein lies the catch: no matter how the experts from the autosourcing company try to fulfill your order, they will never be able to achieve the required quality bar. Moreover, not many studios can boast of real-life experience in voicing game projects, and even the most famous ones sometimes refer to the final product ... not in the best way.
The voice acting is better to entrust to a person who is well acquainted with the development team, knows the product features, the characters of the characters and understands what result to get. At the same time, you should objectively evaluate your own strengths: will there be enough time for the sound producer to find the right studio, equipment, casting and create a quality product? In large projects, the sounding process can take months and years, but even behind the dialogues from a small indie game there is hard work and an iron endurance of the sound designer.
Casting
Standard voice sets the game and its genre. Very much depends on whether you work with a mobile runner, browser-based platformer or RPG for Next Gen consoles, if 50,000 lines of dialogs are written in the script, or if there is only a list of short exclamations printed on A4 paper.
To cast, it is not necessary to invite hundreds of people to the studio. Successful trials can be arranged, even if your sound engineer is a social phobia, and the actors live on the other hemisphere. It is enough to send them the text with the appropriate instructions and explanations, and then evaluate the result. Even a professional actor should have some experience in voice acting, otherwise there is a risk of very long to beat the drama out of him. Make a base of interesting voices, even if they are not suitable for this project.
In extreme cases, be creative. There are many options for how it is interesting to voice the characters, without recording the voices of the actors.
Some useful tips
Some interesting tricks that developers used:
For the game The Sims was created a special language Simlish, which the characters speak. It is based on French, Latin, Tagalog, Finnish and Ukrainian. And in the game Knock-knock, the main character speaks a strange language. It is known that it is not derived from any of the existing ones. The developers claim that the sound files and the concept of the game sent an unknown person to them, who insisted on implementing the game in this form.
Invite for the voice acting of famous actors. This is not only an excellent marketing ploy, but also a psychological method of influencing a player. Nathaniel Howe’s chances of survival in Dragon Age: Origins are noticeably increasing because he is voiced by Ilya Pale. It's hard to hate a character whose voice belongs to Hank McCoy from the movie "X-Men", Bruce Benner from The Incredible Hulk, Arthur from "The Beginning" and many other characters in films and video games.
To immerse in the gameplay, some phrases pronounced by foreigners can be left untranslated. For example, in the XCOM: Enemy Unknown game, foreign mercenaries may shout out teams in their native languages. When creating an antagonist for the War of Thrones game, the Plarium sound engineer studied several varieties of Orc’s speech and, together with the voice acting actor, recorded the speech of the god of Chaos - Balur - in orcish language.
Customizing the voice of the protagonist is one of the components of a quality RPG game. For example, in Neverwinter Nights, you could choose from a list of 15 or 20 voices of different types. Dragon Age: Inquisition also adds voice selection. However, this time, the developers simplified the task: instead of recording another 30,000 conversational phrases with a new actor, they simply lowered the timbre of the actor’s voice in the original recording.
To create the voices of monsters, mixing the recordings of the cries of real animals is usually used. So did the creators of the Spore simulator: all the animals created by the player make sounds that are a mixture of the cries of real animals of a certain type. Human-like creatures speak each other in a language that is a simple improvisation of voice actors.
Nowadays, it is hard to find a game project that completely lacked sound. However, not all developers understand the extent to which graphics and voice affect the perception of the game. The quality of these two components will largely determine the loyalty to the product and the degree to which the user is immersed in the game world.
If your left eye doesn’t twitch from these images, you most likely have never done video game dubbing before. Under the cut - a few tips for those who decided to make this feat.
')
The main task of voice voice acting is to report on events in the game, plot advancement and key points of the gameplay. From the dialogues of the characters and the NPC, the user learns important information, understands how some of his actions will be regarded by the game environment. For example, in the Assassin's Creed series of games, the characters can actively respond to the actions of the main character — shouting, calling the guard, and just wondering why a person in a strange white suit jumps over the rooftops.
At the stage of developing the first Plarium strategy, we decided that all the characters should be voiced. The following projects are made according to this standard - each character in the games has its own character, voice and even favorite words. Voice acting adds another dimension to the game, making the product more interesting and multifaceted.
Types of voice acting in games
Voice in video games, as well as music and sounds, can be diegetic, extradiegetic or transdiegetic.
Diegetic voices are heard both to the character and to the player himself. These are dialogues, monologues, cries on the battlefield, songs in taverns, and even reflections of the main character.
Extradiegetic voices are heard only by the player. It is often the voiceover of the narrator, who tells about some events that occur before the start or during the game. He can also suggest what actions the user must take to successfully complete the mission.
Transdiegetic voices belong to the game world and at the same time are system notifications. “My inventory is full!” - on the one hand, we hear the voice of the hero and understand that it is he who says it, but at the same time such a message should convey to the player a thought: it’s time to run to the merchant and sell the loot.
Outsourcing or death
There are many studios that are engaged in voice acting video games. They will gladly offer you their services. And therein lies the catch: no matter how the experts from the autosourcing company try to fulfill your order, they will never be able to achieve the required quality bar. Moreover, not many studios can boast of real-life experience in voicing game projects, and even the most famous ones sometimes refer to the final product ... not in the best way.
The voice acting is better to entrust to a person who is well acquainted with the development team, knows the product features, the characters of the characters and understands what result to get. At the same time, you should objectively evaluate your own strengths: will there be enough time for the sound producer to find the right studio, equipment, casting and create a quality product? In large projects, the sounding process can take months and years, but even behind the dialogues from a small indie game there is hard work and an iron endurance of the sound designer.
Casting
Standard voice sets the game and its genre. Very much depends on whether you work with a mobile runner, browser-based platformer or RPG for Next Gen consoles, if 50,000 lines of dialogs are written in the script, or if there is only a list of short exclamations printed on A4 paper.
To cast, it is not necessary to invite hundreds of people to the studio. Successful trials can be arranged, even if your sound engineer is a social phobia, and the actors live on the other hemisphere. It is enough to send them the text with the appropriate instructions and explanations, and then evaluate the result. Even a professional actor should have some experience in voice acting, otherwise there is a risk of very long to beat the drama out of him. Make a base of interesting voices, even if they are not suitable for this project.
In extreme cases, be creative. There are many options for how it is interesting to voice the characters, without recording the voices of the actors.
Some useful tips
- Watch for uniform sound. As in the case of graphics, the game as a whole and each location in particular should have a stylistically uniform sound design.
- Use frequency processing to select the optimum sound.
- Listen to how the whole scene sounds. Too loud shouts or dialogues can get out of the general concept and destroy the state of immersion. At the same time, an important phrase, sounding too quiet, can be missed by the player.
- Testing is a guarantee of quality. At the final stage, listen to how the sounds overlap and which of them can be removed without regret. Make sure that there is no chaos and cacophony.
- To achieve the desired effect, combine studio and field recordings.
- Avoid exact repetition of sound bites. If possible, vary or randomize phrases even minor characters.
- Start working on voice acting as early as possible, as soon as the final version of the dialogues or phrases is ready. Leave a decent amount of time to re-sound some moments if they do not fit well with the visuals.
Some interesting tricks that developers used:
For the game The Sims was created a special language Simlish, which the characters speak. It is based on French, Latin, Tagalog, Finnish and Ukrainian. And in the game Knock-knock, the main character speaks a strange language. It is known that it is not derived from any of the existing ones. The developers claim that the sound files and the concept of the game sent an unknown person to them, who insisted on implementing the game in this form.
Invite for the voice acting of famous actors. This is not only an excellent marketing ploy, but also a psychological method of influencing a player. Nathaniel Howe’s chances of survival in Dragon Age: Origins are noticeably increasing because he is voiced by Ilya Pale. It's hard to hate a character whose voice belongs to Hank McCoy from the movie "X-Men", Bruce Benner from The Incredible Hulk, Arthur from "The Beginning" and many other characters in films and video games.
To immerse in the gameplay, some phrases pronounced by foreigners can be left untranslated. For example, in the XCOM: Enemy Unknown game, foreign mercenaries may shout out teams in their native languages. When creating an antagonist for the War of Thrones game, the Plarium sound engineer studied several varieties of Orc’s speech and, together with the voice acting actor, recorded the speech of the god of Chaos - Balur - in orcish language.
Customizing the voice of the protagonist is one of the components of a quality RPG game. For example, in Neverwinter Nights, you could choose from a list of 15 or 20 voices of different types. Dragon Age: Inquisition also adds voice selection. However, this time, the developers simplified the task: instead of recording another 30,000 conversational phrases with a new actor, they simply lowered the timbre of the actor’s voice in the original recording.
To create the voices of monsters, mixing the recordings of the cries of real animals is usually used. So did the creators of the Spore simulator: all the animals created by the player make sounds that are a mixture of the cries of real animals of a certain type. Human-like creatures speak each other in a language that is a simple improvisation of voice actors.
Nowadays, it is hard to find a game project that completely lacked sound. However, not all developers understand the extent to which graphics and voice affect the perception of the game. The quality of these two components will largely determine the loyalty to the product and the degree to which the user is immersed in the game world.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/243907/
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