Rampant Games - Opinion On Voice Acting

The Rampant Coyote talks about his opinion on voice acting in games, and talks about why his Frayed Knight games don't have voiceovers.

Talking to someone at Comic Con last weekend, they recommended fully voiced dialog for my game because they hate to read when playing a game, but they will listen to somebody talk to them “all day.” I mentioned that for me, I’m kind of the opposite. Maybe for the first couple of lines – especially if it’s a major bit of character-revelation or a significant plot development – I’ll listen all the way through. But most of the time, I’ll read through the line of dialog, and then interrupt the voice-over in mid-sentence to jump to the next part. Voice is just too slow.

I love the idea of bringing the Baldur’s Gate style back into vogue – where the first line or paragraph was voiced in any particular scene, so you get the flavor of the character. But in talking to some modern players, they aren’t so keen on that. In short – players don’t want to read when they are playing a game. (I suspect some of them don’t like to read, period, but that’s another story.)  I do get that. I find myself in the same boat. When playing a game, certain parts of your brain are active, and get into a rhythm. Going into text-reading mode completely breaks that flow, and engages different parts of your brain. At least, that’s how it feels. It breaks the flow of things. And while gaming is primarily visual, we can be interpret audio information and communication in a way that’s less disruptive then stuff we have to process visually.

So I dunno. Maybe I’m out there on the fringe, wanting a return to the Baldur’s Gate style “samples” in hopes of getting the best of both worlds. Maybe I’m really out to lunch on this. Maybe I’m too far from the “mainstream.” I dunno.