Voiceover in casual games

[Phil Steinmeyer]

I was thinking about adding some V/O to my game, and wondering what others think of this, and some examples of games that have done it well. Off the top of my head, both Zuma and Bejewelled 2 had good V/O. Other games that have done it well/poorly? General thoughts?

[Drake]

Flashbang's Glow Worm has really good VO.

Obviously, VO adds significant localization costs, unless you go with subtitles or something. I think it's an impressive feature, though, and if your characters resonate with the audience, then VO will definitely amplify that.

[RinkuHero]

Voices add a huge amount to the download size. I like it, and think it's a good idea if it's done well and adds to the game experience, but they can very easily double the download size, or more.

Plus, the danger "cheesy" voice acting is very high, especially if the people making the game themselves do the voices, and especially if the editing is bad; better to have no voices than cheesy voices, I think.

My last game did use voices, but not for prolonged lines, only short lines such as "Haa!" and "Graah!" and "Nooooo!" and the names of special attacks and such. I liked it, but I don't want to repeat it because getting all the voice actors to record all of that and then editing it took awhile, over a month.

If you do use voices, a good idea is to use Audacity, an open source sound editing tool, which allows you to edit the sound wave directly, and to apply various filters which would remove background noise.

[Drake]

Ah yes, the cheese... here's (http://audioatrocities.com/games/castleshikigami2/clip14.mp3) what (http://audioatrocities.com/games/grandiax/clip4.mp3) not (http://audioatrocities.com/games/lastalert/clip3.mp3) to (http://audioatrocities.com/games/residentevil/clip4.mp3) do (http://audioatrocities.com/games/castleshikigami2/clip17.mp3) when it comes to game VO. :)

[Phil Steinmeyer]

I know how to do V/O right - I've worked with V/O companies for previous (non-casual) games.

I was just thinking of a relatively small handful of short phrases, mainly congratulations, warnings, etc, that are relatively superfluous. For localization, they could be dropped if need be.

My game has an island setting - sort of Caribbean, and I was thinking about using either heavily Spanish/Cuban, or Jamaican inflected speech. I did this for a mainstream game (Tropico), and it worked well. Might feel a bit 'exotic' for the casual crowd, but I think it'd probably work.

[Greg Squire]

I thought the voice overs in DROD: Journey to Rooted Hold (http://www.caravelgames.com/Articles/Games_2/JtRH.html) were well done, though it might not be considered a "casual game".

[Andy]

It's hard to give away objective marks for your own job but we liked a lot how voice over job was done for our Zombieball (http://www.wildsnake.com/arcade/zb/)

[AnthemAudio]

As usual, I was about to post links that I had done for examples...but I haven't done VO for "casual" games yet, now that I think about it. I did in fact do DROD recently, but that's not "exactly" casual.

Try not to imagine me doing "air quotes" while reading this, that would be lame.

For single lines and simple phrases, nail them good. Especially if they hear them plenty times.

For accents, make sure the accent is spot-on.

Duh.

[TimS]

Our upcoming game Blobyrinth will feature fully voiced cutscenes... and might include some Walken impersonation. Who can say if these things are a good idea... but it'll be fun.

As for games that have done it well, I can't really think of any in the CASUAL space... Dynasty (http://www.reflexive.com/index.php?PAGE=game_detail&AID=633) did it pretty well I suppose... with the whole "Supa Dragon!" thing...

[amaranth]

I think if it significantly impacts the size of the game you should have it as an add on that the players can download. My two cents. :)

[Popcorn Boy]

Glyph has some decent voiceover in it. Dynasty has voiceover as well, though I'm not as sold on it. Heavy Weapon does it well, but it's definitely more of an arcadey, Mortal Kombatesque style.

[MrGoldfish]

Voice overs really pee me off in games unless they're over a cutscene or something. Normally you end up waiting for the voice over to finish before you can continue to the next thing that they're going to say. This is really annoying. It's just so much easier to just let someone read something at their own pace and then move on when they're ready rather than force them to listen to something which, in most cases, has some really annoying person reading it.

Look at the final fantasy games. Most of them hadf no voices what so ever and they were awesome.

[PoV]

Even professionals can't save a bad script. If the king of the Rolanian empire is having a heated 15 minute discussion with his son and his Generals... well, you can't not tell me that doesn't sound borring. It may sound good, but the whole advantage of the gaming medium is it's interactivity. Writing effective long dialog is something perhaps best saved for after writing some good short dialog, unless your game *really* suits it (adventure). I don't know about other amateurs, but voicing long scripts is hard, and a lot of work. I know I avoid them.

[MedievalElks]

I can't imagine anything cheesier than Bejeweled's voiceover.

"Incredible"

[Anthony Flack]

You can't not tell me that doesn't sound boring.

I don't not disagree. That absolutely does not sound like something I can't not tell you isn't boring.

[PoV]

What aren't you not saying?

[Anthony Flack]

Oh, I don't suggest you shouldn't not worry about it. I don't think we'd better not avoid delaying a return to the thread topic now.

[PoV]

I don't think this topic hasn't been forgotten by now. Not out to the void we're not aren't isn't no.

[Grey Alien]

those voice overs are pretty funny thanks.

Has anyone mentioned about that Reflexive egyption game with placing shapes into a shape (hmm nice description there)? Can't remember the name, where the voice over was an old lady and everyone said why can't it be a hot soundling young Egyptian lady, but then maybe the target audience wouldn't have grooved to what the bunch of hormone fuelled programmers thought was good...

[Sean Doherty]

How much disk space does a minute of voice over generally take?

[GolfHacker]

How much disk space does a minute of voice over generally take?

Depends on several factors - how it is sampled, whether you store it in a file format that is compressed (e.g., wav vs ogg), etc. Obviously a high sampling rate would result in a large wav file, but I don't think game voiceovers necessarily have to be recorded at CD quality, particularly if there is music and/or lots of other sounds playing.

[GolfHacker]

The voiceovers we incorporated into Fashion Cents really helped set the tone for the game, in my opinion.

Still, while most players we have talked to really enjoyed the voiceovers, there were some players who found them annoying right from the start. In fact, it was so annoying for at least one person that it created a bad first impression, and they wrote on grab.com that they stopped playing right then and there, and they uninstalled the game.

I think voiceovers can be good, if they are done well and if the users have the option to disable them if they don't want them. For that reason, I plan to add a separate toggle in our next release to turn off voiceovers independently from the rest of the game sounds. I also plan to provide only a few voiceovers in the trial version, and a separate download for the rest of the voiceovers in the full version (for those who want the extra variety).

[ManuelMarino]

I know how to do V/O right - I've worked with V/O companies for previous (non-casual) games.

I was just thinking of a relatively small handful of short phrases, mainly congratulations, warnings, etc, that are relatively superfluous. For localization, they could be dropped if need be.

My game has an island setting - sort of Caribbean, and I was thinking about using either heavily Spanish/Cuban, or Jamaican inflected speech. I did this for a mainstream game (Tropico), and it worked well. Might feel a bit 'exotic' for the casual crowd, but I think it'd probably work.

Uhmmm , I'm sure you don't need Italian voices, yes? :)