Category: Let's talk
Am I the only one who is absolutely sick of having to deal with voices in games that sound either like a robot, or like a fifth grader is putting on a production of ann frank and is trying to do a german accent?
I was thinking about this earlier when reading the board post about grizley gulch. I remember some of the voices on there, they were done by humans, not computerized at all, and yet they were the stupidest things I've heard. I mean, one of the villains in that game sounds like a cross between a transvestite prostitute and a bad opera singer.
Then look at jaws or window eyes. Why is it that we can buy an IPhone and get a voice which sounds relatively human already installed, but if we drop a grand on jaws, we have to deal with a monotone robot voice that sounds like marvin from hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy? We're in 2013, it should not be that hard to accurately reproduce human speech. We can reproduce human tissue by three-d printing, you're telling me we can't make an accurate voice?
And graphic audio. I usually love graphic audio, but when they have people that sound as if they're doing their best monkey impression while having a painful orgasm, I no longer like it. No one sounds like that. Anyone who does sound like that has the good sense to shut up and not let anyone hear it. Its unrealistic and annoying.
I say we rise up and overthrow the voice making corporations. Or just bitch about it on this board post. Whose with me!
Or get ourselves into voice acting. That's my pipe dream anyway.
Seriously though, I agree. I stear clear of accessible games as a rule, but the ones I have played often have this issue. Even commercial games sometimes have this issue. Not so much these days, but it ran rampent back when voice acting in games was a new idea (and even when it wasn't.) If I had to guess, I'd say a large part is due to the developers simply not taking the time or allicating the resources to hire anyone with any talent. In some cases that's inexcusable, such as with big game corporations. But games for the blind are a relatively niche market from what I understand. And i'm not sure the immersion factor is really high on the priority list when you have a limited budget. A lot of these games are pretty primative when compared to those in the sighted community. And if I'm wrong about that one, I'd love to be pointed in the right direction.
What Graphic Audio production are you referring to? I've listened to a whole lot of their material and most of the time, the acting is really quite good. But I know there are a few cringe-worthy performances every so often.
The game Q9 is a fairly advanced game, for what it is and what it does. Swamp had a vocal community, as does the Road to Rage. As for GW Micro, Freedom Science Fiction, and other bullshit companies, it is highly unlikely that they will use any different synths from here on. An exception might be Serotek, since you can get synths from them.
I love you Cody. Lmfao!!! I agree 100 percent with you. The one thing I love about most, keyword, most, of the swamp voices now, is that there's so much difference in them, and everyone it seemed worked hard at them. I speak for myself here, since I'm now in an accessible game, it's not that hard. Unless you're like Sheldon Cooper and you have no prowess whatsoever in acting, it's not so hard to do. Seriously, you have to think of what you want your character to represent and then, invision yourself as that character or voice and boom, you're good to go. Even for those companies previously mentioned, how would you want your screenreader to sound? Just somethin to ponder.
Most of the fifth-graders are actually teenagers from foreign countries who have tried their hand at game-making (which means the "games" have absolutely no entertainment value). I agree that few games I've seen have good voice acting, usually just the developer. The scenes in Q9 are OK; clearly someone went over them and polished them up. But it's still just one voice and some sound effects. I have to say that at least the opening cut scene for terraformers is quite nice. I should really get to playing that to see if they all hold up. With other games, (super liam and blast chamber are a few) that are commercially successful, at least as commercially successful as a blind-specialized game can be, have basically no good voice acting. Take this transcript from a super liam cut scene:
"That robot there who's running away from you, who just appeared randomly, 'cause I don't know how he got there, that's laser bot."
Add to this that the introductory cut scene and the documentation storyline do not agree on the process of events. I play relatively few games, but I find my favorites are the ones where they don't try to voice-act at all. I like playing games that use my text to speech (I use the acapela voices, thus giving me a pleasant interface). I turn off the music if there is any and simply play. About speech synthesizers, I don't see a problem with eloquence because it can handle fast speeds. Both freedom scientific and GWMicro send nuance vocalizer voices along with their products for free. If people want higher-quality voices, why don't they use these? As for seven languages that can handle high speeds in ten megabytes (which are very cheap), why not?
By the way, since we are on the topic of game audio I wanted to ask you a question. I am thinking about trying my hand at game making so that everybody can tell me to get back to work because my game-creation is awweful! I am trilingual, so will be translating my game into Spanish and Chinese. The reason I raise this issue is that there are two forms of the pronoun "you" in Spanish language. Do you think it's better to use the informal or formal form? For those who speak Spanish, should I conjugate in the "tú, estás, eres" way or the "usted, está, es" way? Thanks in advance.
That's why I lost interest in the Sarah game, because all but a very very few of the voices were completely synthetic.
I was reading an article on cracked not too long ago brought up a sad but true point. Unfortunately voice acting does not sell games, blind, mainstream, or otherwise. It mentioned Eternal Darkness, how many of you have played that? Decent acting all round, good game too, but it didn't sell at all well. Kind of made me think of Soul Reaver, which had a couple of the same actors. It's already been said on here, but you're right, as big as the industry has become, good acting just isn't the focus of a lot of mainstream developers, and so it goes worse for these specialized games... usually.
I agree about Eternal Darkness, which I have played multiple times. Both that and Soul Reaver were quite good. I didn't know Eternal Darkness didn't sell well. Certainly it has quite the following these days. But it was also meant to be on the nintendo 64, and went through a few delays. That doesn't destroy a game's sales, but I don't think people really knew what to make of it on a system, most of whose games were - to put it bluntly - not targetted at mature gamers.
Yes, that was a big part of the problem. I remember being impressed with it when it was new, but most people I talked to back then had never heard of it. Bit of a cult following now.
I reccommend you use the formal when addressing the playing, and whichever form of the "you" pronoun which fits with the voice acting.
As for games, I thought Star Fox 64 had a few good cut scenes, especially thae Andros battle.
Ah yes, Eternal Darkness. I actually own it. Good game.
Still the only game for my Gamecube I'd really want to keep.
As for voice acting in general, it doesn't sell games, but people sure do notice it when it's either abscent, or terrible. It's one of the most under-appreciated factors in gaming in my oppinion.
That's one of the reasons I liked the Lunar games on Playstation. The voice actors at least tried to play their parts well. And as a special treat if you beat the games you could listen to outtakes from the recording sessions. And some of those were incredibly funny. "I am Zophar, master of sh-foghorn!" LOL.
Oh yes, I remember those outtakes. laughed quite contentedly after finishing the first game. Honestly don't recall any outtakes after the second though. I didn't finish the epalogue segment though. Only problem with Lunar is it was back in the day when only less than a quarter of the game was voice acted. That's one thing games have (generally) gotten better with. If a game's voice acted, a lot of the time they go all-out (at least in the west.) Eastern games are another story though.
Ah. You had to complete the epilogue segment to get the outtakes. After the credits for that segment were done it would prompt you to insert disk two. Once you did that the outtakes would start playing. I definitely liked John Truitt's Ghaleon outtakes but it was definitely funy to hear the big bad guy screw up his lines. There is, after all, a major difference between being Lord of Darkness and Master of Shit. I bet there was a regular laughing fest in the recording studio after that little slip. LOL. I know Lunar 1 was remade for the PSP a few years back, but the voiceovers for this new version were, with but a very few exceptions, mediocre at best. There just didn't seem to be much feeling in the way the new voice actors delivered their lines. And the Magic Emperor's new introductory cutscene was horrible.
Thanks. I'll have to look at those on Youtube. The game was great, but I sadly neither have the time nor means to replay it just for that.
Generally, I'd agree that voice in audio games is often bad, and something of a detriment depending on what it's meant to be saying. Grizzly Gulch and Chillingham, in particular, made me cringe, though most of the other games I've played with any regularity aren't so bad. Super Liam's notoriously...odd; those cutscenes are just Liam's wacky sense of humour. His other games do stuff like that too; just listen to some of the Judgment Day unlockables.
On a slightly different note, I want to address the everyday synth thing. Cody, I believe the reason that we're stuck with a robot, as you put it, is twofold. On one hand, a voice whose inflection you can predict even subconsciously can be ramped up and up for speed and you'll still absorb, while this happens less with realistic speech. Second, and probably more to the point: Jaws and other synthetic voices continue to sell, and the companies have us over a barrel so to speak, so why should they change? It's a captive market. This doesn't mean that I'm totally okay with Jaws - I'm used to it but don't feel any particular affection for it either - but...well, I doubt anything will change on that front until someone comes along and rocks the more complacent folks out of their safety zone.
I actually very much like eloquence. Once I got used to it I found it smooth and very usable, and I love that I can speed it up without losing the ability to fully understand what it's saying. Also, no irritating breaks or cracks that you sometimes get with "natural" voices.
Yes, it's the breaks and crackles that turn me off from using natural speech engines as well. Despite its robotic tones, I find Eloquence to be the best out there. It's smoothe enough to understand without issue, and has just enough inflection to convey at least slight tone. It'll never surpass the human voice, but since we're apparently a long way off from a really natural speech engine, it's the best, for me at least. I just heard ESpeek, the one bundled with NVDA. though I love the idea of NVDA, that's probably one of the most robotic voices I've ever heard.
If you would still like to use NVDA despite ESpeak's admittedly horrid quality, it is very easy to get an eloquence addon. They install in seconds and are quite stable from what I've seen so far.
Eloquence is grate for consuming massive amounts of information very quickly. It's not high quality, but that's actually why I rely on it so much: it's smooth, it gets the job done and it does it well.
I didn't know you could get an Eloquence addon? There was a blog post at the end of 2011 basically stating that their efforts failed and there wasn't much more that could be done. Has this changed?
Brice
I also like and use Eloquence . I have Jaws 14 and still don't use any of the other voices you can add to it, because they aren't as natural as they are said to be.
To the second-last poster, would you like a link? (otherwise, just google "eloquence addon for NVDA" and you should find it easily enough.)
As for voices in audiogamesI agree for the most part. I mean I know professional voice talent is way beyond the means of the average blind developer but some of them don't even makean effort to make sure a given applicant has the right voice for whatever part they're auditioning for. At least Philip Bennefall does, not that he's really used many voices other than his own in his games yet.