http://kotaku.com/5821597/why-excellent-video-game-voice-actors-cantor-shouldntbe-stars

Ugh, makes me a bit mad that the writer of the article is so misinformed.

Discuss.

That was a weird article. I sort of semi agree with it, but I think the writer is confusing one type of acting (body acting that requires being able to see an actor) with all acting. Radio dramas (which I think of immediately because I'm listening to a lot of Sherlock Holmes radio shows from the 1940s right now) were around before movies and after movies and stayed very popular. They provided no context for the actors to work with to record their lines either, but they were excellent and well acted.

Good voice acting is something that, while I don't think it makes or breaks a game, does matter. Having a big name star doing voice acting is important only so much as that star is able to do a good job as a voice actor. I am not any type of actor, but I would imagine that voice acting is really very different than stage or screen acting and as a different experience requires different skills.

Personally, I see this as yet another case of a terrible headline.
The article itself seems to be pretty decent (skimmed through it).

The article is pretty decent and the ending points something very important out - if you start noticing the actor behind a character, that most likely means he's not doing his job right.

With that in mind, it's quite surreal to hear characters you know and love embodied as mere mortals before your eyes...

Just bumping this

I don't get why people feel the need to see all the facial expressions all the time. I like fully voiced dialog, but I don't think a lack of facial animation hurts anything. Then again, I read novels. Im used to filling in the blanks.

RPGs of the late 90s/early 2000s are great examples of this. They (and videogames in general) I think have some of the absolute best voice acting around cus they got actual voice actors for them, rather than what companies like Bethesda or Funimation do with their voices where they lather rinse and repeat even though facial animations and mouth movements are present it doesn't make them any better.

I didn't read the whole lengthy article, but at least with the point that the money would be better spent on developing the actual game than for salaries of big name (voice) actors. To me, some of the most memorable voice actors in PC games have been unknown non-actors, like (IIRC) the lady who played Shodan in System Shock, or the one doing "tree lady" in Thief The Dark Project.

Or how about the man who did the one-liners for Serious Sam? I don't know if he is some big-name actor, but I don't believe so, and the oneliners always crack me up. I googled him (John J. Dick), and at least he's not some big name actor it seems.

Does someone really need better voice-acting like, say, the frightened pilot in the intro of Descent Freespace? Seriously? Hire that guy. :)

It's funny they use GTA IV as an example because other than a few radio personalities like Juliette Lewis and Iggy Pop the cast was largely unknown which worked really well. Compare that to the all star cast GTA: Vice City had.

Nowadays when they say that making a video or PC game costs over ten trillion dollars, I'd really like a rundown where the money mostly go. To the Hollywood voice actors (like Dennis Hopper in old PC game ."Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller" where he wasn't really shining IMHO), or the licenses to use two dozen car models in Gran Turismo, or paying Green Day and several others to use their music in yet another GTA clone?

I'd rather see that money spent on game design.

What are you doing reading that horrible site to begin with?

I stopped going there a month ago, and my blood pressure has gone down quite a bit.