What are you playing?

[Jaedar]

Guys, a question, and answer honestly.

Do you listen to every voiced line in the fully voiced games? Or do you start reading the subtitles and skip ahead?

[Jonas]

Do you listen to every voiced line in the fully voiced games? Or do you start reading the subtitles and skip ahead?

If the writing's good, I listen to every voiced line. That means all Obsidian and BioWare games, anything from Ken Levine, Human Revolution, and so on.

Given a game budget, the gameplay, narrative and graphics can be improved by using text only instead of VA.

That is actually untrue, and seems to be based on a vastly simplified view of how game productions work.

First of all, "given a game budget" is not how it works. Voice-over is a brilliant example to demonstrate this, as it happens: if you're making a game with no voice-over, you can expect to sell less copies (because people like games with VO) and so you give yourself a lower budget. Yeah VO costs more money than not having VO, but it expands your target audience accordingly. You think BioWare started using VO in KOTOR just because they wanted to? Of course not - they realised they'd sell more copies of the game that way, so they could give themselves a larger budget and expand their studio accordingly.

Secondly, you can't necessarily simply transfer the money for VO over to another part of the game and get the same value for it. Though BioWare likes to use "zots" or whatever to try to explain to their players why putting more work into one part of the games would mean less attention paid to other parts, it's not like you can just take a million dollars from the audio department and send them over to the art department and expect that the art in the game will be better by a similar amount.

There are several reasons for this that I can think of: one is that the difference between 0 dollars and 1 million dollars is (particularly in creative terms) far greater than the difference between 5 million dollars and 6 million dollars. Secondly, money equals time - more money in the art department gives them more time to work on their part of the game, but what use is that if programming and design and QA don't have money to keep working for a similar amount of time? Then you'd be spreading that money out, and it would make a far smaller difference overall than it did when it was all concentrated in the audio department. Alternatively you can hire more artists, but more artists requires more time to coordinate, not to mention new hires need to spend time learning the workflow, the asset pipeline, and just figuring out what the hell kind of game you're making. Besides, who's to say you can even find as many qualified artists as you need?

Etcetera etcetera. The important part here isn't so much the specific reasons why it isn't as simple as you think, but mainly to show that it isn't.

I actually don't think anybody disagrees here really. I think we can all agree on the statement that voice acting can be a good investment, depending on the kind of game you're making, where in other cases it can be better to do without it to spend the resources on other game elements.

Absolutely. I mean my studio is working on a game right now that won't have voice-over. Actually in my opinion the greatest benefits of not having VO is that you can make the text more dynamic, and you can more easily mix different kinds of text. Case in point: we're mixing descriptions in with the dialogue in the PC version of Conquistador, and that would probably be a little weird if the dialogue had voice-over. More importantly, we can have NPCs address the protagonist by the name that you, the player, have given him or her, and we can pick random NPCs from your expedition and make them have conversations with you without having to record the same dialogue once for every possible follower you can have (which is probably going to be somewhere around 30).

But conversely we can't expect to sell as many copies of the game as we could have if we'd had voice-over.

[Hassat Hunter]

Heh, speaking of bad writing...

Me or TOR?

Bethesda's writers aren't very good. That's their problem.

They did a lot better in Morrowind. Also a lot more variety amongst NPC's and various cities. Because all there was for it to do was text.
But in Oblivion suddenly everyone got less to say, and much less city-specific lines. I certainly think VO had a lot to do with that.

Sure there's more money left over for everything else if you don't have VO. There's also more money left over if you don't have any art. In fact, hmm... programmers are typically the ones who get paid the most. Why not just cut the fucking gameplay out of the game and make a movie instead? SO MUCH MONEY LEFT OVER!

Well, as game developer you must know some decisions need to be made cost/money wise vs. worth.
In the case of VO, it generally doesn't add that much. Actually when I play older games without or with little I usually find it nice to just read texts on my own pace, usually far more expanded than modern RPG's or games provide.
I just think the trade-off is so much better than when cutting it from elsewhere of the game. As in, actual depth.

Deus Ex, however, wouldn't have been a better game by being an open world RPG (one alternative use of resources)

Open world is starting to get a bit overrated. Everyone thinks making an "open world" will just magically improve a game. I generally prefer more streamlined games with defined plots, which are well, I can't think of any which are open world. Heck, people even complained about the MAKO sequences in Mass Effect. Still haven't finished Arkham City to see how going from centered to open world went there, but first impression it isn't an improvement.
I just want to slap someone everytime I see someone complain a new game isn't open world, or they think it's going to be better if open-world.
Would The Witcher become better if it's open-world and become like Oblivion? No... freaking... way.
Ugh.
Anyways, back to the topic at hand...

I actually don't think anybody disagrees here really. I think we can all agree on the statement that voice acting can be a good investment, depending on the kind of game you're making, where in other cases it can be better to do without it to spend the resources on other game elements.

True.
It works great in many cases, like TNM, KOTOR's. Dragon Age is nicely too.
But it's just like when they announced Drakensang II and the "improvement list" listed 'full VO' I was... "NOOOOOOOOOooooo, WHY?"... and indeed, the conversations in the sequel turned out less deep and expansive.

Guys, a question, and answer honestly.

Do you listen to every voiced line in the fully voiced games? Or do you start reading the subtitles and skip ahead?

I generally do, yes.

[gamer0004]

@Jaedar: I generally skip, but I still like voice acting.

Given a game budget, the gameplay, narrative and graphics can be improved by using text only instead of VA.

That is actually untrue, and seems to be based on a vastly simplified view of how game productions work.

First of all, "given a game budget" is not how it works. Voice-over is a brilliant example to demonstrate this, as it happens: if you're making a game with no voice-over, you can expect to sell less copies (because people like games with VO) and so you give yourself a lower budget. Yeah VO costs more money than not having VO, but it expands your target audience accordingly. You think BioWare started using VO in KOTOR just because they wanted to? Of course not - they realised they'd sell more copies of the game that way, so they could give themselves a larger budget and expand their studio accordingly.

Secondly, you can't necessarily simply transfer the money for VO over to another part of the game and get the same value for it. Though BioWare likes to use "zots" or whatever to try to explain to their players why putting more work into one part of the games would mean less attention paid to other parts, it's not like you can just take a million dollars from the audio department and send them over to the art department and expect that the art in the game will be better by a similar amount.

Short comment: I did actually acknowledge this, saying that it depends on the game (of which one aspect is its total budget) whether it's worth shifting the resources from voice acting to an alternative use.

There are several reasons for this that I can think of: one is that the difference between 0 dollars and 1 million dollars is (particularly in creative terms) far greater than the difference between 5 million dollars and 6 million dollars. Secondly, money equals time - more money in the art department gives them more time to work on their part of the game, but what use is that if programming and design and QA don't have money to keep working for a similar amount of time? Then you'd be spreading that money out, and it would make a far smaller difference overall than it did when it was all concentrated in the audio department. Alternatively you can hire more artists, but more artists requires more time to coordinate, not to mention new hires need to spend time learning the workflow, the asset pipeline, and just figuring out what the hell kind of game you're making. Besides, who's to say you can even find as many qualified artists as you need?

Actually the statement is absolutely true, though it's just one aspect of game development budgeting decisions, because there are more variables, as you correctly identified.
So lets expand on this. First of all, the discussion was about the 'quality' of a game, and about how this can be as great as possible given a certain budget. Now, in reality the situation isn't static like we were talking about. In real life, in fact, it's typically about the financial returns to an investment, not about achieving the highest quality given a certain budget. The latter is true, however, for non commercial projects like mods. Which is why some mods (including TNM) are in fact far more enjoyable than many full priced games. Modifications are limited by a certain budget, for instance the amount of money the developers wish to spend on it. If the goal is to make a game which is as enjoyable as possible, in some cases VA are a good investment (in both money and time), in other cases the money and time had better be spent on other elements, such as more dialogue, bigger or more or more detailed maps, more characters, better graphics &c (though it's not just about making a good mod, most developers would also like their mod to be popular. Spending money and time on things that increase the interest of players in the mod may in such cases be preferable to investing in elements which make the game more enjoyable once people actually play it but which doesn't increase the interest in the game).

Most games aren't developed that way. Most games are commercially developed, meaning investors want a return which is as high as possible. If you want to look at it in this way (which actually wasn't what we were discussing, but it's interesting nonetheless), these decisions are based on cost and payoff. How much does full voice acting cost (it's far more expensive to have full voice acting for an RPG with thousands of NPCs than for a linear shooter with just a few oneliners) and by how much does it increase revenues (voice acting can help sell more copies)? If the payoff is positive, discounted against the required rate of return (if the money can be invested more profitably in other game elements or completely unrelated projects, then that's a better choice), the investment should be made.
Unfortunately, elements that increase sales are typically not the same elements that increase the enjoyment for gamers (though preferences are different from one person to the other). Companies don't actually care* about how much fun their customers have playing their games, as long as their return (and future returns, a shitty game that sells well might result in lower future sales of other games) is sufficiently high. This is why so many gamers say they don't care much about graphics (and voice acting), yet so much money is spent on them. Also, huge advertising budgets. Some investments on game elements which have a positive payoff also increase quality, obviously, but ultimately the enjoyment/budget ratio is terrible considering the fact that many indie games with a fraction of triple A titles are (almost) as enjoyable or more enjoyable to play.

A company like Bethesda could improve their games enormously by making different decisions given their budget, but they won't because that would reduce their revenues and profit. There is a financial reality that means suboptimal investment choices are made from a game 'quality' (again, depends on preferences) point of view. If there was a way to couple enjoyment to sales then the overall welfare would be far higher.

*This depends on the kind of company obviously. Smaller companies where the owners are also the developers are often willing to reduce their profits to increase their satisfaction by making great games.

[Jaedar]

Iiiiinteresting.

I try to listen, but the games in which I never skip past a single voiced line number very few.

[Hassat Hunter]

Voiced line is something different.
With KOTOR aliens for example I too just skip when I read the text.

Then again that's just "voiceless" text with flavour. In which they can add the pro's Jonas already mention, like the PC's name...

[bobby 55]

Voiced line is something different.
With KOTOR aliens for example I too just skip when I read the text.

Oh yeah, they take two minutes to say:"Yes, you'll find it there."...basically

Depends on the game but I'd say 90% I listen to in their entirety.

[Kee715]

I got Battlefield 3 from Gamefly the other day, and I played it for an hour earlier. It's going straight back tomorrow. It's just more Cowadooty under a different name.

A shame, though. I needed a game to play. :C

[Jaedar]

Hi Kee. Long time no see.

[DaveW]

Guys, a question, and answer honestly.

Do you listen to every voiced line in the fully voiced games? Or do you start reading the subtitles and skip ahead?

I usually start off listening to the entire sentence, but if the conversation is going on for a while I tend to skip it. The voice acting in Human Revolution was really good, for example, but I tended to get bored and skip through it.

I instantly skip through bad writing, for example I didn't listen to much of Skyrim. I read the text (which was bad enough) and skipped through it.

[nerdenstein]

I find that I listen to most; but yeah, KOTOR for example I will skip voice acting.

I've been playing Batman: Arkham Asylum and I'm really enjoying it. Combat is a little dull but the investigation side of things is cool.

[bobby 55]

Borderlands. I started off just to give Mad Moxxi's a whirl and ended up playing the story...again. However I have a plan: I've assembled an array of corrosive weapons to eventually take on Crawmerax. I found a sweet large capacity shield with fast regen, and a class mod (Soldier) with a team shield regen of 27%. I'm hoping to find an awesome combat rifle before I get to T-Bone Junction.

[Jonas]

Me or TOR?

You had no less than two grammatically unsound words in the bit I was replying to. I just thought that was faintly ironic, wanted to poke a little fun at you in a friendly manner.

They did a lot better in Morrowind. Also a lot more variety amongst NPC's and various cities. Because all there was for it to do was text.

Or... it could be because they weren't the same writers. To wit:

Morrowind: Douglas Goodall, Mark E. Nelson, Ken Rolston, Bill Burcham, Todd Howard, Michael Kirkbride, Ted Peterson, Todd Vaughn

Oblivion: Brian Chapin, Kurt Kuhlmann, Alan Nanes, Mark E. Nelson, Bruce Nesmith, Emil Pagliarulo (he wrote the Dark Brotherhood questline though, so he's cool), Ted Peterson, Michael Kirkbride

I count three people who appear in both lists, two of them had "Additional writing" credits.

But in Oblivion suddenly everyone got less to say, and much less city-specific lines. I certainly think VO had a lot to do with that.

I can't rule that out, but if so the main problem is that Bethesda failed to deal with it properly.

As far as I can tell, it's pretty much impossible to make a big-budget game without VO now adays, though. If you want to justify a $20 million budget, you have no choice but to allocate resources to VO or the chances of recouping your development costs are extremely slim. We can take the chance with a game with no VO at Logic Artists because our budget is around $120,000. All we have to do is sell 10,000 copies at launch price and we'll be home free. If Steam will pick us up, that shouldn't be a problem.

[Jaedar]

I think you may be doing a bit too much conjecture on the necessity of voice acting to sell copies. Zelda games continue to sell like hotcakes, and they have no voice acting. And for how many people do you think the make or break part of mass effect was if the codex entries had voiceovers?

I like voice acting, I just think it's overdone. Not to mention that voice acting tends to cut down on choices and consequences because while it's very easy and cheap to change a text string it becomes way more annoying when you have to deal with voiceacting. Which is probably why all the C&C in mass effect is done in emails.

So yeah, some voice acting is probably "required" to some extent. but I don't think having every single line in the game read out loud is very important at all. Not to mention that it takes time from other departments cause someone has to direct the voice actors. Spend your money on betatesting instead, you can never have enough of that.

[EER]

Guys, a question, and answer honestly.

Do you listen to every voiced line in the fully voiced games? Or do you start reading the subtitles and skip ahead?

I usually do listen to conversations fully (the first playthrough), however the codex in M.E. not really.