.30 voiceover feedback

[Evrett]

When i read voiceovers I figured you were going to give the leaders some personality by reciting some of their dialog lines..instead time and resources have been invested recording the poetry from the various pop up windows? Erm ok..strange priorities. No disrespect to the actress but I find the voice too high pitched and jarring. If they were informative I might say keep them but I predict people are going to want to turn them off after the 2nd playthough.

[SephiRok]

Hey Evrett,

The main reasons for that are:

1. We can change dialogue lines and add diplomacy options easily.
2. Getting 7 (14 with German) right actors is a lot harder and more expensive than 1 (2).
3. We would need lip-synced faction leader animations.

Cheers,
Rok

[Evrett]

I always thought it unrealistic that faction leaders would show up on live video..it would give too much away about the current condition of that faction..instead perhaps you can use a portrait or dramatic symbolic image sent by that faction. No need for lipsych.

No need to pay hollywood prices. You guys have legions of player volunteers from all over the world..put out the dialog lines and make it a contest.

[HitmanN]

No need to pay hollywood prices. You guys have legions of player volunteers from all over the world..put out the dialog lines and make it a contest.

Brilliant idea! Developers these days are so often stuck with the old-fashioned way of doing everything by themselves, while it's been shown time and again that letting the players get involved with content creation can lead to amazing things. A contest like this could also bring a lot of publicity for the game.

And even if this idea doesn't catch on, the least that could be done is to make adding/modding voices possible and easy, so that the community can do it as mods, post-release.

[vv221]

No need to pay hollywood prices. You guys have legions of player volunteers from all over the world..put out the dialog lines and make it a contest.

Sorry, but I'd say you're wrong: amateur voice-acting is often (always?) worse than no voice-acting at all.
There is a lot of things you could ask from a community of beta-testers, but voice-acting is not one of them (neither should any creative task be done by amateurs).

[HitmanN]

I'd say Youtube proves you wrong. Look at the number of charismatic online personalities out there that do their thing with no strings attached, and often starting off with no prior experience. The existence of the internet already makes it certain that one of the millions of people out there is just as capable as a hired VA. Couple that with today's technology and affordable hardware and anyone can potentially be a sound studio of acceptable quality.

No reason to expect the contestants to all be 10 year olds with ten dollar mikes from last century.

[richmcd]

The problem is surely reliability? You can't pay winners for their work (bureaucracy nightmare) but if you aren't paying you also can't compel them to keep providing voices for future expansions. And at this stage it seems like the problem is also time, not just money. Organising a competition like this requires a lot of effort wading through all the bad entries in the hope of finding a good one,which isn't guaranteed. I'm all for developers trying to break out of the existing model, but in this case it seems like too much effort with too much risk.

[HitmanN]

Expansions needing new voice clips is certainly a valid point, but I'm guessing most of the features the initial expansions might have are already decided. They're the things that didn't make it to release. So the contest could include voices for planned features as well. Beyond that, it could be considered an issue, but I find it a bit short-sighted to drop the whole idea just because of that.

Winners don't need to be paid in money. Again, I'd just like to point out Youtube as evidence of how many people out there would be satisfied with the pure attention they'd get, a chance to get their voice in a game, and their name in the credits.

I still think the time and effort needed for a contest like this is easily worth it when the big gaming sites start posting headlines about a game studio giving the audience a chance at becoming voice actors. It'd be such an unusual event that it's bound to gain exposure. And exposure is what a small studio like this desperately needs. This contest idea is just one example of how to achieve that. Maybe not the best, but I think a valid one.

Anyways, I made my point, so I'll end my contribution here.

[Evrett]

Certain worthy trying and if they dont get enough submissions they like no harm done. Mightly defeatist attitude to shoot down the idea before trying it..if you dont take any any shots your not gunna make goals. Who said there will even be an expansion..and really assuming they couldnt get the same volunteer its not possible that the voice on the line is the leaders Lt. or son or a different senator taking the call? Somehow not talking to the same person every single time is a deal breaker? How nice and supremely realistic to have world leaders available to talk at your very whim 24-7. The direct leader to leader conversation is an artifact from older games..realistically its completely absurd that a leader would communicate this way with a potential rival. Way too much information given away in a personal video conference..not to mention the time requirements..arnt these leaders busy with their trophy women? do they not have day night cycles on this planet where calling a city on the night side would be considered rude ?

[kevinsky]

I know a lot of work went into the voiceovers but I listen to them once and then tune them out. They add to the play experience for a first time through. Perhaps the dialogue, with which I find there is room for improvement, affects my perception.

In a larger budget world each leader would have a unique voice and text with some pithy quotations like the Total War series does. They should be used on the loading screen. Goodness knows it takes long enough to load....
You've got time for a quote from every faction leader while the game is initializing.

[jdmillard]

I have to admit that after hearing the voiceovers a few times, I went and lowered the voiceover volume so that it was only a faint whisper. The voice itself is a nice feature, but I don't really care to listen to any of these quotes or to that voice for more than a few seconds. I've literally tuned it out.

[vv221]

One small thing disturbed me with the voice-over: the cut when you close the associated window.
A fade would sound better IMHO.

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@ HitmanN: We still disagree
What you can find on YouTube (even the ones with millions of view) doesn't sound good like professional voice acting.
Maybe I'm a bit elitist on that, it's a matter of taste.

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Goodness knows it takes long enough to load.....

Might be my computer, or my OS, but I didn't even notice there are loading times

[richmcd]

Certain worthy trying and if they dont get enough submissions they like no harm done. Mightly defeatist attitude to shoot down the idea before trying it.

I think you're making the mistake of assuming that it's a binary thing: either a submission is good or it's bad. But there are going to be dozens of lines. So either a submission is a sample (in which case you need to chase the winners to record the rest) or the submission is the whole thing, in which case the most likely result is "Great! You're the best for this role, but we need you to rerecord lines 13, 15, 17, 23, 25, etc."). You'd expect that even if the submissions were from professionals, I think.

I don't think it's a terrible idea, and I don't doubt that you'd get a good quality result at the end of the process, but I think you're underestimating the amount of work it would involve. It might make good marketing for a medium sized studio, but I think a small studio like Proxy will be glad to just get the lines sent off and recorded. That "no harm done" of not getting enough submissions is actually a lot of wasted time and looking rather foolish that they weren't able to drum up enough interest.

[jdmillard]

Goodness knows it takes long enough to load.....

Might be my computer, or my OS, but I didn't even notice there are loading times

It's your OS. I'm convinced the compiling is optimized for Linux. The game loads in a couple of seconds on my crappy Linux laptop that has a generic HDD. It takes almost a minute to load on my Windows gaming PC that has an SSD!