Can You Hear Me Now? Voice Acting and Character Dialogue

In games from the late 1970's and early 80's, most games had little to no voices, merely sound effects. For instance, in Pac-Man (1980), there were only small beeps for when you ate either a ghost, a fruit, or a pellet. It wasn't until the 1990's that voice acting started to become prevalent, such as with the Superman game in 1999. As games became more and more advanced, voice options for characters increased as well.

Today, many games have at least a few set lines for main characters, as well as a small repository for minor characters (RPG's naturally have more voicing lines than a FPS, keep in mind). For example, Fallout 3 (2008) had a very extensive library for character dialogue, allowing the player to interact with the other characters in varying ways, allowing for opening of new dialogue options, quests, and relations.

As budgets for games have expanded, more popular game series started to hire more famous actors, borrowing from the movie industry. Such actors as Liam Neeson not only were present in Kingdom of Heaven (2005) and Taken (2008), but also in Fallout 3 as the main character's father. Other voice actors have done similarly, acting in movies, television, and games. This increasing number of voice actors has helped games achieve a wider range of character personalities, helping establish a larger community of units in a game.

As the number of voices and characters in games continues to grow, character options have done the same. Compared to the 1980's, there are more options to both perform and hear when it comes to building up a character, whether it be in a role playing, racing, or puzzle game. As the voice repository continues to grow, it seems that it's certain there will be games in the future that have a unique voice for every character, even when those number in the hundreds.

Source:
Mazer. (2013, September 14). "Top ten video game voice actors." Retrieved from http://www.screwattack.com/news/top-10-video-game-voice-actors

The Open World and Development of the Sandbox Genre

Today I wanted to try making a podcast, covering the development of the sandbox genre and open world games. Feel free to give it a listen!

In the Industry's Pocket: Sales and Economics

Since 2000 (as an example), the gaming industry has been steadily increasing in its profits, selling new titles and consoles every year. While this might seem unimportant, keep in mind that the more money companies have, the more production they can put into their work. As such, I thought it important to quickly summarize some economic findings on video game sales over the years. While there is a smaller slump in the present, the overall trend from 2000 is upwards in spending.

(I've also included a link to the full image here, in case it's difficult to read)

Sources:
Harry Wallop. (2009, January 15). "Video games: Eight out of ten homes own a next-gen game console." Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/4248136/Video-games-eight-out-of-ten-homes-own-a-next-gen-games-console.html
Jane McGonigal. (2011, February 14). "We spend 3 billion hours a week as a planet playing videogames. Is it worth it? How could it be more worth it?" Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/conversations/44/we_spend_3_billion_hours_a_wee.html
NatalieBot. (2012, October 31). "How much money is too much to spend on games per year?" Retrieved from http://www.bigshinyrobot.com/45403/how-much-money-is-too-much-to-spend-on-games-per-year/
NPD Group. (2012). "Computer and video game sales in the United States from 2000 to 2012." Retrieved from http://www.statista.com/statistics/273258/us-computer-and-video-game-sales/

Modding: A Creative Change for Older Games

Mods have been available since the mid 1980's, allowing users and small companies to add, change, or otherwise alter portions of a game past its original intent. Mods have increased in popularity since then, and have led to the generation of modding communities, who outsource their game mods to the public, making modding easily accessible to everyone. Bennie Lively is one such modder, who has been modding games since 2006, and continues today. In the growing field of user created mods, I believe he can help give some insight into what modding is today, from all its quirks to its benefits and development.

Me: So to start off, what was the first game you remember modding?

Bennie: I want to say it was for the bloodmoon expansion on the Elder Scrolls III, Morrowind. Although it may have been Oblivion, I can't remember which I modded first. It was the elder scrolls games that got me into modding in the first place, in fact.

Me: What do you see modding as? A means to breathe new life into older games, a creative outlet, or something else entirely?

Bennie: I think modding definitely breathes new life into older games, and can help them by improving it in ways unthought of at the time. It's like having a bland, older game and adding some flavor into it, for example. It allows you to cross over multiple genres to create an overall better game, like adding an rpg element to a game entirely focused on something else.

Me: If there was a mod you could create right now, what game would it be for, and what would it do?

Bennie: Honestly I'm really liking modding Civ V at the moment. If I could, I'd like to create custom units for it that would create an entire new tech tree if possible. If I could, I'd make an entire entry for all the Starcraft units into the Civ V game, I think that would be pretty cool.

Me: How has modding evolved in your perspective from when you started until today? For instance, have you seen companies begin to embrace modding, or deny it?

Bennie: I've seen more companies embrace modding now, as most companies now give modders the tools they need to mod whatever they want to the game. They used to have very limited tools, but now they cover the entire game and allow almost anyone to use their tools to change their game any way they want to. For example, Civ V allows you to download their source code from Steam for free and use a custom built coder that runs off a variant of Microsoft Visual Studio to mod their game with. I almost rarely see games that are closed source to modding anymore, they're just too outnumbered by companies willing to allow users to mod their own content. 

Me: What's the strangest/ most interesting mod you've ever come across?

Bennie: The strangest mod? Hm, I'm not really sure. Do you mean one of my mods, or from somewhere else?

Me: It could be either yours or someone else's, really.

Bennie: I've seen mods for Neverwinter, Minecraft, Civ, Elder Scrolls, there's just so many ones to choose from. Although there was a pretty strange mod that added Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts content to Oblivion, for instance in one part you had to fight master Chief in a ghost, while he had an enegry sword and you drove around him really fast in the ghost, that was pretty silly [laughs].

Me: Lastly, is there any direction you'd like to see the modding community go from here?

Bennie: There's  becoming more and more experienced people in the modding community, and I've seen a lot of modders who have gotten to the point where they take their knowledge of modding to make games off of kickstarter, based off of the games they've already modded. I'd like to see modders make new content entirely, since I prefer modded content even more than the original copy of the game.

And there you have it. As companies continue to create games, it seems as though companies are easily accepting modding as a method to help give their games a sort of free DLC, with the users being the ones to create the content for one other. As more and more users are able to mod copies of their games, it'll be interesting to see where the modding community goes from here.