MMO VO
Some massively multiplayer games have voice overs (recordings of real people speaking game dialogue) for their non-player characters. Some are good, some are bad, some are just meh. In some games, virtually everything is voiced, from the random NPC on the corner to the kings and queens of the world. In others, only the important things are voiced, such as cinematics or NPCs particularly relevant to a game’s story. Is this wasted time, money, and effort on the part of game companies, or does it add enough to a game that it should be pursued?
Personally, I think it’s unnecessary. It can add something to the game if done very well. But, if only some NPCs have it, I find it jarring when I talk to one without it, especially if it seems like it should have VO. If all NPCs have it, it’s super expensive, and there tends to be more variance in the quality of voice over (the really important characters get the better actors). And, if there is any significant variance in quality, I get taken out of the world instantly wondering why the hell such crappy VO made it into the game.
The cost factor is what really gets me as a game developer, and not just the monetary cost. Yes, it is quite expensive to put VO in your game. Moving on from that, because that is assumed. On to my bigger gripes as a game designer…
The second something is recorded, you can’t change the dialogue. If you’re playing your own game and do one of the quests you wrote, then realize the dialogue for an NPC is worded a little funny and you want to fix it, you can’t. It’s too expensive to get that actor back in to re-record the line of dialogue.
It also makes adding any new content very prohibitive: Want to add a new quest to the game? Better get that cleared by your lead, the producer, and the money guy, because even though it’ll only take you a day or two, it will cost a couple hours of recording sessions and even more man-hours to get it done.
And, don’t get me started on localization. Voice over adds significant cost to translating your game to another language. Either you shell out the cash and get people to record VO in all of the languages your game is translated to (even though a lot of the dialogue probably doesn’t make a lot of sense when translated in the first place), or you give non-English speakers a sub-par experience and don’t give them VO in their language.
Are there alternatives to actually voicing whole lines of dialogue? I think so. I really like the idea of recording generic one-shot lines or simple words in a variety of voices and demeanors. Basically, there would be a standard set of responses, greetings, etc. Then, a bunch of combinations of race, sex, and demeanor would be recorded to fulfill that standard set.
For example, an angry male dwarf version of “Hello” could be, “What do you want?!” A “Hello” from a friendly female elf could be, “Greetings, heroic one.” A “Hello” from a paranoid male human could be, “Don’t flog me!” You get the idea. Basically, the designer would assign a race, sex, and demeanor to an NPC, then would select which standard line would be spoken for all lines of dialogue in which it makes sense (they should emote, too!).
All of the costs and risks considered, combined with my personal opinion that simple greetings and one-shot lines are almost as good as full voice over, I really don’t feel like VO is necessary at all in an MMO, and would rather see the time, money, and effort spent on other aspects of a game. At most, I’m cool with extremely important stuff being fully voiced, and only if it’s in an obviously different venue than standard dialogue (e.g. in a cinematic).
Do you actually care if a game has VO for its NPCs? If so, how much do you think should be voiced?
They recently added voice overs to all NPCs in the first two worlds of Wizard 101. I don’t feel it added anything.
In EQ2, I did love the random passing insults the NPCs directed toward my halfling troubadour in Freeport. That really added to the flavor of the city and is a huge reason why I love Freeport so much.
“Do you actually care if a game has VO for its NPCs? If so, how much do you think should be voiced?”
Not so much. I’m more of an eye candy type than an ear candy type.
I don’t care much about VO, unless the game was offering more Wrathgate-style cutscenes.
For regular NPC interaction, I like what you brought up which is similar to WoW’s simple one-line greetings. Even the simple “What’s on yer mind?” from the dwarves stands out in my mind as giving that race a distinct type of flavor. That’s all I really need from VO.
I generally dislike VO. If it’s done well, and sparingly, then it’s cool. But if it’s done a lot, I hate it. I read faster then someone speaking the text to me. And if I didn’t want to read the quest text, what makes you think I want to hear it?
I wish developers who added VO would give you a “next page” kind of feature. Too often it’s either sit and listen at the pace of the speaker, or skip the entire cut scene. I want the story in a non MMO type game. I just don’t want to wait for it.
What if voice overs actually ment something? I mean, right now they’re the same as flavor text, kind of nice, but ultimately useless. What if the conversation between NPC’s you heard actually was the clue to a quest?
They’re expensive, I know. But when you’re looking at costs, there are certainly more expensive areas that can easily be trimmed from the budget. Also, voices are now pretty much the hallmark of the AAA mmo. Like it or not, they are. Also, consider outsourcing some of your voicework. The added trouble might be worth looking into if the cost savings can be worth it.
Good points.
I think VO is awesome on the gamers side, but tough on the devs side like you mentioned. I think a good in between is ambiance VOs. You hear chatter and random other stuff as you walk through things. Those types can be done cheaply as they are merely background noise.
Adds to immersion.
I always thought it would be interesting if, say the game used Vivox for integrated VoIP, if a dedicated channel were used to transmit voiceovers. If a TTS engine were advanced enough, it could replace the need for voice actors and dialogue could be changed as needed. Not sure if such an engine exists now or in the foreseeable future though.
I agree that extensive VO isn’t worth it. I’ve long thought that a good use of writers’ time in the polish phase and post-release would be to expand dialogue options for completed NPCs (not longer paragraphs, but additional entertaining dialogue branches). As you say, that sort of expansion isn’t feasible with VO.
I don’t care for VO used for NPC greetings and exclamations. I’ve experienced that in a few games, perhaps first in Neverwinter Nights. It just makes the silence afterward noticeable and awkward. But I do like Neverwinter Nights‘s use of VO for player-character exclamations.
Tipa’s example represents what I consider the best use of VO, which is environmental use. A city feels more like a city when there’s chatter in the background… individual and group chatter. You don’t need expensive actors for that, and it’s a dynamic that can be changed anytime. Some non-MMOs, like Saints Row, demonstrate how great it is when you’re walking the same streets for the nth time and hear something fresh and amusing from an NPC.
The tone of chatter could change in response to events, representing the general tone of a location’s NPC population. Recordings could include anger, apprehension, fear, celebration, weariness, etc. Then, when word comes that a town’s enemies are on the move, the fear / apprehension chatter files are played. Compared with art assets, this seems like an inexpensive way to make a location’s tone dynamic and repeatedly enjoyable.
The thing I dislike most about VO in some games is that clearly the studio ran into budget issues and could only afford “this much” VO. After a while you really get tired of hearing the same dozen merchant greetings. VO is one of those things where you either need to go all out, or you need to avoid it as much as possible. If you aren’t going to go all out on your VO in an MMO, you should restrict yourself to cut scenes and ambiance.
To Garthilk: for purposes of accessibility (and supporting people that may not be able to play their speakers loud at the moment) you really can’t have clues that are only in the audio
To Scott: Voiceover transmission at runtime is BAD- it’d put a HUGE bandwidth load on the hosting service. Remember, they don’t get the luxury of a single “unlimited access” bandwidth fee. Most VOIP systems work because none of the voice data has to go to the hosted environment, so there’s no increase in traffic (they get the “subscription list” from a server but send directly to the clients.)
TTS (Text to Speech) as you noted isn’t really there… though it might work in the right genre (a synthetic voice might be right for a “netrunner” type of world.) I’m more curious about the reverse: speech-to-text. Even THAT is somewhat lacking for conversational dialogue, but I wouldn’t mind seeing games support api’s so I could speak into the chat console. I like VOIP for being able to communicate when my hands are busy controlling my character, but a Speech-to-text system would give me that, let me see dialogue I might have missed, give me a log of the event, and NOT have the immersion-breaking male-voice-from-female-avatar disconnect.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say it is needed. Very badly even. Full Dialog Voice overs are absolutely needed.
In current MMO’s people already barely read the text. Most non MMO games now have full voice overs, so attempting to attract those people, with walls of text, is not going to happen.
Does it add something? Absolutely! People want cinematic experiences from games…This is what they get from single player game experiences.
This genres needs to leave MUDs behind, and catch up to modern gaming.
Case in point?
http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=1096
You can go one of two ways with quest text:
1) NPC tells you where to go / what to do (e.g: WoW)
2) NPC gives you conversation options that will reveal where to go / what to do (e.g: Baldur’s Gate/KotoR)
I’m assuming you’ve played these games.
In games like WoW, nobody reads the quest text. Therefore, quest text is useless. These people want to get in, get the quest, and start running off towards it without even understanding what the quest is for. The only way you can get through to these people is to give them voice that they can listen to as they run to their destination. It doesn’t have to be long-winded, but it should be self-contained (i.e. convey all the information). Yes this will be more expensive than written text, but the alternative is to throw one more MMO onto the fail-quest trash pile (see Jeff Kaplan admitting that nobody wants to read WoW quest text at recent GDC).
In games like Baldur’s Gate, everybody reads the quest text. Yes, it’s a different audience – only those in their mid teens and onwards will play it. So, if you’re targeting an MMO at kids and young teens, probably this is not the way to go. However if you’re not, you can afford to have (relatively) extensive dialogue that you know people will read. NPC’s in these games feature exactly what you describe, usually only the first sentence is voice for main NPC’s (except in cut scenes), and minor NPC’s have various generic greetings.
The only way quest text ever becomes important again is if you remove the bullet point quest log entries so that the text needs to be read in order to know what to do. Even in games will full VO doing the entire dialog, unless your character gets locked in place the game forces you to listen to them, the bullet points (or waypoints) show up on your HUD and you can wander off.
The idea that “This genres needs to leave MUDs behind, and catch up to modern gaming” is extremely narrow minded. Some people like the full dialog RPGs of the consoles, some don’t. I really wish people, and game companies, would stop assuming that all games need to be the same. I’d still be playing EQ if they hadn’t gone so far to “update” the game, breaking everything I loved about it.
I really don’t see VO as worthwhile in MMOs. The “risk vs reward” of it is pretty low. I’d much rather all that money be spent on content development.
I see a use for it when it comes to the few major characters but other than that I think it is wasted.
@Tipa: “They recently added voice overs to all NPCs in the first two worlds of Wizard 101. I don’t feel it added anything.”
I noticed that yesterday and thought it was great. While it might not add anything for you, my 5-year old who is still learning to read is getting a helping hand with it. It also means my 3-year old can hear what is being asked of him. While it’s not a big deal for you, it does make the game more accessible to a younger audience.
Of course, that game is targeting a younger audience. That isn’t the case with a lot of existing MMOs.
@topic: I’m usually tired of reading by the time I get home. I’ll usually just accept quests and take a look at the objectives. If the NPC was talking to me, I’d be more inclined to listen – unless I had done the quest before. I do know that I stop and listen to stuff in WoW where the NPCs talk.
The problem with one-shots is they get a little too repetitive and the attempt of adding personality to a NPC gets lost in everything of TypeX sounding the same.
When done well, voiceover adds a lot of character to a game. It is polish, and should probably be one of the last things a development team tackles. Fable 1 did a great job with the random NPC phrases. I burst out laughing at some of the off-handed comments (when I had the title Pie Eater, especially). With regard to the effort and cost, it is much easier to crop out than create new. If you must record early on, have your writer pound out a matrix of phrases (x number of phrases times y number of NPCs). Once you get the voice actor in the studio, it’s almost as easy to record a hundred phrases as it is to record ten.
VO can add to immersion, but I don’t think it’s worth excessive cost/ effort. But I’d guess that’s up to the person’s playstyle, as I tend to have my own music going in the background with the TV on, vent chat fighitng to be heard, (the wife nagging)… So I rarely have any in-game sounds going.
Vald
@Jason: My comment was about the method of delivery. Not to homogenize, or remove the use of text. My comment was about people making MMO’s and other online games , or RPG’s for that matter, thinking that Text only is still a valid option in this day and age of gaming. Its not narrow minded, its modern, narrow minded is thinking the conventions of MUDS will somehow grab modern audiences. ( Wont even go into the fact that most MUDS are not played, but automated, so much for reading..a? ) After all, we are not talking about making a game for you, we are talking about making games for mass market appeal. Its fine if you want to play games with only Text… But its not really about you, or keeping the old. Don’t take that personally.
I would say those games that added partial, to full voice overs have gotten really good feedback about it (AOC, eq2, wizard 101 to name a few already talked about here), and if you are going to attract people who started playing MMO’s in the last five years, you had better have it.
Mass market appeal is subjective. Which market? The WoW market? The not yet playing MMOs market? The I still love MUDs market? “Mass market” is advertising speak for “I don’t want to define my market, and I’m willing to make my product likable by as many as possible even though it means making it lovable by less.” Define your market and build a game for that market and they will play it forever. If you go “mass market” you will lose your audience when the next “mass market” game comes out.
And I have to take it personally because the game companies make it personal. Like I said, if Sony had left EQ alone, adding content without changing the fundamental structure of how the game was played, I’d still be playing it. They made EQ2 to compete with WoW, why try to make EQ compete with WoW also? They did the same thing with SWG (though I do believe their hand was forced by Lucas’ people), plenty of people loved the game as it was. They could have merged servers, put it on life support and built SWG2 (assuming Lucas’ people would allow it), but instead they fundamentally changed SWG with the NGE.
I honestly hope in the future, more games come out like EVE, where they are catering to a fairly narrow market and making them very happy.
It depends on how you define ‘voice-overs’. To me, a voice-over is : when you’re offered a quest, and the NPC speaks the quest text as well as opening up a quest dialogue text menu. That form of VO I don’t need, or even really want. I do, however, want the NPCs to have voices.
I don’t need the NPC to speak any of the quest text. That distracts me. I read LOTS faster than they speak, and it irritates me when the vocalization does not match the text exactly. I do want PCs and NPCs to have voices, however. Greetings, taunts, chatter to PCs or to other NPCs… something to breathe life in. This needs lots of variety, though, and even perhaps removing old chatter and adding new so that players don’t end up wanting to slaughter certain NPCs after hearing the same thing day in day out for, possibly, years. (“Have you ever seen a gnoll before?” Die, Nathan, die.) The only time I feel extended voicing works well is, for instance, in LotRO where you get a vocal introduction (narration, I suppose?) to the zone/instance you just entered.
I’d say that any place that has significant amount of text meant to be actually “read” should have VO. So most of the quests do not need VO really, yeah it’s nice to have, but certainly it’s easier without it. On the other hand – tutorials and instructions must have a voice. First hour of the game should probably be voiced over, because even if it costs a lot more to change it later, it definitely makes the initial experience better. I think it was one of the reasons why I stuck with EVE online – their tutorial ( even though it’s quirky and all) is being read by one of the most pleasant voices I have heard in computer games. At least parts of the text are. There is no way I would have read all that text without VO, and I am one of the Baldurs gate playing types.
Personal opinion only – when I first started playing MMOs (DAoC, SWG) I didn’t think I’d care about voices on NPCs and such. Although i was VERY into the in-game music. However, I was so impressed with the voice stuff in WoW, from the NPC phrases (especially the way they get annoyed if you keep clicking on them!) to the character “jokes” and flirts, I’ve changed my mind. I think that voice can add a lot to a game, and (obviously) I feel like WoW is doing it right.
One of the biggest disappointments in Age of Conan, for me, was the way that after your starting experience (levels 1-20), they apparently ran out of money or time and the NPCs did not speak any more. Those first 20 levels were so atmospheric and engaging, and then boom! it was all gone. (It had to do with more than just the voice overs, but VO was definitely a big part of it.)
I’ve found that the quests I want to have VO dialog for are the big ones. If I run up to an NPC (past level 20 at least) and they start talking to me with a VO, then I expect that this is gonna be a damn important quest for me to do. It’s a cue to me that I need to pay attention.
Anytime I find an NPC that is supposed to be a part of a huge expansion arc type quest (the main signature quests in EQ2 for example), I expect a VO. I expect them to make going through it an enjoyable experience, not a freaking grind like the other quests.
I also hope that big bosses have VO, though I’m more lenient if they only have basic commentary (Raid Bosses in EQ2 is a great example, where they say things that usually indicate something is about to happen, pretty much like in all MMOs now)
that’s my 2c. or, probably a little less since the economic downturn
Or perhaps more than 2c due to inflation?
“Or perhaps more than 2c due to inflation?”
Nah, gotta tighten the belt, can’t afford to be handing out 3c each time. I mean, gotta draw the line somewheres
I deeply agree with you. Nowadays, people play the MMO games do not care about this unnecessary things in the game. They more focus on the game quality I mean some usabilities , some fresh stuff in the game(it can be thought like how is it different with other games )and maybe graphic even the graphic is not attractive to people anymore. In the MMO games, players always talk with other players with some online taking software. They don’t even listen to any voice from the game especially. Furthermore, due the this economic crisis, then main constrain for developing a game is the money i think. And also As we know it NPC is only for selling the item to the players and give players some guides or hints. they not the even the important component in the game ever and never i think. If they put the NPC Vo in the game. As you said It is the risk that if the player like or dislike this voice and the player maybe leave this game. Thus the game development should put more money and creativeness on the game itself such as the story or game play. So i point of view is, they can put some VO such as greeting this sort of simple stuff there but not too much on it. Because players will not going to listen what they talking about and they will read the text on the screen and skip the conversation and on one want to waste time on it.
In most cases, VO is superfluous and not required. In most MMOs, there are no other cases. Quests, dialog options, all that jazz… completely unnecessary.
Case can be made for combat/action/flavor voices, to “ground” the player in during the “active” part of the game. The various and generic “Uhh” and “ahh” and “have at thee!”. Not required, but nice to have. Production value. Mmm, that’s nice. But it’s not critical.
And then you have special cases when you MUST HAVE VO. They have to do with the way human brains and human vision works. We are able to process only so much information at any given moment. Our eyes are naturally driven to moving parts – we tend to notice fast moving objects and ignore static ones as in our minds they “blend” with the scene’s background.
What does this have to do with the price of beans? Say, you’re doing some sort of fast paced adventure with multiple moving NPCs who talk to each other (friendly party banter?) and you (as the designer) have no control of where the player’s avatar is during this (is he following them? Is he afk? What is he doing?), therefore you have no control over his or her field of view. If all of the following conditions are true, players will miss the chat bubbles over NPCs heads. And if what the NPCs were saying was important, too bad. Now the player can’t follow the story and is confused.
Oh sure, you have your chat window. And the confused player may be able to scroll up and read the sequence of events to figure out what happened – long after it’s all over. The cinematic effect is gone by then. Long gone.
If your MMO does something like this, then you’ll want to request extra special quality voice over for this part. Otherwise, it’s a waste. Get your pack of standard grunts and fierce moans and spend the rest of your money on crafting.