作者：James Batchelor

需要阅读大量文本去了解故事和角色的相关信息的时代已经不复存在了。沉默的主角也早已消失。如今，电子游戏中的所有人都有了自己的声音能够开口说话了。

而这也大大提高了开发者的工作量。就像《Morrowind》只有少量的台词，但是《天际》却拥有超过6万句台词，《辐射4》更是拥有超过11万句台词。Bethesda更是表示《辐射4》的录音花费了他们好几年的时间。

或许这样的工作量看起来很吓人，但配音却成为了让你的游戏变得更加生动的重要贡献者，并且开发者也力图通过这方面去提高游戏的整体质量。

OMUK的总经理Mark Estdale说道：“当游戏被制作出来并且游戏角色和配音得到认可时，这便是个值得庆祝的好消息。但这同时也是一记警钟。”

BAFTA(英国电影电视艺术学院）在最近于洛杉矶的活动中为Amy Hennig作为一名有远见的编剧和导演而颁奖便是一个典型的例子。因为Amy便写过这方面的内容。而甚至是像《她的故事》和《Firewatch》等独立游戏也向我们证实了该怎么做。

Side的业务开发经理Ben Ryalls也表示认同：“在过去几年里，性能质量变得越来越重要。开发者越来越倾向于那些能够对整体游戏体验带去影响的低成本但却有益的做法。”

“如果有更多游戏获得高质量性能的认可，那么其它游戏的糟糕性能便越容易被发现。”

所以为你的游戏去招募配音演员就变得刻不容缓了，即使是一些AAA级工作室也开始向OMUK和Side等公司求助。就像这些公司所说的：他们能够将真正的专业带到开发过程中并且无需开发者的任何重复劳作。

Ryalls说道：“在录音过程中，专业负责人对于性能标准的贡献是巨大的。在整个录音过程中如果拥有专业负责人，你便能够保证所有人都会专注于保持质量和性能的一致性。”

“而专业演员也能够带来更好的表现，因为他们往往拥有更好的经验和专业性，所以更能够赋予你的角色生命力。”

配音演员Posy Brewer补充道：“一定要使用合适的配音工作室。有些人会选择使用同样的资源并最终导致玩家反复都在听着同个声音，这会导致游戏缺少多样性。同样也一定要使用经过专业培训且能够有效使用麦克风的配音演员。如果你是直接和配音演员共事，请确保他们能在一个拥有有效音响效果的办公室工作。“

找到一家合适的工作室非常重要，因为这将影响着你的游戏最终的录音质量，并最终避免你的游戏让人失望。

Soundcuts的总监Adele Cutting说道：“没有什么比因为在音响效果不加的房间录音而彻底破坏了游戏性能的情况更糟糕了。小公司可能会认为录音太费钱，但这却是不该忽视的一环。”

“糟糕的音响效果只会破坏游戏的可信度并导致玩家分分钟脱戏。”

vocal performances(from develop-online)

开始配音吧

可能这一过程所需要的时间远远多于开发者的想象，但这并非配音公司要求开发者尽早录音的唯一原因。实际上在一开始便确定配音演员也能够进一步塑造游戏本身。

Estdale说道：“开发者可能犯的最大错误便是在脚本准备好时再外包配音工作。但是到那时候那些可能有利于最终成本的关键元素便已经不复存在了。”

“所以最好在角色一成形时便开始选择配音演员。如果角色的声音定下来了，开发者对于该角色的想法便会更加明确。明确的声音也能够帮助开发者专注于设计，文本和动画，并最终创造出一个更加强大且完整的角色。”

Cutting表示，一旦开发者开始接触这些服务提供者，他们便不能只是思考希望听到怎样的配音了。

她解释道：“你们将讨论各种各样的内容，不只是关于脚本和演员，同样还包括你希望如何配音，你想要什么风格的配音，台词在游戏中的作用是什么，游戏中使用了怎样的语音系统，对话是如何进行的等等。”

Brewer还补充道，让演员试着去说说台词也能够帮助开发者明确自己想要的效果：“让配音演员尝试着以不同方式说几句台词去达到你想要的效果。有时候即兴表演也有助于创造出一个优秀的角色。”

将配音演员聚集在一起去了解彼此的表现也能够更好地完善游戏中的对话。除了让他们同时配音外，你也可以通过动作捕捉技术去帮助他们真正融入角色中。

Brewer说道：“随着技术的发展，大多数人会使用动作捕捉方法，这也能够有效实现配音与角色的同步。许多工作室会在动作捕捉和配音中使用同一个演员。通常这都能够创造出最佳配音质量并且能让配音演员真正实行配音的专业技术。“

而尽管动作捕捉技术在过去几年里取得了巨大的发展，能够呈现出非常强大的逼真感，但是仍存在一些需要去完善的工具与方法。

Cutting说道：“就像配音工具和数据库连接都是最需要做出完善的内容。通常情况下游戏脚本都不是锁定的。它们是不固定的，而当对话展开时它们可能就不能有效运行了，所以便会出现台词发生改变的情况。所以拥有一个能够清楚呈现已经配好音，修改过或已经删除的台词的数据库是非常重要的。”

在脚本中

雇佣专业配音演员和制作公司固然很好，但这主要也是取决于开发者以及他们所提供的材料。

Estdale说道：“毫无疑问最重要的便是故事内容。其它都是次要的。如果开发者的故事非常糟糕，那么不管你的配音多色或配音演员都优秀也都不重要了。”

“配音质量固然重要，但是文本和作家的质量更加重要。”

当然不只有脚本很重要。配音演员还必须了解角色的背景故事，个性和动机等等。就和许多开发元素一样，语境总是最重要的。

Ryalls呼吁开发者：“最好在配音前把资料发给我们。可以是角色的基本资料，情感脚本试演，视频和故事综述。如果我们团队能够更全面地进行准备并了解你的游戏故事，我们最终所交出的考卷便会更完美。“

“对于配音演员来说也是如此。如果他们能够拥有更多时间去浏览你所提供的资料，他们便能够更投入于角色中并拥有更完美的表现。”

配音公司通常都会竭尽全力确保团队成员能够完全投入到开发者想要传达的故事中。就像Side便为了保持一致而让同一个制作经理和配音总监去负责《巫师2》，《巫师3》以及最近的《血与酒》扩展。

Estdale总结道：“不管你是否拥有世界上最出色的配音演员其实根本就不重要，如果语境错了，表现得再好都是扯谈。”

“录音过程中的视觉和声音线索或者导演的口头表达总是比脚本中的书面提示更有效，因为这能让演员更好地融入进去。”

配音正在快速发展着。它也将进一步推动游戏媒体的发展—-但前提是其中的对话是合理的。就像Cutting所说的：如果没有配音，《孤独的托马斯》将便会变成一款完全不同的游戏。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转发，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Voices of reason: Improving vocal performances in your game

By James Batchelor

Gone are the days of reading reams of text to gather information about story and characters. Gone are the days of the silent protagonist. Now everyone in video games has a voice and something to say.

This has dramatically increased the workload for developers. While Morrowind only had a handful of spoken lines, Skyrim has over 60,000 and Fallout 4 features more than 110,000. Bethesda claimed recording for the latter took several years.

As daunting as this might seem, voice acting has become an integral part of bringing your title to life and devs striving for the best possible performances are raising the quality of games in general.

“When games are produced and recognised for great character and voice work, it’s good news,” says OMUK MD Mark Estdale (pictured). “It sets the bar as a wake-up call to everyone.“

BAFTA’s recent special event in Los Angeles recognising and awarding Amy Hennig for her achievement as a visionary writer and director is a sublime example. Amy has written large what can be done. Even indie games like Her Story and Firewatch help set the bar by demonstrating what can be done.”

Ben Ryalls, Side’s business development manager, agrees: “Quality of performance has become increasingly important over the last few years. Developers are appreciating the relatively low-cost, positive impact this can have on the overall game experience.

“The more titles where high-quality performances are recognised and commented upon, the more noticeable the poor performances in other titles become.”

Casting, directing and recording actors for your game can been a colossal task, with even the biggest triple-A studios turning to the likes of Side and OMUK for help. With good reason, these firms say: they can bring a level of professionalism to the process that almost no developer would be able to recreate.

“A professional director will make a huge difference to the level of performance you can achieve in a voice recording session,” explains Ryalls. “By having a director involved from casting right through to final pickup recordings, you ensure you have someone focusing on continuity of quality and performance throughout.

“Professional actors will also bring a better performance – the more experienced and the better trained they are, the more equipped they are to bring a character to life.”

Voice actress Posy Brewer adds: “Use proper audio recording studios. Some people rely on using the same resources and end up using the same people that you hear again and again, and it doesn’t bring variation to the game. Always use voice actors who have had training and also have a good microphone technique. If you’re working directly with an actor, make sure they are have a broadcast-quality studio.”

The need for a decent studio is vital, as this will have a major impact on the quality of your recordings – something that can detract from an otherwise impressive game.

“Nothing is worse than a great performance that has been completely spoilt by recording in a room with bad acoustics,” says Soundcuts director Adele Cutting. “Smaller companies may think recording in a studio is cost-prohibitive, but that is certainly not the case.

“Bad acoustics completely break the illusion of believability and bring you out of the game world. And don’t get me started on bad microphones and mic technique.”

TIME TO TALK

The process can take longer than developers might think, but that’s not the only reason why voice production firms urge studios to reach out as early as possible. In fact, getting voice actors on board at the start can help shape the game itself.

“The biggest mistake a developer can make is to outsource casting and recording when the script is ready,” says Estdale. “By that time key factors that contribute massively to the quality of the final results are already lost.

“Cast as early as soon as ideas for your characters are forming. If a character’s voice is in place, it empowers a unified clarity of vision for the character. Voice in place helps focus the design, the writing and animation and, ultimately, fleshes out much stronger characters.”

As soon as they’re in discussions with these service providers, developers need to think about more than just how they want the voice acting to sound, says Cutting.

“There’s a lot of stuff you can talk about – not just script and actor, but how you want to record, what the style of recording is, how the lines are working in game, what speech systems are in game, what is the dialogue doing, and so on,” she explains.

Brewer adds that experimenting with how actors perform their lines can also help find unexpected levels of quality: “Push them and ask them to try as many ways recording the lines to achieve what you want. Sometimes improvising can help develop a character.”

Finding ways to get the actors together in order to feed off each other’s performance can go some way to improving your game’s dialogue. In addition to having them record at the same time, opting for motion or performance capture can help put them in the shoes of your characters.

“With technology evolving and more people using motion capture, it is becoming more important on the voice element being spot on and syncing with characters,” says Brewer. “Many studios like to use the same actor for both motion capture and voicing. It’s always right to get the best quality for any production and use true voice actors practised in the specialist technique of voice acting.”

Although motion capture tech has advanced significantly over the last few years, delivering realistic performances and celebrity likenesses, there are still tools and pipelines that need refining.

“The biggest improvement could be the toolset to record the actor and link the takes with a database,” suggests Cutting. “Scripts for games are not always locked. They can be very fluid, as when speech is implemented it might not work, so lines are changed or re-written. A database that clearly shows recorded, revised and deleted lines is super important.”

IT’S IN THE SCRIPT

Hiring professional voice actors and production firms is all well and good, but they entirely depend on developers – and the material provided.

“Without doubt the most important thing is the writing,” says Estdale. “Everything else is secondary. If it’s a turd it doesn’t matter how you record and what actors you hire.

“The quality of voice acting is improving but it’s always down to the quality of the writing and great writers have always been around.”

It’s not just the script that matters. Actors need to know the words beyond the words: lore, backstory, personality, motivations. As with so many aspects of development, context is king.

“Get assets to us for prep before the recording session,” Ryalls urges. “It can be character bios for casting, dramatic and emotional scripts for auditions, videos and story overviews. The more our team can prepare and be invested in your story, the better job we’re all going to do.

“The same goes for the actors – the more time they have to read through their materials, the more committed to their character and performance they’re going to be.”

Voice production firms will often go to great lengths to ensure their teams are fully invested in the stories developers are trying to tell. Side, for example, assigned the same production manager and lead voice director to The Witcher 2, III and the recent Blood & Wine expansion in order to guarantee consistency.

Estdale concludes: “It doesn’t matter whether you have the best actor in the world – if the context is wrong, the performance is wrong.

“Visual and sonic cues during recording are much stronger than written notes in a script or the spoken word of the director, as they enable the actor to live in the moment. And the moment will be right for the game.”

Voice acting has come on in leaps and bounds. It furthers our medium – but only if the dialogue is right. As Cutting points out: without voice acting, Thomas Was Alone is just another puzzle game.（source：develop-online)