The importance of voiceovers in gaming

Tetris or Donkey Kong. You will surely remember those. There is not much about storytelling in those classics and we have come a long way since the old school arcade games.

The gaming industry is booming. New technologies and storylines give game characters and you as a player the opportunity to become part of new, fantastic worlds that are both realistic but at the same as far away from reality as possible.

In the race of being the best game, quality is a decisive factor. Quality effects, quality storytelling and finally quality voiceovers.

And this is what we will look deeper into in this blogpost, voice overs for games. Why is it even important and how can a voice contribute to lift a game to new heights? Read here more about all the advantages.

Voice overs in games are necessary

Typically, it is the voiceover that carries the storytelling. It is the voice that sets the standard and guides the player through the game, describing what to do and shape the context for the remainder of the game.

This is what you can do with gaming voiceovers:

•  Create a narrative voice that guides the player through the game
•  Create personality for the game through characteristic voices that match the game’s characters
•  Connects all dots of a game through a recognizable voice
•  Create or increase a certain atmosphere
•  Create context that carries the storytelling
•  Draw the player into the game

If you choose the wrong voice, the single character could lose it´s personality and become flat and boring. If the voice talent in contrast is good and knows how the character should be played, you will remain to have the player’s attention. And who doesn’t want to have that?

It is the voiceover that brings a game to life – like we see it in for example movies, where the voices of both the actors and the narrator guide the viewer. In gaming, the challenge is that it typically is animated figures that require even more personality and life to be recognized. This makes a good voiceover even more crucial.

If you choose the wrong voice or leave voiceovers completely out of your game, you risk that the game loses its value – even if the visual part works. Without a narrator it will be difficult for any player to become part of the game and the magic vanishes.

For many gamers, it is the characters and the storytelling that keeps them playing a game. It’s the same effect as in movies or books. The narrator’s power is not to be underestimated.

This is where there is no doubt that voiceovers in gaming are one of the most crucial elements in today’s gaming world. If your game should live up to the current standards, it needs to have a strong voiceover that gives the game its character and draws the player into it.

This is how you choose the right voiceover

Now that we have made clear how important a voiceover for the success of a game is, let’s find out how you can find the right voice that matches your game as best as possible.

Are you for example looking for a narrator that guides through the whole game and would you rather want to equip the single characters with a matching voice? Is the setup rather funny or is it a rather dark thriller game? The choice of a voice is dependent on many factors.

A guiding narrator should usually have a very clear voice, while certain characters might need to have more personality and possibly even come with certain specifications such as accents or dialects. Regardless of the type of voice you are looking for, they should all have one thing in common: they need to shape a certain atmosphere that matches the game’s DNA.

When you choose a voiceover for a game, it is important to look at:

• Language including dialects and accents
• A tone of voice that matches the games DNA
• Age and gender
• Experience within the gaming industry