Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 51 How to Spend Money

"OK! This take is done, the recording for this morning is finished."

"A good match."

With a word of praise from the voice director.

Jiang Yue breathed a sigh of relief, bowed slightly, and then walked out of the recording studio.

"So, today is the official recording session. Do you feel that our recording method at Xingchen is any different?"

As the work was finished, Xu Hang, the voice director of Starry Night Games, smiled and struck up a conversation with Jiang Yue.

Normally, Xu Hang rarely chats with voice actors.

After all, he was very busy with work, but in two days it would be the intensive dubbing phase for the new version, and Xu Hang was worried that Jiang Yue wouldn't be able to adapt, so he deliberately chatted with her for a few more minutes.

"I definitely feel something is different, but I can't quite put my finger on it."

Anyone who spends a few hours in Starry Night Games' recording studio will clearly feel that Starry Night Games' recording process is somewhat different from other companies.

For someone like Jiang Yue, who has previously received systematic training and has experience recording at many game recording studios, this perception is more pronounced.

Upon hearing Jiang Yue's words, Xu Hang added a comment.

"Do you feel that reciting lines here is more natural?"

Upon hearing the word "nature," Jiang Yue nodded vigorously.

"Yes, that's the feeling!"

For voice actors, "natural" is a very high compliment, because "natural" here does not mean that the voice actor speaks in a normal tone.

Rather, it refers to the effect achieved by the voice actors, making it feel like the character is speaking normally.

This is a fundamental skill for voice actors in Japan, but very few can achieve it in China today.

On the one hand, some voice actors in China excessively pursue a magnetic voice and clear pronunciation, often resulting in "everyone having a broadcasting voice".

On the other hand, at that time, the level of voice acting directors in the domestic game industry was often not very good.

They only know that lolis should have loli voices and mature women should have mature women voices, so it sounds very awkward and gives people the feeling that all the characters are "acting".

These issues can all be collectively referred to as "human" problems.

However, the reason why domestic game voice acting is so poor is not only due to human factors, but also because of problems with the voice acting process.

Similarly, in voice acting, the international mainstream, whether in Japan or Europe and America, all adopt the "voice acting first, animation later" model.

In this way, voice actors can improvise based on the storyboard, and even add or remove lines, because the entire animation production process is to first dub the lines, and then the animators match the lip movements.

However, the domestic voice acting industry is completely different.

Whether it's animation or games.

Basically, it's just reading the lines; the voice actors have absolutely no room for improvisation.

This small detail is actually one of the reasons why the voice actor's performance feels awkward, and the audience's listening experience feels even more awkward.

In a previous life, a very famous Japanese voice actor mentioned this incident in an interview, saying that it happened when he was voicing the Chinese animated film "The Legend of Luo Xiaohei".

He and many other voice actors found it very difficult to match their lip movements.

It's worth noting that when "The Legend of Luo Xiaohei" was released in Japan, the voice actor lineup included Kana Hanazawa, Mamoru Miyano, Takahiro Sakurai, Tomokazu Sugita, Yoshitsugu Matsuoka, Aki Toyosaki, and Inori Minase.

They are all top-tier voice actors.

They all looked distressed and could say things like "it was very difficult".

It's clear that even for top Japanese voice actors, "describe from pictures" is not an easy task. If this is the case in Japan, then it's even more difficult for domestic voice actors whose dubbing skills are already somewhat lacking.

This is like someone who's bad at the game to begin with, and then insists on playing on hard mode right from the start.

Sometimes, the incredibly awkward lines in some domestic animations and games are often because they have to be lip-synced, so they have to read them word by word according to the script.

In such an environment, it's not impossible to create a natural feel, but it's certainly very difficult.

of course
The reason the industry has become like this is mainly due to "inertia." Overall, domestic game developers, whether developing traditional games or anime-style games, do not place much importance on copywriting, or rather, they place very little emphasis on it.

The copywriting is not valued much, and the voice actors who accompany the copywriting are even less valued. Moreover, even in games with voice acting, the voice acting is outsourced.

Therefore, in most game development processes, voice acting is the last step.

In other words, by the time the voice actors are doing the dubbing, the lines and corresponding performances have already been prepared, and the dubbing actors have to read the lines word by word.

You can't add one more, or remove one, or even add a single interjection.

There's a line, so there has to be a voice actor for it.
This is the method of game voice acting now, and will likely remain so for a long time to come.

However, Chu Chen established the focus on emotion from the very beginning of the development of "Final Front," and therefore attached great importance to the copywriting. This emphasis led to changes in the development process of "Final Front."

The script was finalized first, followed by the storyboard, and then the art direction and special effects.

This gave voice acting the opportunity to come first.

At this point in time, since no further work has been done, the voice actors are free to improvise and don't have to read the lines word for word.

In this mode, the performance of voice actors is greatly enhanced.

The reason for the rise was not technical, but rather a relaxed mindset.

In the old model, if you made a single mistake in dubbing, you had to start over. But now, as long as the overall meaning remains the same and the emotions are right, even if the lines are completely wrong, the dubbing director can still let you pass.

Apart from this detail.

Another detail, as mentioned before, is that the script for Starry Night is quite close to spoken language, without many long and complicated sentences, which makes the voice-over relatively easy.

This allows voice actors to focus more on their acting skills.

"That's amazing! Was this the idea of ​​Director Xu?"

Xu Hang shook his head repeatedly upon hearing this.

"I don't have that much courage; it was President Chen who made the decision."

"Mr. Chen!? He knows voice acting?"

In Jiang Yue's impression, most game company bosses are either technically skilled or marketing experts. For a relatively niche field like voice acting, it's already considered good if they can avoid being laymen giving instructions to experts.

It's unheard of for someone like Chu Chen to optimize processes directly from the root.

Xu Hang glanced around instinctively to make sure no one had heard him before he breathed a sigh of relief.

"Don't say that in front of other people..."

Xu Hang was so nervous because when he first joined the company, he had done something similar, complaining to other employees that Chu Chen was wasting money and that there was absolutely no need to build his own recording studio.
Actually, his intention in saying that was to show off a little.

After all, he had been tormented by funding issues and demanding clients at his previous company.

When it came to Xingchen, Chu Chen said only one thing: "Director Xu, what I need is not a machine that reads lines, but a voice that can give the character a soul. Money, equipment, manpower, as long as the effect is achieved, none of these are problems."

At first, Xu Hang didn't quite believe it. Which boss doesn't make grand promises with great enthusiasm? But when he arrived at Starry Sky Games, he realized that Chu Chen was serious.

So what he said is basically the same as some guys taking a picture of a PS5 and saying they don't want their girlfriends to buy it, but their girlfriends insist on buying it.
However, he might not have expressed his emotions very well. Anyway, after he said that, he was interrupted by that old employee of Starry Sky from the beginning of time.

They talked about how Chu Chen suddenly unleashed his full potential in a desperate situation, explaining that they initially didn't understand those aspects of the game, but how he ultimately succeeded.
In short, after being held back and talked to for an hour or two, Xu Hang gave up.
He never showed off again after that.

However, on the other hand, in the two months he had been dealing with Chu Chen, he had come to admire Chu Chen quite a bit.

In fact, many people in the industry know that there are problems with the voice-over process, which is a problem that has existed since the MMORPG era, but there is not a single person who is truly willing to put in the effort to solve the problem.

after all
"Now that the voice acting is done, can players spend an extra penny?"

Even in the era of anime and manga games.

The voice acting issue hasn't actually been improved; many games don't even have voice acting for story segments, let alone this detail.

That's why.

It is truly admirable that Chu Chen was able to take the lead in providing his own solution under these circumstances and was even willing to spend real money on it.

(End of this chapter)