Voice Acting or Subtitles

            Games are a visual medium for storytelling. Well, they are now at least. They don’t have to be strictly for telling a story, but should you want to make a game solely for that purpose, keep in mind that it’s just like a movie, only interactable. The most common advice I get for working with a visual medium is “Don’t tell me; show me.” That being said, which is better for games: voice acting or subtitles and text dialogue?

            Voice acting is a bit like regular acting, just less memorizing lines and more making your voice be heard. Having a unique voice helps, but being able to replicate a variety of voices is invaluable as an asset. Most big budget titles opt for voice acted characters to explain the plot through lots of exposition. For a complex plot, this is necessary. However, for a story that can easily be summarized without leaving out critical detail, there’s hardly any need to have characters speak. 

            Here’s an example: we have a hero of the story who is caught in a bind. The villain explains his plans in explicit detail and then laughs maniacally and leave the hero alone to escape. A scene like this may last well over five minutes. A better way to do this is to have the hero be bound, the villain maybe does a little interrogation, gets what he needs, attempts to kill hero, and then hero manages to avoid death and escape. A scene like this can occur in under three minutes. It’s all a matter of how much the audience sees and how much dialogue the characters speak.

            That example is more fitting for a movie rather than a game. But imagine if the plot was very complex and the characters had to say a lot of information so the audience can understand why the events of the story are happening. This is where text and subtitles come in. Most voice acted games have subtitles, but are by default toggled off. For a game that has only text for their story such as the early Final Fantasy games, players had to read everything. Coincidentally, the plots to these games were pretty complicated and reading the story just helped me understand it better. 

            How about this: which is easier for you as a person; reading words or reading faces? Faces convey emotion and expression. If you’ve seen enough faces, you can tell exactly what a person is feeling the moment their muscles contort into a frown or stretch into a grin. Connecting those faces with the surrounding environments and events happening can give you an idea of what is going on. Words give descriptions, but the scene can be imagined in your head. This is what makes books so entertaining to readers. They read the paragraph that describes a character’s appearance, the setting they are in, the events that led up to this point, and that character’s reaction to it all.

            Is there a clear winner here? I doubt it. Both are excellent ways to portray a story. I prefer text simply because I usually mishear what a voice actor may say or the acting is done poorly. Imagine Tidus doing his horrendous laugh during that one scene. Now imagine it without the actual laugh, but his body and face stay the same. You can still tell he’s laughing and you almost want to laugh with him. Now if acting is done great enough, you might not need to read the words as the facial expressions and the voice of the character say it all for you.

Story: How Vital is it to Games?

            The very first games had no stories to them whatsoever. No plot, no characters, no dialogue or subtitles, not even a distinctive art style. Back then, it was just about the game. You played for the love of the game itself. Now that we have found a way to implement interactive storytelling through digital games, almost every game requires a backstory. Now I don’t think this is a bad thing, but do you honestly want to know exactly why those green pigs want the bird eggs? You just want to break their houses with your peeved off pigeons. That being said, is a story always necessary?

            Stories are these tales of actions and events that occur by characters and we as readers of these stories get to watch them grow. This is what makes reading a mildly entertaining pastime. It’s even more fun when your imagination kicks in and fills in the gaps of information books can’t provide with words alone. When you read any of H.P. Lovecraft’s horror stories, do you imagine the beasts described in detail? I do and they are terrifying. Games, however, provide a ton of visual information that your brain registers, leaving nothing to the imagination. 

            And yet, we love games with a good story. It’s because even though our imaginations are not being stimulated, our sense of immersion is spiking through the roof of our skulls! We are experiencing a manifested form of someone else’s imagination. When their story becomes real, we believe it is real. Real in the sense that you can interact with it, but not real enough to break into reality. Still, these stories make us love games as a medium for storytelling.

            But when is a story even called for? For an arcade game with high emphasis on gameplay, the story is virtually nonexistent. What’s the story behind Tetris? No idea, but the main menu has Russian architecture and an 8-bit version of an old Russian folksong is playing during the main game, so we can assume the world takes place in Russia. Even so, there is no plot. I would argue Tetris has no story, but that doesn’t make it a bad game. The endless gameplay is still fun and a story would detract from that experience.

            How about Final Fantasy? The franchise is legendary for having stories. People love the games BECAUSE of the stories they tell. Any Final Fantasy fan has a favorite story, but it’s harder to point out which entry is their favorite GAME. I personally like Final Fantasy 9’s story and some of the gameplay offered, but if I were to analyze it, I might find some things annoying about it such as random encounters, the same battle theme for every single fight, a party member who is almost completely useless, and a briefly fun trading card minigame with a side quest that can only be finished if you happen to get the right cards. Having a story works with the series, but sometimes the gameplay suffers.

            There’s also “non-games” or “walking simulators” that have a high emphasis on story and almost no gameplay. Let me just pick on Walking Dead for a moment. The story is amazing. The choices you make affect the ultimate outcome of the game and the characters are fantastic. However, gameplay is limited to walking around and clicking on objects or people to speak to, then doing QTE’s during action sequences. It almost feels like an interactive story with arbitrary minigames. I say this because it feels really easy. The game is technically a point-and-click, but the gameplay doesn’t engage me. Other games of the genre such as Machinarium challenge me and have a decent story to boot. It’s even done without dialogue!

            Is story essential to making a good game? Not really. As much as I love a good story, there is a balance to be maintained when implementing one in a game. If you want the story to be complex, your gameplay will suffer greatly. A fun game may have a minor story that will be forgotten after the first playthrough. The thing is digital games are a visual medium. The most common advice for making a story for such a medium: “Don’t tell me, show me.”

Greenlight Process

            There’s this community project on Steam known as Greenlight. The Steam Community looks through lists of games and votes on which games should be put on Steam. Seems like a great way to get indie titles noticed and ported to PC, right? It would if it weren’t for all the shovelware that shows up all the time.

            Shovelware is a term used to describe games that are so bad and abundant that you shove them out of the way in hopes of finding something good. Greenlight is filled with this kind of stuff. Yet, lots of these titles show up on Steam every day. How? Because the developers who are trying to get their games on Steam show a few screenshots and a video of gameplay or possibly a cinematic trailer showing no gameplay. Players don’t get to playtest anything. They vote based solely on concept. 

            Take Day One: Garry’s Incident. I recall seeing this on Greenlight back in 2013. I liked the idea of a jungle survival game where you crash land in an unfamiliar place and have to figure everything out. I saw how it looked and thought it was ready to be put on Steam. I voted “Yes” and waited. Eventually the game was approved and Steam Greenlit the game. Later in the same year, the game launched and it is horrendous! 

            Ever since then, I have avoided the Greenlight Community at all costs. I saw only a concept, but had no information on the developers. No idea how good they were, what past games they made, how much money went into this, nothing! You want to know how bad it was? Here’s a link to a first impression of it by Totalbiscuit.

 

            How did this get Greenlit? By voters like me. I was just one of the thousands of players who thought this was a good idea. Concept wise, it was brilliant. The execution was terrible and until Greenlight fixes the way it approves games, don’t bother voting.