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Original post by Degra It's the programmers, designers & artists that make or break a game...not the voice actors. If it takes a big-star voice actor to sell a title, then it says a lot about the game...

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Original post by s_p_oneil I think it hurts most games to use recognizable actors. It adds to the cost and detracts from the immersion you want to achieve in a game. The big game companies should tell SAG that they just lost a potential source of income and recognition for their members. I would find it hard to believe that game companies or publishers make a significant amount of money on games based on movies or TV shows. I can't think of many that were very good unless you count the Star Wars franchise, and I hardly count that because Lucas owns movie and game studios, and the merchandising clauses in his movie contracts include provisions for video games. Now if only Lucas were a lot better at writing and directing movies... ;-) EDIT: In short, I agree with coderx75

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Original post by sinrtb The probelm is that the actors in big name movies are in the screenactors guild and if you get them in your game like if youre doing one of the lord of the rings games or chronicles of riddick. in order to use the actual actors which is very important (of if in CoR they used the some lame duck as the main char). But to get these actors you have to hire all screen actors guild people. even for one liners. And in these instance the game sells extremely well whether it was done well or not (Enter the Matrix)

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Original post by Conner McCloud From a consumer's point of view, the two most important aspects of a game are gameplay, and general aesthetic quality, neither of which are dependant on programmer ability. CM

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Original post by Conner McCloud From a consumer's point of view, the two most important aspects of a game are gameplay,

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and general aesthetic quality,

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Anybody who's ever watched a fan dub of an anime can appreciate the importance of quality voice acting. Will the voices in a video game make or break it? Probably not. But will it affect sales? Most certainly.

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Original post by MENTAL Erm, gameplay doesn't just appear on it's own. Someone has to program it. Same for art - if the graphics coders provide a crap interface (bad material language, strict model restrictions, etc) then the aethetics will be bad too. Just remember that for everything you see in a game, the programmer has a lot of responsibility for :)

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Original post by Solias Quote: Original post by Conner McCloud From a consumer's point of view, the two most important aspects of a game are gameplay, Things like AI, networking, and scripting language support all contribute to quality game play. Not to mention tool programming to enable those game designers to design that game play. Also, if the game is buggy, slow, or laggy that gameplay is going to go downhill fast.

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Original post by Solias I'm not arguing that artists and designers don't contribute a lot to the game. I'm not even arguing that programmers contribute more. But I think we need to get away from this developer role infighting, it's just dragging everyone down.

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Original post by Solias Professional quality voice acting is important for many kinds of games. While lack of voice may be acceptable for many games, it can also enhance the experience. And poor quality voice acting is worse than none at all (remember the mid 90s).

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This last point is the important one. Its not great voice acting that gain sales, its poor voice acting that hurts sales. If you don't hire professional actors, you're a lot more likely to get the latter than for former.

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Original post by Conner McCloud I'm just trying to defend the artists from what appears to be a bunch of nerds who refuse to accept that there's more to quality titles than a good engine.

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This last point is the important one. Its not great voice acting that gain sales, its poor voice acting that hurts sales. If you don't hire professional actors, you're a lot more likely to get the latter than for former.

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Something else to keep in mind is that this deal doesn't just deal with voice actors. It also affects motion capture models and things of that nature. Honestly, I know less about this second group than about the first, but its something to think about.

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Original post by krez go ahead and make a video game without any programmers, see if you can pull that one off (and yes i know, a game with "programmer art" won't go anywhere either).

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Original post by krez the voice actors, however, are not necessary...

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Original post by krez ...nor do they contribute even the smallest percentage of the work the real developers do.

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Original post by krez i never know anything about the voice acting before i buy a game, hell i don't even know where to get information on whose voice is used so i can carefully consider if the guy yelling "cover me!" made a good enough game to spend money on.

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Original post by Conner McCloud Anybody who's ever watched a fan dub of an anime can appreciate the importance of quality voice acting. Will the voices in a video game make or break it? Probably not. But will it affect sales? Most certainly.