Voice Acting Costs?

[Joseph]

Hi, its me again

Has anyone here hired voice actors in any of their games? How much can one expect to pay, on average, for voice acting? For an average to full length game, how much do you think it would cost for a 30+ character game? (ps: some characters can be played by the same actor)...

Is it realistic to expect to budget under 1000$ for voice acting? ( Im talking about hiring good voice actors, not big-shot hollywood names or amateur crappy no-names).

Anyone know about this area?

Ive checked VoiceActing 123 which is pretty cool, but I wanted to know from inside AGS if anyone had experience going thru the hiring process of voice actors.

Chow!!

[Stupot]

I considered this once, and thought of a good idea.
Go on IMDB and look up some computer games (especially if you have been impressed by a voice and want to know who the actor is).  Then you can find out some names, and that will give you a springboard.  From there a bit of googling will get you to some agencies, or maybe even some of the voice actors will have their own websites.  And then all you have to do is ask.

[cosmicr]

Hmmm lets say you've got 30+ characters at about an average of 50 lines of spoken text each.

If each line costs say $1 a pop, which is relatively cheap, thats 30x50x$1 which is $1500. Which is close to what you estimated.

But that doesnt take into account the facilities required. I would imagine most voice actors dont come with their own recording studio, and the ones that do probably cost considerably more. Plus I cant imagine many would want to come to someone's home to record voices in someone's bedroom/study/garage/basement or whatever. It would appear very amateurish and all for what $50 or so?

Having said that, if you've already got decent facilities, then getting your foot in the door on hiring voice artists probably wouldnt be that difficult, provided you've got the cash.

[Layabout]

Wha!? You are paying for Voice Actors. You must really be either really stupid or making something UBER-professional. Very few ags games have been made with professional Voice Artists.

Try using friends and family. They may not be perfect, but it is up to you to direct them, etc.

Unless of coarse you are making a big budget (for an indie) commercial product, then by all means hire the pros.

[magintz]

According to WikiAnswers

Actors with recognizable voices are paid very highly.

For normal voice actors, who aren't famous they are paid around minium wage, and are paid per line.

Like normal actors they have auditions, and the competition is a little bit less but still there.

[DazJ]

We're paying our actors £50 each for a game, with the promise of 2 sequels. They're not well-known but if they're serious, they'll be happy to simply get stuck in with a role and really get to become the character.

[Joseph]

Interesting...good to get some feedback.

No, I assure you Im not stupid, LOL! It was just for getting an idea, I dont think I will ever really actually DO that!

Getting friends + family is fine, I always wondered however how much it would have been.

Dazj, if you dont mind me asking: Where did you find your actors? Are they family + friends, or had auditions with "pros"?

[TerranRich]

I personally was hoping to find voice actors for free. I know, kind of unrealistic, but a few of the people I have set up for voice acting in BTS are working for free. It seems I might have to set up a budget for By the Sword, after hearing this.

Is it realistic to expect to find people to do voice acting for free?

[DazJ]

We got ours from here: http://voice123.com/ and were amazed how many people responded. The website is a god-send.

TerranRich...Put up a post, you'll be pleasantly surprised

[Dave Gilbert]

Depends what you want, really.  Professional voice actors will usually charge $300 per hour with a one hour minimum.  If you use a studio, that can get dang expensive.  The VO work for Emerald City Confidential ended up costing about $23,000.  Of course that was for several dozen characters and almost 10,000 lines of dialog, plus it was funded by a publisher who paid for the whole thing.

You can certainly get voice actors for cheaper.  For my internal games like Blackwell, I get a much better deal!  The actors I use here in New York usually charge about 50 or so a pop, sometimes more if they do more than one characters.  Of course, I know a lot of actors in the theatre scene so the personal connection helps.  I prefer being able to direct them live.  It is so much better than getting VO lines remotely.  

I'm willing to act as your VO studio, if you need help with that.  I'm not a professional studio, but I've directed five games worth of actors so far.  Feel free to drop me a PM.

edit: I've used voice123 before, but I've had (mostly) horrible experiences with getting lines remotely.  The quality of the sound differs greatly from person to person, and it's very hard to give direction.  Just a preference. 

[Vince Twelve]

The VO work for Emerald City Confidential ended up costing about $23,000.

:o

For my internal games like Blackwell, I get a much better deal!  The actors I use here in New York usually charge about 50 or so a pop

I'm so using the Dave Gilbert Voice Acting Studio for Resonance...

[Dave Gilbert]

The VO work for Emerald City Confidential ended up costing about $23,000.

:o

For my internal games like Blackwell, I get a much better deal!  The actors I use here in New York usually charge about 50 or so a pop

I'm so using the Dave Gilbert Voice Acting Studio for Resonance...

I'd love to help with your voice acting, Vince!  Gimme a shout when you have a script.

[miguel]

Hi! I was passing by this thread and could not stop wondering why AGS members don't have a  group of people that could do VO. If one takes a look at the 'need help/offering help threads' here, many members will do voice overs for free.
Idea: Get together and do VO at a reduced price! This way many members will have their first shot at voice acting plus earning some cash.
Just a thought.

[TerranRich]

Hmm, maybe there should be a Voice Actors' forum.

[miguel]

Hmm, let's say this Voice Acting Forum has its set of rules, something like:
    - game is released and has been around for a couple of months;
    - it was given 3 or more blue cups by the AGS judges;
    - it is popular and accepted by the community;

The game is suitable for VO and the active members of the Voice Acting Forum (actors) decide on charging a fee if the game is going commercial. Or not, the game will serve as training for the actors.

Well, it's just an idea of something that seams like a lot of talent wasted. 

[TerranRich]

Um, what if somebody is 90% done with developing their game and want to hire voice actors? They can't use this hypothetical forum?

[Gilbert]

Actually I'm a bit unsure to how demanding voice acting would be for AGS games to require a forum. The majority of amatuer games wouldn't need voices at the moment (and if poorly executed, it wouldn't help in improving a game, if not making it even worse, and it only adds to the painful waiting of downloading a supposed simple and small game). Voice acting is only needed for larger scale (commercial, sometimes) games and when you're sure that it would add fun to your games.

I think a thread dedicated for this purpose would be enough, though currently this is mostly covered by the RAT and OYS threads I think they're becoming too heavy and off-hand recently. Separate threads for some of the more important parts of work may be good.

[miguel]

Gilbet, I thought about that (quality of the project in hand) and that's why I mentioned some requirements for a game to be eligible for VO.
I think that, once a game is accepted by the community to be average-to-good than why not give it a voice pack?
The voice pack can be downloaded separately by the way.
I think that when well done, voice always adds to the game play, it's like music or graphics. Even if it's a small game.   

[Gilbert]

Actually I didn't mean that average-to-good games must not have VO. My main point was that I don't think a forum is necessary, but a thread is.

[miguel]

Yes, I agree, a permanent thread would be more than enough.
Thinking about it, there are lots of musicians offering music for games, why not gather and do the same?

TerranRich: Erm...they can use this thread (not forum) if the Voice Acting Comity (wow!) decides to. But if I was in charge I'd have the game to be finished first, and then given blue cups, and CJ's blessing too.