The entire auditorium at the Peacock Theater rose in a standing ovation when a surprise guest emerged.
“It’s a fever dream,” Baker recalls toEntertainment Weeklymonths later in February.
But Ford graciously quipped to Baker in an aside, “I think this guy did a great job.
Neil Newbon.IvanWeiss.London
If I’d known he was so good, I would’ve done it myself.”
Says Baker, “I was like, That’s all I need to hear, man.'”
The moment felt emblematic of where gaming is at this current time.
Troy Baker, Matt Mercer, Neil Newbon, Ben Starr, Sam Lake pose for the Pixel Pack photoshoot.Courtesy Rich Soublet
Gaming, as a business, now rivals and even outpaces other entertainment sectors on paper, including Hollywood.
And now even Netflix is in the gaming business.
How can I best let you know you had to have been there?"
Yuri Lowenthal.IvanWeiss.London
Baker muses on the matter.
“The thing that games do that none of those mediums do is they really make you the agent.
You are the one who’s driving.”
Matt Mercer.Courtesy Rich Soublet
He’s now trying to take actors involved in gaming to the next level.
So this is a good time to talk about it."
Leveling up
Newbon remembers his first professional gaming job.
Troy Baker.IvanWeiss.London
It was for Ubisoft’sGhost Recon: Future Soldier, which debuted in 2012.
“Those guys were lovely and terrifying simultaneously,” he remarks.
Yet he remembers the types of conversations he would hear from professionals behind the scenes.
Sam Lake.Courtesy Rich Soublet
I was like, ‘What do you meanrealactors?
‘I’ma real actor.
I went to the f—ing Edinburgh Festival, man!
Abubakar Salim.IvanWeiss.London
The general vibe at the time, and for a long time after, felt dismissive.
“They just didn’t want me to do it, which is not cool.
But this was a long time ago.
Bryan Dechart.IvanWeiss.London
I got rid of those agents.”
This isn’t an isolated experience, either.
“I live to die… but I love it so much that I can’t stop.”
Maggie Robertson.IvanWeiss.London
Hale believes one of the biggest misconceptions about what they do is the skill required.
“The entirety ofMass Effect, I saw no line before the moment I recorded it.
It was all cold reading on the spot.
Courtesy Rich Soublet
A couple takes, maybe a few, and it goes out to market.
That’s it.”
She notes that this scenario isn’t much different even now.
Erika Ishii.IvanWeiss.London
“It’s extraordinarily demanding.”
“A voice performer was very much treated like the utensils on the table,” she describes.
I had a 6-month-old at home who I was still nursing.
Anjali Bhimani.IvanWeiss.London
I really was watching the clock.
I finally sought out the stage manager toward the end of the show.
He goes, ‘What’s your category?’
And I told him the category.
He said, ‘Oh, we taped that earlier with the winner.’
The dismissiveness of it definitely I felt that.
“Video games have suffered from a similar perception for a long time.
We’re in the era of prestige video games.
“Then you started having all subsequent stories that were told from there.”
or ‘How big of a commercial success?’
But that has changed project by project.
WithAlan Wake IInow, I felt very proud.
Looking at reactions, I felt that now we have arrived and we are on equal footing.”
Salim is also in a unique position as both an actor and developer.
“It’s very raw.
It’s very real.”
He hopes to turn theTales of Kenzerainto a multimedia franchise.
The current state of the industry i.e.
That appetite for gaming adaptations has only grown.
Game changers
The conversations around gaming continue to change on the business side for the actors themselves.
“What was the last thing standing?
“I have not had a down day since March of 2020.
It’s only increased.
And her buyers aren’t looking for the same jot down of voice work, either.
The attitudes around gaming once deemed the field “almost cheesy and childish and juvenile,” Goldman remarks.
As a result, projects often sought “cartoony” or “wacky” deliveries for characters.
That’s not so prevalent now.
Ford shares her own experience working with Newbon onWarframe.
“We had him voice a talking fish,” she writes over email.
She says, “There’s no difference in the people who are booking these things.
In games, it’s not voiceover people anymore.
And that is the big shift.
They don’t want just random people plugged in because they can do a Russian accent.
They want authenticity.”
Thought registers on camera.
Many of the actors coming up in the gaming scene today are of that same school of thought.
“Having a Shakespeare background, I pulled a lot of Shakespeare stuff into this,” Robertson explains.
“There was something very Shakespearean in the way that she utilizes language.
It’s her words.
She really uses the power of her words to hurt.”
The thirsty responses Robertson saw online were…something else.
And then to see the way that she was embraced by audiences, it was just very surreal.
It really truly changed my life in every possible way.”
Salim remembers “it being a lot” when theAssassins Creedaudience latched onto his role as Bayek.
He credits the material itself.
“It was deep, man.
“It is always wild people picking it out,” he says.
Newbon found himself in a similar situation to hisResident Evil Villagecostar, Robertson.
It’s definitely taught me a lot about humility and about keeping yourself very centered,” he reflects.
In some cases, they were even contractually forbidden to do so.
Mainly developers and behind-the-scenes technicians were the ones out front promoting the material.
Ishii had to navigate this matter herself in the years before she became a known name.
She often spoke about games through YouTube and Twitch streams, and developed an audience that way.
In her words, she was a fan herself.
“You rail against the man, and then one day you wake up and youarethe man…
I shitposted about video games quite a lot.
Only now suddenly I am a literal face of a video game.
So you have to separate out what is professional to post, even on your own personal channels.”
Since 2022, tens of thousands of jobs were eliminated.
Though, 19 percent of the companies didn’t offer any reason.
is a real problem, but folks like Hale and Goldman aren’t so concerned with A.I.
“There’s no doubt that the industry is going through a challenging time.
And I’m not going to get that from A.I.
