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"Apple and Pears? Its how we speak Guv."

Everyone communicates. It’s something we need to do. Whether it’s a simple wave, a quick wink, or even a full-length conversation. We all do it. Cats, pigs, monkeys, even flowers (no they don’t talk, but they do attract bees to come to them by being colourful!). Not only is it real life beings that communicate, but also games characters do to. Some have no voice; some can speak fluent English. But exactly what thought goes into what accent a character speaks in, and how does this effect their characteristics?

Most non-fictional games really don’t need much thought or imagination on deciding how a character speaks. It’s all there for the producer. For instance, characters in games like Medal Of Honour will almost certainly take the voice of the real life counterpart they are based on. For example, you wouldn’t expect to walk up to a German soldier and here him say ‘Och ey the noo! Kill the wee laddy!’ now would you? And I’m sure developers never even dream of putting that in such games. It would make the game unrealistic and the creators would be laughed at so hard that all the hospital waiting lists would be taken up with people diagnosed with hysteria. So it’s pretty obvious then that a developer making a non-fictional game must get it right, and therefore has limitations on how they can develop the characters speech.

However, sometimes characters are not based on an individual. Take Max Payne. He wasn’t meant to be anyone we know, just a brand new character. So now the developer has a choice. Does the character have an accent that is stereo typical of his appearance, or something completely unexpected? Most likely a character like Max Payne would pick up the voice style of a typical American, but supposing he had an Irish accent. This would probably mean a whole new story line, including different characters and events. And imagine the designer at Rockstar really did want Max Payne to have an Irish accent. The Max Payne we all know could have been totally different!

Sometimes, well quite a lot of the times, games aren’t set in our world. Take Final Fantasy. None of the 10 games have been set in our universe, and I expect any additions in the future will follow this trend. So if these games aren’t set in our world then how come most of the characters speak exactly like us? Surely in order to get the real feel of fantasy then some fantastical new language or accent could have been conjured up? Well yes, maybe. But if we want to understand what they are saying then it does have to be some sort of English. However the new Final Fantasy 10 has a character that speaks with an American pronunciation. This may be due to the fact that the voice actors who did the voices were American, but that’s no excuse. Everyone can put on a voice, and maybe if the accents used in FF10 were altered to sound less recognized then maybe FF10 would have been an even greater fantastical experience.

Not all producers get it wrong though. The brilliant voices used in Jak and Daxter really captured the experience the game offered. Not only were they understandable but also they distinguished every character and clearly showed a step away from the everyday voices we hear all the time.

Quite clever things can be fashioned using accents. Take Metal Gear Solid 2. Almost every one favoured Solid Snake over the girly Raiden. Some say Hideo Kojima shouldn’t have used Raiden at all and just kept Snake. However it seems Raiden was manufactured so that the contrast could clearly be seen between the mighty Snake and the puny Raiden, hence showing the power of Snake. This doesn’t just show through appearance. Clearly Raiden had an almost feminine, ‘spoilt brat’ type voice. On the other hand Snake had a grisly, hard-guy tone. So here, a great method using the accents was used to show a comparison in characters. Clever.

Sometimes voices can get on your nerves. So wouldn’t it be good if you could choose your own? Well some games do give you this option. Take Worms Armageddon. This gave you the choice of all the accents under the sun. From ‘American Sports Dude’ to the very funny Welsh style voice. It had them all. Not only did this give variety, it also meant that the tone could be changed to something the gamer found funny rather than irritating. This was also the case in Ready 2 Rumble Round 2. Hopefully we will see more of this in future games so that the player can have the accent that suits their characteristic rather than some whinging American.. Who knows, there could even be an option to get your own voice in the game in the near future. Lets see shall we.

Thanks for reading.
Nath.

Different accents can lead to people getting the wrong impression of a character, for example if cloud did have a camp voice then when people hear it he would sound like a weak and feeble character, not the hard and main character that he actually is. The speech on screen is a good idea, as yes there is no sterotyping of characters because you can't hear them, but the text doesn't half give u sore eyes!! especially that blue and white of ff7, far to straining...

Ok then...supposing i reverse what i say. What if they did use voices in FF7 but the person who played cloud was batting for the other side. However the developer wanted to make cloud macho and hard guy. But because of the voice everyone thought he was quire when really he wasn't it's just coz of his voice and everyone is stereo typing him. Now is that wat your saying?

lol, whether cloud was camp or not is going into a different topic all together. The advantage i see with the text is that you cut out all the stereotypes that come with the accents and you apply all your own ideas to the chraracter by the way that they move,act and talk.

But of course, speach in games suits some of them, and plain text in others suits that.

Just depends what your playing.

Yer thanks for the replies. I'd like to add that like you say accents can make people rather judgemental. For example any one who has watched neighbors lately may have noticed that Irish guy. The way he acts make him look like a right plonk and i think the reason the producer chose an irish guy is because maybe his accent went well with the character that the producer as trying to create. Games companies i have seen do this in the past have included Lucas Arts when they made Mokey Island. Guybrush the main character was a right nancy boy. His voice (which u heared alot of in the game) directly showed this and without even seeing him you could automatically think "He's a bit of ponce".

And now onto the point about text based voice that lets you imagine the voice. This is a good point. This does allow for more creativity. I remember when i USED TO read the Beano. I always thought Dennis the Menace was a hard guy and spoke with a deep voice. Then i watch the programme and he speaks like a right little kid which totally spoilt it for me. So yes good point there.

However. i dont always think that text based is the best. For example. Supposing the developer of FF7 wanted us to believe cloud was lets say a bit camp. After all he dressed in purple. But all the events we saw him in made him look macho and hard guy stereo typical. This then means the creater hasn't had his wish to make cloud sound like a nancy boy. If he had been able to use say Dale Winton as a voice...then maybe we would have thought differently about cloud and FF7 would have seemed a tottally different experiance. Please realise this is all fictonal...we all know Cloud wasn't gay....or do we?

You are right. The good thing with voicing gaming characters is that you can use B or even C-list actors with good voices and still create a powerful impression on the players

True, i guess it can lead to wrong impressions of accents, but then, i suppose its down to the developer to make sure that what they use is actually correct, not only making the games better, but pleasing us, the gamers.

But what about the times when the accents are actually not spot on? This could cause friction between societies. As an example the MGS2 Russian accents. I can assure you that not all Russian people talk like that. Konami have brought the stereotypes into the game which may not be too important in this case, but can really become problematic should it be interpreted the wrong way

In somes games though speech is really needed for the whole atmosphere of the game, such as in MGS2, you really need to have the correct accents for all the people, like the russians to add to the whole realism of the game.

So, it seems that there are times when you really need speech with accent, and times when you dont.

Would Broken Sword have been as good without the french accent to its story line? Hmm, doubt it.

I certainly think that the way characters speak could influence our perceptions of the characters and ultimately the gaming experience itself. Since people started demanding real speech to be included in games, developers really needed to consider several things. First of all is what market are they really trying to appeal to. If a company is developing a game that is unlikely to get a release outside of the USA, there would be no point in including character voices from a different country unless of course it is required by the narrative itself.

In order to get the best effect from using speech in games, it has to be effective. As you said Dame, certain people may not be too pleased to listen to American speech in Final Fantasy 10 but the thing here is that us Brits are the minority. The game was first and foremost aimed at an American audience and there are inevitably going to be more people buying the game in the US. The way out of this is to have two different voicing studios for UK and the US, but it would be too costly and in all honesty Americanised voices sounf much more effective and convincing.

Again having subtitles is sort of like reading a book really. Noone is putting words into your mouth and expects you to identify with that very voice. If you watch a film adaptation of a book, you may be disappointde because certain characters do not sound the way you thought and the way you wanted them to sound. Same goes with games-you may feel that someone like Squall from FF8 would be moderately cold-hearted and therefore his voice would reflect this. But say if it was some gloomy geek voicing him in an unconvincing manner-what would gamers say.

I personally think this is why speech is not used as widely in video games as it could have been. Yes there are storage space implications but a fear of disappointing certain members of the society is also a huge factor in this matter.

If you think about it, choosing an accent for a character can be a very very important decision, and if you make the wrong one for the character, well, the game could be very badly damaged.

Accent an dialect is a big part of real life, at times, in really important situations it can be the difference between getting a job or not, because people judge people on the way they speak. I myself am from south yorkshire, and we are all well known for our 'different' accents, chances are if i went down to london to get a job, if someone was there from that area with the same skills as me, they would get it, because we judge people on accents, i could be seen as thick (no jokes please :)) But whats this got to do with games?

Well, giving a character the right accent in a game is giving the character a mood, a personality that needs to be maintained and correct throughout the game, otherwise the story just wont work. As you said, would Snake have been as believeable as he was if he had Hals accent? I dont think so.

As people judge people on there accents, we judge characters on theres, and so the developers are going to have to get it right if they want us to play and get anything from the game in terms of the story line and how things pan out and how we take on board the characters feelings.

Going to your point about FF being in a different world and that there should be another accent other than an american one used in FF10. Well, thats one good thing that i liked about all the previous FF games, it was the fact that you had to read what they were saying, and you were judging the characters on what they were saying rather than how they were saying it. Imagine if Zindane had a voice like Beckham, would we have thought he was a hero then? But what if he had a voice like Arnie? Then we would have thought that was odd.

Another plus about having to read what they say is that, with what they are saying, as you read it you kind of put your own accent to there body, an accent that you things suits them, so you are really never fooled into how they should act, as you judge them on there brains (or what the storyline has for them).

I think games should have this option, to turn sound off and let you read what they say, after all, we all come on SR, so we dont have a problem with reading do we? :)