The New York Times: A stream of actors who built their careers in Hollywood are making their digital presence felt in video games, a once stigmatized medium that is increasingly seen as a unique storytelling platform with the ability to reach large audiences.
2 comments:
I’m happy that more and more actors are expanding their reach through video games. As the article mentions, for quite a long time video games used to be stigmatized and not viewed as real art forms. I think it is great that video games are becoming more accepted and seen as true forms of storytelling. I wonder if this increase in positive public sentiment towards video games is due to their seemingly increasing popularity. It seems as though with social media, video games have been more involved in popular culture and have been popping up everywhere. There has also been an increased amount of film and TV getting crossed over with video games, with shows like The Last of US. Having actors be involved in video games really makes some of the games feel real because it is like you are playing with a real person you have seen on TV before. Also, actors bring a great sense of movement and physicality to their role when they are filming for the video game, making it seem all that much more real.
I’m not sure how I feel about this. Though motion capture technology is getting better and video game acting is getting closer to live action acting it is still a fundamentally different skill. It’s voice acting. I don’t like the idea of hiring big name actors just to sell more or get more popular. Most of the time when I see big name actors in video games they don’t do that well. It really is a fundamentally different skill. In addition there are so many amazing voice actors who can do some amazing work but don’t get the recognition for their work. Big name actors have movies and tv shows, they don’t have to make video games too. All that being said, I think if an actor is enthusiastic about working in video games and really wants to give it their all, it can work well. However if they’re just acting for a video game because a studio offered them a lot of money, that acting won’t be that good. This is because they aren’t trying to learn this new skill.
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