The fundamental idea of zero tolerance is that there are no second chances. You make one mistake and you're out. This is a problem, because obviously what is the point of punishment if there are no second chances or opportunities to reform?
But it's not the biggest problem. All zero tolerance does is cast an even harsher light on the real problem. The real problem being that as little justice as there is in our justice system, there is absolutely no justice system outside of it.
Schools, corporations, and other organizations are free to dish out penalties and punishments without any semblance of a fair system of justice. If two kids fight in school, the teachers/principals just decide what to do. Usually just hand out punishments. They don't have to investigate. They don't hear the kids out. The kids don't present their cases in front of a jury. The administrators of the school may as well be Judge Dredd.
And of course, the real root of all problems in our society is that our government is corrupt as fuck, so good luck trying to change anything unless you are mad rich.
In the Patrol test I just ran, with the players as South Vietnamese National Police, the players... - Took a pitifully small bribe from a weapon smuggler without question. - Got drunk at the bar they were investigating. - Took up the bartender's bribe to start shit with another bar. - Got even drunker. - Murdered two dudes at the other bar with a machete. - Hid they bodies (they are policemen) - Decided to pick a fight with the VC. - Broke into a VC compound... to steal a truck. - Murdered their guard and stole his shit, including a grenade. - Both died trying to throw the grenade through a window as they pulled out in their stolen truck.
10/10 would ruthlessly oppress the citizens of Saigon again.
Video game voice actors are going on strike. To that, I say GOOD RIDDANCE. Not that voice acting doesn't take talent, doesn't have its place, or that these actors don't deserve better working conditions.
It's just that when I think of my favorite and the best video games of all time, other than Portal and Portal 2, voice acting did not meaningfully contribute to their greatness. The overwhelming majority of them had no voice acting whatsoever.
And seriously, how much money does someone deserve for saying one or two lines like "The last Metroid is in captivity. The galaxy is at peace." or "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets."
I hope that this leads to a lot more video games with no voice acting whatsoever.
Maybe the video games YOU play don't need voice acting, but just about every AAA and even AA title utilize voice acting heavily. Halo, Mass Effect, Call of Duty, Metal Gear, GTAV, Uncharted...
And what they want isn't unreasonable. They want what actors in other media get: royalties after profit (with a cap), limiting session duration times for voice work that's physically difficult (like screaming 80 different ways for an hour) so they can properly rest their voices, people to properly train them for special stuff like MoCap, and transparency on the game project itself (expected number of sessions, expected rating for the project, whether or not there will be offensive content, will there be vocally stressful sessions, character/plot information, etc...).
And seriously, how much money does someone deserve for saying one or two lines like "The last Metroid is in captivity. The galaxy is at peace." or "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets."
I'm not anti-labor. Voice actors are getting a shit deal, and if they are doing all this work they deserve a lot more.
If you're doing some game with a zillion lines, I think you actually need to get paid more than people get for most movies and TV shows. Video games are way bigger and way more work.
But if the game has literally just one line like Super Metroid? Ok, that's not worth much.
But my core point is that all those AAA and AA games you just mentioned? They're all garbage. Fuck all those games. I would be very happy for all those series to just die. Games with extensive voice acting are almost universally garbage. The best outcome for me would be for all games like that to no longer be made due to a never ending strike.
From Tetris to Rocket League, voice acting not necessary.
From Super Mario Bros. to Mario Maker, Mario never needed to talk. Games would be just as good if he didn't say "letsa go!"
Half-Life and Half-Life 2 had voice acting, but it didn't really contribute to those games being better. They could have had subtitles, or been completely without dialogue and still be just as amazing, if not better.
Voice acting contributed heavily to the quality of Portal and Portal 2.
From the oldest old to the newest new, I can think of no other great games besides Portal where voice acting contributed heavily to the greatness of the game.
It's almost entirely unnecessary, and most games would be better off without it. If your game has a ton of voice acting, just make a movie instead.
Scott, Super Metroid was made 21 years ago! If it had any voice acting in it at all, I would be surprised. And even if a game DOES have only a few lines in it, there isn't a minimum wage for a voice actor. Voice actors are payed for each session or for a flat, agreed upon, negotiated rate. This rate isn't even universal across all actors. Stephen Downes, without a doubt, makes more money than Kyle Hebert. They're not asking for astronomical amounts. Hell, the only money thing they're asking for is royalties AFTER the game has already broken even.
But my core point is that all those AAA and AA games you just mentioned? They're all garbage. Fuck all those games. I would be very happy for all those series to just die. Games with extensive voice acting are almost universally garbage. The best outcome for me would be for all games like that to no longer be made due to a never ending strike.
Well, I'm certainly glad you are in the overwhelming minority. I think games like Mass Effect, HALO, and GTA V do great things in the realm of storytelling and cinematic technique in games. Are they ground breakers like "Depression Quest"? No. But they add refinement and polish to the techniques we already have.
From Beethoven to Penguin Cafe Orchestra, voice not necessary.
From The Birth of the Cool to A Kind of Blue, Miles Davis never needed to talk.
The Beatles and The Rolling Stones had voice, but it didn't really contribute to those albums being better. They could have had liner notes, or been completely without lyrics and still be just as amazing, if not better.
Voice contributed heavily to the quality of Robert Johnson.
From the oldest old to the newest new, I can think of no other great acts besides Robert Johnson where voice contributed heavily to the greatness of the music.
It's almost entirely unnecessary, and most music would be better off without it. If your album has a ton of lyrics, just make a collection of poems instead.
I don't know much about video games, but I can tell a bitter old man when I see one.
I think games like Mass Effect, HALO, and GTA V do great things in the realm of storytelling and cinematic technique in games.
In other words they are movies. As far as games go, they are trash. They did no great things in the realm of games. As far as movies that were delivered as software they are ok. But compare them to actual movies, and they rank very poorly. If HALO were made as a movie instead of a game, you would only know about it if you saw it on MST3K.
The AAA games industry is infested with people who weren't good enough to get their film made in Hollywood, so they made it as software instead. They attach their shitty movie to a worthless game and get such high praise. This isn't something new. It's been happening ever since the SEGA CD and developers were first able to make cutscenes.
A game that is actually good at being a game doesn't need voice acting. Making the game more like a movie by adding things like voice acting almost always makes these real games worse.
If Rocket League had announcers you sure as fuck would be turning that shit off within 5 minutes.
Scott, you are being an abject moron right now. Please quit it.
Start naming some good games, (actual games and not movies that happen to be in software form), where quality voice acting is an important contributing factor to that game's greatness. I can't think of any besides Portal and Portal 2. Is anyone here going to name any, or just insult me because you can't handle the truth?
I spared myself the work of listing every single game in a series, but since I already knew that was going to be your "retort" I prepared myself.
Portal Half-Life Gone Home Left 4 Dead Spec-Ops: The Line GTA (III and after) South Park: The Stick of Truth The Stanley Parable Beyond Good and Evil Bioshock Team Fortress 2 Batman Arkham Asylum Bastion Brütal Legend Driver Max Payne Dear Esther Dead Rising L.A. Noire Saints Row Mass Effect Mirror's Edge Psychonauts Runaway
- Bastion. A pretty simple little game made great by art direction, music and the narrator. - Company of Heroes 1&2. The very extensive voicework, delivering various lines contextually to the action, on individual units which actually really surprised me and is very memorable. The writing and cheesy delivery is both great for immersion (as it reinforces the idea that your guys are guys and not C&C pixelblobs) and humour. I still remember a game I played where one last overwhelmed German soldier hiding in a house radio'd me with "It's raining the entire fucking allied army!" and I popped over to see that, indeed, there were paratroopers everywhere! - Dishonoured/Deus Ex/etc Stealth Games: Sneaking around and grabbing bits of information off the guards is much better with voices. Just getting close to people and then reading the subtitles would be hella immersion-breaking, plus actually rob hearing players of a skill component (ie: get close enough for it to be audiable and know to stop and listen). Special shout-out to Dishonoured, which tucks the brilliant worldbuilding into the Heart, whose sad, somber delivery adds a ton to the feel of the game. - Homeworld. Spoiler: I'm going to be listing all of Relic's RTS games because they all make brilliant and different uses of voice feedback. The panic that creeps into the voices of your otherwise professional pilots adds a serious sense of urgency to fights when you are losing in a way that, while it can be achieved through pulsing alarms, would lack the human connection that Homeworld pulled off so well. - Left 4 Dead. Using voice acting, Valve managed to make a multiplayer game that isn't completely infuriating if only 3 of 4 people have microphones. - South Park Stick of Truth. Would be completely unfunny without the voices from the show. - Dawn of War. Another Relic RTS. Without voices, a dumb grim sci-fi shooty RTS. WIth voices, fucking hilarious. Relic used the voice acting to delivery on the cheesy humour side of 40k so the visuals and music could do the grim stupid bullshit parts. Excellent match.
But besides that, you could make similar arguments about a lot of things in games. Like music. Music isn't wholly necessary to most games, but it can make them a lot better, more impactful and more meaningful. There are games that are built entirely around music and games that don't have music at all, but you can't tell me that Mario would be 100% as good, memorable and wonderful if it didn't leave us with its famous theme song. You can't tell me that MegaMan can do without music.
Sound design. You don't need it, things could just give off 8-bit beep sounds, but good sound design is what makes the Super Shotgun so satisfying! Games don't really need good menus, they would be just as functional as a black screen with a list of white text, but good UX design makes a game feel polished and endears it to you, makes the act of beginning to play a joy.
Your argument is lazier and old-man-ier than usual. You okay over there man?
I'm sorry, Scott, maybe I'm misunderstanding your position. Is it your belief that games shouldn't be a narrative based medium? Or do you believe that the narrative should only be expressed through the mechanics and graphic art, but not sound?
If it's the former, what games do you like? Because the games you mentioned (Metroid, Super Mario, Half-Life etc) all use narratives as the motivation for the main character. "The princess, your love, has been taken by Bowser", "The world is being overrun by aliens and you need to try and save it". Should every game be like Pong or Tetris or DDR? Pure mechanics and no story?
If it's the latter, then why restrict a medium which has the potential to express a narrative in a very connecting way to only one sense? Wouldn't it do well to the medium to make the narratives they want to share more like the daily narrative we experience?
And why is incorporating cinematic techniques and practices into games bad in the first place? We've spent the last century building and refining those techniques to make cinema into the great story telling medium it is today. Moreover, since most people already understand the conventions of cinema simply through repeated exposure to them, it's a really good idea to use those conventions since we don't have to, then, teach the audience everything about the medium and, instead, let them fall into the same understandings that they already know. This way, we can just get on with getting them into the story.
In fact, We're already doing this. Retro games take from the musical conventions of cinema (the music is different in Mario 1-1 than in 1-2 to match and enhance the mood), modern games use audio effects to actualize the fidelity of the the environment (the dulling of atmos and sfx and the addition of artificial tinnitus when a grenade goes off nearby), and games move the camera around all the time to recreate the techniques used in cinema.
So, can you tell me why voice acting is bad for games? Not, "why is voice acting in games bad" or "what games have bad voice acting" or "why bad voice acting is bad for games", but "Why is voice acting bad for games"?
Start naming some good games, (actual games and not movies that happen to be in software form), where quality voice acting is an important contributing factor to that game's greatness. I can't think of any besides Portal and Portal 2. Is anyone here going to name any, or just insult me because you can't handle the truth?
How do you define the two? And how do you determine if the voice acting was or wasn't important? Because I think you're either starting to "No True Scotsman" or "moving the goalposts".
I do agree somewhat that games that generally rely a lot on voice acting don't have amazing gameplay. In a way that's what makes games like Portal so perfect. The voices only enhance what is already amazing gameplay. I can't really think of anything where the gameplay is solid on its own and the VO makes it better. The Witcher 3 gets close, but sometimes the gameplay in that game is just maddening. MGS V is also pretty close, but it backtracked a lot on its story to make the gameplay much better. I would also maybe say Dark Souls/Bloodborne, but those games already basically doesn't have VO.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good VO performance, I enjoy a good story based game, but I generally agree with Scott on this one. And I'm trying real hard to find a good answer.
EDIT: I dunno if you consider the quack in Duck Game to be VO, but that is just icing on the cake.
I'll give you Bastion, same as Portal. Maybe there's something about narrating instead of having characters talk that makes them work? Then again while the voice acting does contribute heavily to Bastion, it's not a great game. It's a generic isometric action game. Without the voice acting, it would be nothing. That narrator deserves 90% of the profits.
Left 4 Dead... I don't think the game would suffer without voice acting. But the world would suffer without jokes about grabbin' peels and hating vans.
One or more of the following things holds true for every other game on the list:
1) Would not be significantly worse off, or might even be better off, if you just turn off the voices.
2) Is a storytelling experience in software form with sub-par, minimal, or no meaningful game attached to it.
3) Has a cookie cutter game that has no meaningful connection to the storytelling aspect, and could be stripped out completely.
4) Is bad with or without voice acting.
For example, South Park: SoT goes with #3. You can watch that game on YouTube and the only consequence would be that you saved yourself a lot of time and money.
I like to play the kinds of games where nobody would even consider having voice acting, like a Rocket League. And the kinds of games that normally would have voice acting are usually better off without it, Ocarina of Time.
I still won't shed any tears if they keep striking forever. But if they do work again, they deserve to be compensated way better than they were. Company makes many millions from some game, the people who worked on it, developers, artists, actors, etc. all deserve a piece of that pay day. Make no mistake, I am on the labor side.
I do agree somewhat that games that generally rely a lot on voice acting don't have amazing gameplay. In a way that's what makes games like Portal so perfect. The voices only enhance what is already amazing gameplay. I can't really think of anything where the gameplay is solid on its own and the VO makes it better. The Witcher 3 gets close, but sometimes the gameplay in that game is just maddening. MGS V is also pretty close, but it backtracked a lot on its story to make the gameplay much better. I would also maybe say Dark Souls/Bloodborne, but those games already basically doesn't have VO.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good VO performance, but I generally agree with Scott on this one. And I'm trying real hard to find a good answer.
Well, I mean, as a seperate issue I think that saying with full rigidness "Games must be X and must strive exclusively for X" and "Movies must be Y and must strive exclusively for Y" to be a silly argument. Sometimes I want some peanut butter in my chocolate. I don't think there's anything wrong with accepting a less than 100% narrative and a less than 100% gameplay experience so you can have both at once and see what people do with it.
Like, sure, Mass Effect writing is roughly on the level of Star Trek, but I like Star Trek, too. The fact I got to Star Trek while also doing this...
Honestly I never gave a shit about the narrator in Bastion, but then again I didn't really ever see why anyone liked that game. I thought it was okay but it was fairly repetitive. The music for that game is fan-fucking-tastic though. And the art is pretty good.
The game part of Mass Effect is a sad generic 3D third person action game. Why not at least play a good third person action game like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time or any 3D Mario?
Or if you really like crazy cool attacks and things like that, just snort the pure crack and go for Dynasty Warriors.
The game part of Mass Effect is a sad generic 3D third person action game. Why not at least play a good third person action game like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time or any 3D Mario?
Or if you really like crazy cool attacks and things like that, just snort the pure crack and go for Dynasty Warriors.
I have played Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. It was great! However, it lacked something that Mass Effect had, which was Star Trek!
I do agree somewhat that games that generally rely a lot on voice acting don't have amazing gameplay. In a way that's what makes games like Portal so perfect. The voices only enhance what is already amazing gameplay. I can't really think of anything where the gameplay is solid on its own and the VO makes it better. The Witcher 3 gets close, but sometimes the gameplay in that game is just maddening. MGS V is also pretty close, but it backtracked a lot on its story to make the gameplay much better. I would also maybe say Dark Souls/Bloodborne, but those games already basically doesn't have VO.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good VO performance, but I generally agree with Scott on this one. And I'm trying real hard to find a good answer.
Well, I mean, as a seperate issue I think that saying with full rigidness "Games must be X and must strive exclusively for X" and "Movies must be Y and must strive exclusively for Y" to be a silly argument. Sometimes I want some peanut butter in my chocolate. I don't think there's anything wrong with accepting a less than 100% narrative and a less than 100% gameplay experience so you can have both at once and see what people do with it.
Like, sure, Mass Effect writing is roughly on the level of Star Trek, but I like Star Trek, too. The fact I got to Star Trek while also doing this...
... was not a waste of my time.
The thing about those games is they're okay "one-off" experiences. The story is pretty good, but the gameplay isn't something that I'm gonna keep coming back to. Games that I've always played repeatedly don't really need VO. I've played Rocket League for several hours and it has no VO. I've even replayed FF VII several times in my life and it doesn't have VO. In fact, it would probably be worse with it. Then there are games like Last of Us that have amazing stories and SPECTACULAR VO. The kinda VO that makes you choke up because of the emotion in their voices. But I can't stand the gameplay. I feel like I'm suffering through it to see what happens. Honestly that's how I felt about Mass Effect. I've even replayed through the first two game a couple years ago to get to the third one. And after the ~40 hours or so that it took me to get though both games I couldn't stomach more.
There's nothing wrong with an experience that is what it is, and then is done. Not all games need to be perfectly repeatable stateless arenas where you endlessly grind out your skill, which is not to say some games shouldn't be. Sometimes I want a fine steak, sometimes I want to shove my face full cookies while getting high and watching Babylon 5.
There's nothing wrong with an experience that is what it is, and then is done. Not all games need to be perfectly repeatable stateless arenas where you endlessly grind out your skill, which is not to say some games shouldn't be. Sometimes I want a fine steak, sometimes I want to shove my face full cookies while getting high and watching Babylon 5.
Of course, but what I'm saying is that games that tend to really require the VO to get the emotional impact across generally don't hold up on the gameplay side of things, or oftentimes their elements are way too disparate. For instance, I LOVE the first season of Walking Dead for its story, and without VO that game would be much worse. But I'm not really coming back to it for the gameplay. In the case of Mass Effect I think, even more than other games in that vein, you could get away without VO. I honestly don't think the performances in ME are really great at all. They're usually flat and don't have emotion. But that's beside the point.
Then the games that I'm coming back to for the gameplay side of things. The games that I usually spend the most time tinkering with, or honing skill, or whatever, don't really have a need for VO. You could often get rid of the story and VO and they would still be good experiences. And I think generally those games, if they do have a story, often don't make it intrusive in any aspect. Because it's hard to get those elements to mesh in a way where they don't feel that way.
There are plenty of games that are good for a play through, but I don't really consider them amazing or anything. They're just kinda good at being a complete package of decent game and decent story.
I know a lot of people complained about Peter Dinklage, but I really enjoyed the voice acting of Destiny. There is a slew of well known VA's/actors in that game that fit well for the character.
I must admit that I'm a little surprised that I actually agree with Scott about 90% on a topic where most people think he's wrong. I agree with everything he's said with the exception that I do not think all AAA games are garbage. He is definitely oversimplifying in some areas, but I think his core tenants are solid.
Voice actors do deserve better working conditions. And it is extremely difficult to have a game with both great narrative and great gameplay. Thus, very few such games exist. Where you see one, the other isn't. And you know what? That's okay. Don't get your knickers in a twist over it.
Comments
But it's not the biggest problem. All zero tolerance does is cast an even harsher light on the real problem. The real problem being that as little justice as there is in our justice system, there is absolutely no justice system outside of it.
Schools, corporations, and other organizations are free to dish out penalties and punishments without any semblance of a fair system of justice. If two kids fight in school, the teachers/principals just decide what to do. Usually just hand out punishments. They don't have to investigate. They don't hear the kids out. The kids don't present their cases in front of a jury. The administrators of the school may as well be Judge Dredd.
And of course, the real root of all problems in our society is that our government is corrupt as fuck, so good luck trying to change anything unless you are mad rich.
It's just that when I think of my favorite and the best video games of all time, other than Portal and Portal 2, voice acting did not meaningfully contribute to their greatness. The overwhelming majority of them had no voice acting whatsoever.
And seriously, how much money does someone deserve for saying one or two lines like "The last Metroid is in captivity. The galaxy is at peace." or "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets."
I hope that this leads to a lot more video games with no voice acting whatsoever.
And what they want isn't unreasonable. They want what actors in other media get: royalties after profit (with a cap), limiting session duration times for voice work that's physically difficult (like screaming 80 different ways for an hour) so they can properly rest their voices, people to properly train them for special stuff like MoCap, and transparency on the game project itself (expected number of sessions, expected rating for the project, whether or not there will be offensive content, will there be vocally stressful sessions, character/plot information, etc...). You know what I just read?
If you're doing some game with a zillion lines, I think you actually need to get paid more than people get for most movies and TV shows. Video games are way bigger and way more work.
But if the game has literally just one line like Super Metroid? Ok, that's not worth much.
But my core point is that all those AAA and AA games you just mentioned? They're all garbage. Fuck all those games. I would be very happy for all those series to just die. Games with extensive voice acting are almost universally garbage. The best outcome for me would be for all games like that to no longer be made due to a never ending strike.
From Super Mario Bros. to Mario Maker, Mario never needed to talk. Games would be just as good if he didn't say "letsa go!"
Half-Life and Half-Life 2 had voice acting, but it didn't really contribute to those games being better. They could have had subtitles, or been completely without dialogue and still be just as amazing, if not better.
Voice acting contributed heavily to the quality of Portal and Portal 2.
From the oldest old to the newest new, I can think of no other great games besides Portal where voice acting contributed heavily to the greatness of the game.
It's almost entirely unnecessary, and most games would be better off without it. If your game has a ton of voice acting, just make a movie instead.
The AAA games industry is infested with people who weren't good enough to get their film made in Hollywood, so they made it as software instead. They attach their shitty movie to a worthless game and get such high praise. This isn't something new. It's been happening ever since the SEGA CD and developers were first able to make cutscenes.
A game that is actually good at being a game doesn't need voice acting. Making the game more like a movie by adding things like voice acting almost always makes these real games worse.
If Rocket League had announcers you sure as fuck would be turning that shit off within 5 minutes.
Portal
Half-Life
Gone Home
Left 4 Dead
Spec-Ops: The Line
GTA (III and after)
South Park: The Stick of Truth
The Stanley Parable
Beyond Good and Evil
Bioshock
Team Fortress 2
Batman Arkham Asylum
Bastion
Brütal Legend
Driver
Max Payne
Dear Esther
Dead Rising
L.A. Noire
Saints Row
Mass Effect
Mirror's Edge
Psychonauts
Runaway
- Bastion. A pretty simple little game made great by art direction, music and the narrator.
- Company of Heroes 1&2. The very extensive voicework, delivering various lines contextually to the action, on individual units which actually really surprised me and is very memorable. The writing and cheesy delivery is both great for immersion (as it reinforces the idea that your guys are guys and not C&C pixelblobs) and humour. I still remember a game I played where one last overwhelmed German soldier hiding in a house radio'd me with "It's raining the entire fucking allied army!" and I popped over to see that, indeed, there were paratroopers everywhere!
- Dishonoured/Deus Ex/etc Stealth Games: Sneaking around and grabbing bits of information off the guards is much better with voices. Just getting close to people and then reading the subtitles would be hella immersion-breaking, plus actually rob hearing players of a skill component (ie: get close enough for it to be audiable and know to stop and listen). Special shout-out to Dishonoured, which tucks the brilliant worldbuilding into the Heart, whose sad, somber delivery adds a ton to the feel of the game.
- Homeworld. Spoiler: I'm going to be listing all of Relic's RTS games because they all make brilliant and different uses of voice feedback. The panic that creeps into the voices of your otherwise professional pilots adds a serious sense of urgency to fights when you are losing in a way that, while it can be achieved through pulsing alarms, would lack the human connection that Homeworld pulled off so well.
- Left 4 Dead. Using voice acting, Valve managed to make a multiplayer game that isn't completely infuriating if only 3 of 4 people have microphones.
- South Park Stick of Truth. Would be completely unfunny without the voices from the show.
- Dawn of War. Another Relic RTS. Without voices, a dumb grim sci-fi shooty RTS. WIth voices, fucking hilarious. Relic used the voice acting to delivery on the cheesy humour side of 40k so the visuals and music could do the grim stupid bullshit parts. Excellent match.
But besides that, you could make similar arguments about a lot of things in games. Like music. Music isn't wholly necessary to most games, but it can make them a lot better, more impactful and more meaningful. There are games that are built entirely around music and games that don't have music at all, but you can't tell me that Mario would be 100% as good, memorable and wonderful if it didn't leave us with its famous theme song. You can't tell me that MegaMan can do without music.
Sound design. You don't need it, things could just give off 8-bit beep sounds, but good sound design is what makes the Super Shotgun so satisfying! Games don't really need good menus, they would be just as functional as a black screen with a list of white text, but good UX design makes a game feel polished and endears it to you, makes the act of beginning to play a joy.
Your argument is lazier and old-man-ier than usual. You okay over there man?
If it's the former, what games do you like? Because the games you mentioned (Metroid, Super Mario, Half-Life etc) all use narratives as the motivation for the main character. "The princess, your love, has been taken by Bowser", "The world is being overrun by aliens and you need to try and save it". Should every game be like Pong or Tetris or DDR? Pure mechanics and no story?
If it's the latter, then why restrict a medium which has the potential to express a narrative in a very connecting way to only one sense? Wouldn't it do well to the medium to make the narratives they want to share more like the daily narrative we experience?
And why is incorporating cinematic techniques and practices into games bad in the first place? We've spent the last century building and refining those techniques to make cinema into the great story telling medium it is today. Moreover, since most people already understand the conventions of cinema simply through repeated exposure to them, it's a really good idea to use those conventions since we don't have to, then, teach the audience everything about the medium and, instead, let them fall into the same understandings that they already know. This way, we can just get on with getting them into the story.
In fact, We're already doing this. Retro games take from the musical conventions of cinema (the music is different in Mario 1-1 than in 1-2 to match and enhance the mood), modern games use audio effects to actualize the fidelity of the the environment (the dulling of atmos and sfx and the addition of artificial tinnitus when a grenade goes off nearby), and games move the camera around all the time to recreate the techniques used in cinema.
So, can you tell me why voice acting is bad for games? Not, "why is voice acting in games bad" or "what games have bad voice acting" or "why bad voice acting is bad for games", but "Why is voice acting bad for games"?
EDIT, because this took me a while to write: How do you define the two? And how do you determine if the voice acting was or wasn't important? Because I think you're either starting to "No True Scotsman" or "moving the goalposts".
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good VO performance, I enjoy a good story based game, but I generally agree with Scott on this one. And I'm trying real hard to find a good answer.
EDIT: I dunno if you consider the quack in Duck Game to be VO, but that is just icing on the cake.
Left 4 Dead... I don't think the game would suffer without voice acting. But the world would suffer without jokes about grabbin' peels and hating vans.
One or more of the following things holds true for every other game on the list:
1) Would not be significantly worse off, or might even be better off, if you just turn off the voices.
2) Is a storytelling experience in software form with sub-par, minimal, or no meaningful game attached to it.
3) Has a cookie cutter game that has no meaningful connection to the storytelling aspect, and could be stripped out completely.
4) Is bad with or without voice acting.
For example, South Park: SoT goes with #3. You can watch that game on YouTube and the only consequence would be that you saved yourself a lot of time and money.
I like to play the kinds of games where nobody would even consider having voice acting, like a Rocket League. And the kinds of games that normally would have voice acting are usually better off without it, Ocarina of Time.
I still won't shed any tears if they keep striking forever. But if they do work again, they deserve to be compensated way better than they were. Company makes many millions from some game, the people who worked on it, developers, artists, actors, etc. all deserve a piece of that pay day. Make no mistake, I am on the labor side.
Like, sure, Mass Effect writing is roughly on the level of Star Trek, but I like Star Trek, too. The fact I got to Star Trek while also doing this...
... was not a waste of my time.
Or if you really like crazy cool attacks and things like that, just snort the pure crack and go for Dynasty Warriors.
Then the games that I'm coming back to for the gameplay side of things. The games that I usually spend the most time tinkering with, or honing skill, or whatever, don't really have a need for VO. You could often get rid of the story and VO and they would still be good experiences. And I think generally those games, if they do have a story, often don't make it intrusive in any aspect. Because it's hard to get those elements to mesh in a way where they don't feel that way.
There are plenty of games that are good for a play through, but I don't really consider them amazing or anything. They're just kinda good at being a complete package of decent game and decent story.
I know a lot of people complained about Peter Dinklage, but I really enjoyed the voice acting of Destiny. There is a slew of well known VA's/actors in that game that fit well for the character.
Voice actors do deserve better working conditions. And it is extremely difficult to have a game with both great narrative and great gameplay. Thus, very few such games exist. Where you see one, the other isn't. And you know what? That's okay. Don't get your knickers in a twist over it.