Nothing is truly impossible about it, but it is exponentially more expensive than just changing text.
How many hours of dialogue do you think would need to be recorded?
I'm not sure about DA2, but DAO had 750,00 words of dialogue. If you were to speak that, straight, with no interruptions, that would be roughly 83 hours. However, the time taken to do re-takes and re-dos would be much higher. Felicia Day, the actress used for MotA, said she did 12 hours alone for her dialogue, which is much less than that in game.
Throw in the fact that you'd have to multiply it by three for DA2, for a diplomatic, sarcastic and aggressive Hawke and you've got a SIGNIFICANTLY higher cost than just changing text.
How many different actors/actresses?
For DA2, there were two. The male Hawke was Nicholas Boulton and the female Hawke is voiced by Jo Wyatt. Nicholas Boulton is a British actor, who has appeared in movies such as Shakespeare in Love, the British show Doctors, as well as a number of video game acting gigs. Jo Wyatt was originally known for her role in the British show Luna, but has many roles in the video game world as well.
At what wage? I'm sure they would vary from actor to actor.
It would vary. But imagine how much it would cost to hire an established actor versus doing a silent movie.
Video game length, not to mention choices, which Bioware has always thrived off of, turns the production values for any spoken dialogue into an upside-down pyramid of inflated costs. The average video game last 40 hours, 20 times as long as your average animated movie. Add in choice, which means you need to record the dialogue for different situations, and it turns into easily double that. The question isn't "How much do Voice Actors make?" but rather "how much is it going to cost us to record dialgoue for a game that has enough dialogue to fill 40 animated movies?
Do they rent or already own a recording studio?
Given the amount of voice work Bioware does for ME, TOR, DA and whatever other projects Bioware has, I'd say if they don't own a recording studio at this point, then they are wasting money. However, I'm sure scheduling time between other more successful IPs like ME and TOR makes the studio not open 24/7 to them.
What's the actual profit on a game like DAO? I know the sales numbers but not the profit?
Bioware and EA have never posted those numbers. However, it had roughly 4 million in sales, which at $50 a copy, would be $200 million in revenue, not including DLC and expansion sales. DA2 sold 2 million. However, since the large majority of those sales were in the first two weeks due to pre-orders and the large amount of returns that game retialers are reporting, this causes the product to be returned to the distributor, where EA/Bioware would eat the cost. However, ignoring that, revenue for DA2 would be around $100 million.
So, less revenue for a more expensive graphics engine, voice over for all actors and a revamped combat system which took the majority of development hours, in my guesstimate.
How much time would it take a writter to write out the dialogue?
That's a very subjective question. A) There are a team of writers, usually resulting in a group effort of writing, so no one person sits down and writes out the whole script.
The process of writing is one of constant revisions and editting, as feedback from other departments let's the writing team know what can and cannot be done. The development, art, animation and software integration departments can't do their work without a story, but neither can the writing team know exactly what will go into the final product without feedback from these teams. So the writing is going in a constatnt loop of changes and alterations, from the "big-picture" aspect, where entire concepts and narratives are scrapped, to the minute details, where dialogue would need to be tweaked.This can (and I'm sure DOES) result in a script that is constantly changing, and more than liklely requires them to bring back in Voice Actors to redo lines after changes have been made.
How much do the writters get paid? Probably not much?
The writers are some of the most senior and leading influences on both the story and direction of the overall franchise. Jennifer Hepler, Cori May, David Gaider... these are all very big decision makers for the series, and (especially in the case of Gaider) are very public as being the voice of the series. I doubt they get paid in chicken feed.
But regardless, there would still be a neccessity for the exact same amount of writers, since the dialogue would need to be written anyway. But it does tie their hands. If you want to approach Situation A and give choices B,C and D as outcomes, but then it turns out that dialogue has already been recorded, you have to look at the pocketbook. Do you scrap this dialogue, which you've already paid for and would just wind up in the trash, or do you pay more money and pay to have three outcomes (read - three sepearate sets of dialogue) or do you leave it as is?
Having a voiced actor having to re-read their lines (again, in three different tones of diplomatic, sarcasatic and aggressive) over the above-mentioned three choices (B,C and D), or settling for the mediocre resolution that you already had recorded... those are the options. Where you could have just gone into a Text Editor program and changed some dialogue lines with a slient character.
I just don't see how it's soooooo expensive or time consuming it can't be easily and cost effectively done.
It costs more, not just in actual budget dollars, but also in lost potential and creative license with the writing staff. For a feature that brings an extremely minimal amount of improvement to the series.
Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 24 janvier 2012 - 01:23 .
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