Chris Tester

Okay, I get that.

But where are we going with this? Oh, it's the big bad, but what's... I don't care enough. That kind of thing. And then with the latest one, it's like, well, what we're going to do is we're going to give you even more choice with lots of technical to learn. And it'll be great because it's like the biggest, most open sandbox ever. And to me, my brain just goes like, oh, great, more stuff not to...

be good at. And so for me, it becomes crippling. I walk around these worlds and they are beautiful and they are stunning, but they don't have that, you know, like something like The Witcher did so well, which was like, okay, I've got to get from point A to point B, but guaranteed, I mean, Red Dead Redemption does this absolutely perfectly as well.

Between points A and B, within 10 to 15 seconds, something is going to come and distract me. And it's like, then do I go into the woods and, you know, find the racists hanging somebody? Or then do I go and, you know, delve into this other kind of side thing? It's all so concentrated at the same time.

And it's all rich enough so that it's not just a pure Ubisoft experience of I've got to collect them all. I've got to finish everything right now. I've got a shopping list that I need to do apparently of. completely inconsequential tasks. So there's that level of richness. I didn't find that in the three hours in total that I attempted to play either of those two games. But that was it.

So again, that is probably a bit like with The Last of Us with you. That's probably my loss, but I am okay with that loss. I do not foresee some great transformational moment where it's going to get better.

I think there's an element of Nintendo. Yes. Oh, God, that's part of, you know, what made us, you know, fans of this since childhood in the first place. You want it to be good. You want it to be good as when you were a kid. And I'm like, but I don't feel it. It's not doing the same thing for me anymore. It's simple as that. Yeah. Yeah. We sound like the exact same gamer.

Yes, you are right. Your opinion was very well thought through.

It becomes this huge epic, oh my God.

Yes, I have. Yeah, I have. And I, it's curious. It's like, I love CD Projekt Red in for so many things. For so many reasons. You can hear the buck coming at the same time. By the way, guys, like, you know, if CD Projekt Red, I don't know which next one. Yeah, I'm readily available and UK based just saying. But, um, It didn't land for me.

Uh, like the, um, I like the execution is phenomenal in that game on so many levels, like on paper, love it so much. The release is a huge issue for me. Oh, absolutely. For so many people, it was like, I'm a console guy. And it was like that build up to, it's my Christmas game. The one time I'm going to sit down and I can actually say like three full days reserved out.

You get your blue Yeti microphone, and if you can do some impersonations, an orc voice is always particularly useful, and then just go at it. Just spam everyone. That's the way forward.

I'm just going to be playing this game. And then it doesn't even load. So it was already on the back foot. And then when we actually kind of like get into it... I just didn't like, and this wasn't a performative issue, but I didn't like the protagonist very much. V? Yeah, V. And to be honest, I would say I only played the male V, not the female V. And I've heard that, you know,

Some people prefer the female to the male. So I've still got about 20, 25 minutes in, and I've enjoyed it. But if someone said, like, so what's the story of V? What are the big main kind of plot points and everything? I'd be like, well, he's going to die. He's a little crazy. Yeah, he's a bit time poor. And yeah, Jackie's not well.

I like it. But other than that, I'm kind of a bit like, I don't know. So, yeah. And I think it was also because it promised to be so many different types of games. So like when it kind of went into one of the first missions where it's kind of very covert and you've got to zoom between all of the different security cameras and listen into bits of the conversation and that kind of stuff.

And then it was like... Well, maybe you can do that again sometime in your playthrough if you really want to go out on a limb and do it. But you don't have to. And so I never did. And so for me, it didn't quite land in the same way. I get that. Yeah, I enjoyed it. I admire the ambition and the scope. So much style. Everything about it. I've obviously heard the DLC. It's phenomenal.

that's probably will probably get me into doing a fresh playthrough of it.

I mean, they're operating at such a high level to it. That's fine. But I think this is where the tension kind of comes in with somewhere like Red Dead. Red Dead is, I would arguably say, a little bit more of a linear experience. Yeah. And some of the story beats are so well crafted.

Fundamentally, it's your relationship with the villain in something like Red Dead Redemption 2 or even in the original kind of Red Dead. That twist, that turn is completely soul destroying to me. Whereas in terms of the big bad in cyberpunk, I'm a bit like... You know, I'm dead. You know, time is running out. I've got to make a couple of choices. Keanu did some bad things. Or did he? I don't know.

You know, I mean, there was just so much. But again, this may be also partly down to, you know, playing Red Dead Redemption at one point in my life and now trying to play Cyberpunk at another point where I've got like an hour or 45 minutes. Whereas Red Dead Redemption, it was like, it's half a day minimum. I've got to ride my horse now.

But I was more of a kind of resting actor during the release of that game. So yeah, I was allowed to explore that a lot more.

So do you mean specifically as a voice actor who just does games or in general?

Sure. Well, I think it still varies massively. So there are a lot of the talent that would be most recognizable to a lot of people will just go to exterior studios for when they're recording projects. And quite often they'll be cast in those projects or get auditions for those projects through their agents. That might be an acting agent or a voiceover agent.

My very first voice acting gig was Dark Souls 2. And that was through my acting agent at the time. I went to a studio to audition, like literally had 15 minutes to, you know, they gave me a picture of a half man, half scorpion. I assumed that it would sound, I don't know, a bit like a monster. And they said, no, in your normal voice. And I was like, sure. And then I went away.

And then two weeks later, I was booked in and I did the same thing. And so you're dealing with an audio engineer and then whoever else is directing who may be there or may not be there, that kind of thing. However, I would say 99% of my work is recorded from home. And that includes some video games as well.

So I was a theatre actor for about 15 years, but I've been also full-time voice acting from home for about seven years. So I have a bedroom that I've converted into a professional recording studio. And I do pretty much anything and everything. So I do corporate stuff, corporate narration, documentaries, commercials, and I do animation, video games, that kind of stuff as well.

Whereas a lot of voice actors will only do, you know, the video games and the animation maybe and character based kind of stuff. And maybe the odd commercial if the money is really, really good. So yeah, that's the kind of balancing act. For me, as a result of that, I also like a lot of the games that I'm in is because I've marketed myself or I am out there in some way, shape or form.

So in terms of game devs that I admire, I will definitely be shooting my shot and introducing myself and saying, this is my showreel, this is my calling card if you ever need someone like me. You know where I am? Building relationships with casting directors who may be representative of different studios.

So that's about finding out who they are, building a relationship with them so that they know what you can do, what you can't do, what your unique strengths are, whether or not you can record from home, whether or not you're based near a larger city like I'm in London. And it's still advantageous for me in case they want to get someone in last minute.

You know, I've got a in-person job and an in-person audition tomorrow in London town. And that's partly because they want to see you working in a space. Also for them, technically, If everybody is recorded in the same space, it means that everybody will sound the same. They're not like, oh, the noise floor has gone a bit kind of crazy.

And you said you didn't gate this, but you definitely did because you're breathing. You know, all of those kind of things. But what that actually means in terms of the reality is that for a lot of people, it's like, Maybe post on social media to get a bit of a following and a bit of a profile. But otherwise, it's down to your agent to get you the opportunities.

And from that, if you book at one or two of these studios, you might be called in much more. I do that. I have a voiceover agent. But for 99% of my work, I'm doing my own marketing and my own outreach. So that's in-person networking.

kind of a practice type thing that you do you obviously you're a lot more voice orientated so do you have like sequences you work on or is there stuff you do for that to prep for roles or i i mean i used to i used to do a from like three years of drama school training so there was like vocal warm-ups that i became kind of absolutely um enthralled to really using your body as a physical instrument that kind of thing uh which is very important to do

And so there's that and then the physical warm-up kind of aspect as well that goes on top of it as well because it's a full body thing. It's not just the voice. It's much easier to be able to make those kind of choices freely if you're using your whole body.

It's the whole reason that rather than having a very small booth, I made myself a room to thrash around in because it just makes my job easier, a lot easier than if it's a confined thing because the very first recording setups that I built myself from home, I was in a little corner like this and I couldn't really move. And that affects how you can act, just kind of like necessarily.

So there was that. And then from a voice acting perspective, the number one thing that I practice is cold reading. Cold reading, i.e. stuff that I've never read, haven't even scanned before. immediately presenting it myself, pressing record and making sure I don't make mistakes and make choices on the fly. Because most video game scripts are recorded like that.

You do not see the scripts in advance. You do not even get to read ahead. Oh, wow. So it's like, let's do two to three takes of every single line. Let's go. We're on it. So you'll have discussed in advance maybe, okay, so your character is here. You're talking to X, Y, or Z person. You're in the middle of a battlefield. So you've got to shout a little bit.

You know, what's your relationship to that person? Okay, but don't overstay your welcome because time is money and it's already kind of like ticking. So that's part of the craft is like knowing what to ask and what to skip and use your imagination for. But then it's all cold reading. And every time you make a mistake or you mispronounce a word or anything else...

Oh, there's the niche pick. Nice. I like it.

That's on the money of the other person. So you've got to be good at being able to do that as well, technically. And also then as the bonus kind of challenge being like, well, that's great because what I can do is I can take the file and I can put it to the font that I want and I can... No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

All of games, almost all of games for the purposes, the technical purpose of editing... It's going to be on a spreadsheet, which you cannot annotate. So if someone gives you a weird pronunciation of a name, you've got to write it on your body or somewhere if you need to remind it because you can't annotate it as you go or anything else like that.

So it's all about the discipline of being able to take a cold bit of text and immediately kind of give a take on it and know halfway through your first take, what am I going to do with the second take that's going to be different? What little adjustment am I going to make other than going like, I'm going to do it slower? Yeah. I'm going to do it more or less excited.

You know, so it's an interesting and informed take rather than just like, yeah, your first takes are always good and your second takes are always not so good. So yeah, other than that, it's not really that.

And ultimately, it's creative. But it's also the reason why some people will go, well, we'll get an AI to do it. And this is where you frame yourself as like, If you're hiring an actor, then it's because you're interested in their creativity and their choice and what they might bring.

If you're a game dev who literally is like, I know exactly what this sound is that I want, and that's what I want, then you'll use an actor until it becomes cheaper to use an AI to do exactly what it is that you want to do. And I'm not judging you on that one way or the other. If...

If the AI is technically sourced, you know, if it's like sourced legitimately and, you know, with everybody's consent and all of that kind of thing, then sure, go do whatever you want. But that's not what I'm necessarily striving for as an actor is being given line readings is what people would.

say them like this is exactly how you say the line because a lot of directors aren't actors so they'll think it sounds like one thing in their head what actually comes out of their mouths isn't always exactly what they intended so then you're kind of doing almost a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of a not particularly good performance in the first place Like, don't get me wrong.

Like if there's a certain intonation that you need, tell me what the intonation is. I'll find my own way to it and we'll try to do it in as fast a time as possible. But yeah, that's where the kind of like the tension lies. It's like, you've got to be free and easy and creative, but at the same time, tick, tick, clock's running.

In Exile were the devs behind Brad's Tale were one of the first kind of studios that I worked with consistently on that and on another couple of kind of like smaller kind of projects and that kind of thing. And they were always an absolute delight. And the great thing is, is that they are total pros in that there's not lots of endless workshopping. It's like.

Well, I've got a perfect real world example of this, which I think it's totally fine. I've shared it before, which is with Rogue Trade Warhammer, where I play a companion character. I didn't realize that my character was romanceable in any way until we got to a line, which obviously suggested that I was romanceable in some way.

So I kind of said it whilst recording for the first time, but then I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. So, so my character's romanceable in this. And they were like, yeah. I was like, once again, things that could have been brought to my attention yesterday. Immediately thought back to the last eight hours of recording that I'd done going, would I have done anything differently there?

And it was, you know, in terms of the information that was communicated at that particular time, that was just something that had been skipped slightly as a result. So, yeah, it was. And then and so you've got to kind of make these adaptations on the hoof. But we had the writer in all of the recording sessions as well. And that's where trust essentially comes in.

If they're getting what they want, what they need from you, then you've got to trust that. And whatever discoveries happen, happen along the way. And you just kind of got to go with that.

Yeah. Oh, no. I'm sorry. I just, I don't think I would say it like that. No, that's a quick way of just being like incredibly precious. It depends. You've got to read the room. There are some people who are definitely like, yeah, if you want to change it, if you think it's, it's better in a certain other way, then by all means change it, of course.

There are other franchises where it's been through so many different levels before it's reached you. Maybe it's gone through translation and someone's had to sign off on it and all of that. It's kind of like, we cannot change a word.

Do not change you are to your, even if it is more in character for you, because this is what has been signed off in terms of the translation and we will have to re-record it if you insist on recording it in that way because it makes you feel more like an actor. So you just have to have a very honest and open discussion at the get-go in terms of what are the rules with the text.

Can I improvise on this at all? Or with voice acting, there's a lot of what some people call pre-life. So it's the noises, non-verbal noises that you make before or after or during a line, that kind of thing. Some directors love it. Some go like, no, we need a clean cue into it. Don't like warm up into the line and then give me the line after.

well the thing is it's like no we need well the thing is you know um so just act it interesting um so so so you just need to gauge so again you need to be aware of what questions you can ask and how quickly and then make some informed choices off of the back of that wow so i mean i think uh we probably know uh some of the answers to this but like what you're talking about here with the uh directors kind of

They they're like, we know what we want. We've done this a thousand times, but they still give you room for a little bit of creativity as well. So you feel as if you're not just being given line readings. And that's kind of the balancing act with voice acting, especially. It's like you want to be creative and you, you know, you want to give your best and surprise people.

That's arguable how ethically switched that is. I know we're getting to a point where it's like, well, it's a copy of a copy of copy, so who cares, right? It's like, well, a lot of people. But anyway, the one thing that you can't really do well with an AI still is direct it exactly.

You can tell it to speak faster generally or slower or put an emphasis on a different word, but it's still ongoing and it's still laborious. So it's kind of like... that will necessarily take a lot more time to do. Also because there's no cognitive process going through it. It's not understanding what it's saying.

It's literally just kind of rereading the thing, you know, observing whatever emphasis that is there. So that's also an issue I would say. In terms of really nuanced kind of like stuff, it just simply can't do because it doesn't understand what it's saying. And also you will never be surprised. which fundamentally goes back down to why you want to hire voice actors in the first place.

If it's purely just to execute a vision that you've already had, you just need it made flesh, then maybe AI will get there eventually at some stage. But if it's like, oh, no, I want to surround myself with people who are better than me at what they do to up my game and make my writing or my direction or my thing even better...

then I don't trust AI to be able to do that because it's still fundamentally a copy of a copy of a copy and it's predicting going on what's been based before and people's, you know, it's the median. It's the road that's right in the middle.

Whereas, sure, I can give you a really bad choice on lines two or three, but there'll be a bold choice that's out there if that's been kind of like discussed and my whole job is to kind of surprise you and myself. By, oh, actually, that moment could work in a completely different way. Oh, great. Fantastic. Now we're actually learning something.

And it's greater than the sum of its parts, as opposed to only ever as good as the one person.

There's no discovery. Yeah, no, exactly. I'm not saying that every single recording session that I do, I definitely, you know, blow a director's ears off.

What are you talking about? But no, it's fantastic to have the biggest compliment is when someone says, like, I never imagined it was going to be like that, but it works. And it works in a different way because, you know, it's filtered through my experiences and all of those different kind of things. So it's that synthesis, you know, that meeting point. So that's when I think it becomes exciting.

But at the same time, you need to deliver those lines as they need it as quickly as possible. So it's yeah, they were a great team to work with.

And I don't, and I don't know how much of a, this is more in terms of like our, after we've played the game, but that whole thing of like our feeling about the media, Uh, so for example, you know, the actor who played Arthur Morgan, who I've completely blinded.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, like his whole process and how he's spoken about the role and his approach to the role and all of that kind of stuff. is part of the experience of that game. It's going into that Roger, whatever his name is. Yeah, exactly. You know, so delving in kind of behind the scenes in his process and what made Arthur to him and blah, blah, blah.

That's all fascinating. You know, Insight, or Neil Newbon talking about his approach to Astarion and a character that he worked with for four years, and how that character changed massively because of who was playing them.

You know, what Astarion started out as being, and then the thing that, you know, people talk about again and again that Larian did so well is that their writers worked in tandem with the people that they cast. And they then started to write to those people's strengths and go like, okay, this is something that we can build.

So it's a collaborative act as opposed to I'm the genius with all the answers. Do my bidding, children. Try harder until you get it right. And I know which room I would like to be in. That excites me a great deal more. It's why I can't stand Hideo Kojima.

Sorry, I know. No, honestly, I get that too. But I get his whole star thing.

whatever, thing, you get that sense of, oh, he's such an auteur. Yeah, that's one word I'd use for him. It's like, he's probably an incredibly nice guy, and if I ever end up in a project, I'm not now. Just come and bite me on the bum at some point. Like, categorically, definitely. But, yeah, there's just a vibe there that I'm like, that's not a space that I would necessarily thrive with.

And so, yeah, I think that opportunity to really riff, I think is great and can be massively undervalued. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, if I feel replaceable, then I am. And I'm not going to do my best work. Yeah.

I mean, the number one thing is comparison. It's like the, it's the perennial acting. But I think it's, we all do it to a degree. You look at your peers and go like, How have they got that? What are they doing right that I'm doing wrong? Fundamentally. Then you add, you know, social media into the mix because you have to.

And it's amplified even more because obviously, if you're a successful voice actor, you want to leverage that. You have to leverage it. So, you know, you do take that booth selfie or that I'm outside a studio selfie because... it shows people what you're doing. And it's also an affirmation of, yeah, I've got here. Yeah, I'm going to own this. And I'm not going to say like, how dare you?

Having finally got to that, you know, worked with Side Global or OMUK or Pit Stop or whatever on this huge kind of franchise, which because of NDA, you can't talk about, but anyway.

Right.

You know, once you get there, of course you would, because otherwise, what's it all for? It's a celebration of all of your effort and time. However, at the same time, there are at least 20 people all seeing that story and dying slightly inside. I know because I've been on both sides of that every single time. And you can say like, you know, someone else's victory is not my defeat.

But there's still that insecurity always of like, what are they doing right that I'm not doing? And not quite knowing, you know, if there is. It's that lack of autonomy, which is the scary thing. Which is why I try and source my own work by building relationships as much as I possibly can organically.

And then I'll audition for your stuff, but so that I'm one of maybe five or ten options and not one of a hundred options. Because I've been on the other side of casting in the theater world. And I've seen it a little bit in the voice acting world. But for a lot of people, for that first round of auditions, you've got like 100 clips of the same 10 lines.

Your ears aren't going to be as fresh about 20 in. Yeah, yeah. By about 40, you're questioning your will to live. By about 60, what are words? Yeah. By 80, it's kind of like we've only got 20 to go. So, I mean, we should. And by 100, it's like, I don't know what. Did we even press play? I can't.

We don't know. That kind of thing. So that's when you see the whole number of random factors in it. And I think that's probably the toughest thing to do is to kind of like take it on the chin and then keep going and finding ways around it and not questioning yourself too much about it. But you've not got ultimately different directors and different casting people do have different tastes.

So there's not a definitive like, well, this is what you need to do to nail an audition because they have everybody would do it.

Like one casting director who I know is like, if you want to use music in your audition, if you want to change the order of the lines or anything, go for it. Be creative. Make it an opportunity to be as creative as possible. I want to be creative. I want to see your creative response. Make it a fun thing.

It's no surprise that they were originally an actor who's now become a major casting director in video games. There are other video game casting directors who are like, if you do not deliver the exact lines in this exact format, if you ad lib, if you do this, I will automatically delete your audition and move on. And you don't know. You don't know which they're going to be.

So ultimately, you've got to take an educated guess. You do a little bit of research whenever you can. You do workshops. You pay for workshops to learn from these people and what they like and what they don't like. So you can make informed choices. The difference between doing an audition ABC, ABC or AABBCC.

That is a whole kind of huge thing in terms of line orders, and some people prefer one thing and some people prefer something else. So that's it, really. Just trying to keep in the game is the tough spot.

Yeah, I have archetypes. Some people would say they're generalizations. But yeah, there are certain archetypes that you immediately go to. And then I might, I almost certainly will use a little reference like, for example, I use Laban, which is a movement system, which just to make some clear choices. So are they fast or slow? Are they direct or are they indirect?

You know, are they more ringing or are they more pressing? And it's not like this is definitive, but it just kind of gives me a scaffold immediately. Physicality is kind of what leads it. So where do they lead from? Do they lead from the chest? Do they lead from the nose? Do they lead from the back? Do they lead from the belly?

And that will immediately, before you start throwing like, is there a different accent into the mix or anything else like that? It's the breathing pattern, you know, like how encumbered are they? That kind of thing. So just trying to get a sense of the physicality, which will then affect the voice rather than can I make an interesting voice first?

You know, because that's when it becomes some people are great at being able to do that and they work that way around. But that doesn't work for me. Like I don't like record what my voice is doing and listen back and then fine tune it. I've got to go kind of physicality first and then it comes from there. Wow. That's so cool.

I don't need to play the game though to find that stuff now. It's like part of my job is to kind of like find the material so I can build it into my portfolio rather than people, me claim to be in these games, but no one can find the evidence, you know. So that's good. But like I don't have a hundred hours to put into a proper portfolio. playthrough of Rogue Trader.

I'll be completely honest with that. It's my type of game if I had the time to play it. So I've purchased it, I've played the first five hours of it, so I've just met myself. So I was like, okay, I'll stop playing now.

But then I'm more interested in other people's experiences of, you know, the character and, you know, how it's resonated with them, whereas I'd be kind of second-guessing my choices. And for a lot of the stuff, to be honest, whether it's a character where it's like you're mainly just going, how can I die in however many different kind of ways?

Yeah, I'm not going to revisit that because of my performance. Amazing though it may be. It'll be like, either it's my type of game or it's like, oh, yeah, that's me burning to death for... 32.5 seconds. Bang on. Well done.

I didn't ask them. I could have asked them for a key. But no, generally, though, they don't.

Yeah, no, unless I think maybe if you ask, but it's kind of not frowned on. No one ever suggests it. And also, it's quite often with a lot of these, with the bigger games, it's like, so what's this game called? We can't tell you. When's it being released?

To the point where like a game that I didn't, you know, there'll be games released and you're like, oh, is that out now? What was that? I don't know. As people get more savvy and in terms of like the social media possibilities of getting their voice actors on board, that's happening less. But it's still an instance sometimes that you'll just be like, oh, that was that thing. Didn't realize.

So if you just Google NAVA, or NAVA, depending on your accent. Yeah, National Association for Voice Actors. They're mainly based in the US, but they are an international body. Obviously fundraising, yes, for victims of the LA fires. A lot of my friends in LA who have like home studios. So not only have they lost their homes, but they've also lost literally their livelihoods.

as well so but you know what let's let's start off with the really important stuff and that's that you are indeed a gamer at heart right yes yeah yeah so uh right back from uh what zx spectrum was my first thing um so when in the uk you used to get uh magazines uh with little cassettes on the front that you could load up and these were these cassettes that it took 25 minutes to half an hour to load up and played it once yeah

you know the home studios that they've built and constructed to be able to do their work and so uh never never is you know set up this kind of uh gofundme uh and what they're doing is you know people can kind of directly contact them to go into detail about their their particular situations and never will help them out

NAVA are kind of like a fantastic representative body for voice actors generally anyway. They're incredible advocates, especially for rights in terms of AI rights, looking after voice actors in that respect. The rider that even when we were organizing this podcast, I said, could Should we add this to the contract?

Which is great. Yeah, so it's just, it's literally something that any voice actor should make sure is added to their contract if there isn't a clause in there already. Just kind of going like, I'm not giving you my rights to giving you the rights to use my voice once it's recorded in any way kind of possible.

Because that is a stipulation that has been in contracts since the beginning of time of recorded media because no one thought that AI would be a huge thing. So NAVA is kind of first and foremost like giving people tools to kind of counteract that, but educating people. And they also do a lot of kind of free workshops for voice actors at various different levels as well.

So as an organization, they are worth checking out if you're interested in voice acting or you're fans of voice actors at all.

That's why you asked for my card details before this. Yes, exactly.

Zero zero seven. Yeah. Okay.

Oh, gosh. Okay. Ryan, you got to hit us with one.

welcome christopher to the video gamers podcast thank you for coming on and joining us today no i i can't compete with that i have never attempted what are you talking about you're professional i'll be back yeah no it's not happening i'll do it as an orc yeah it's fine but yeah great beautiful oh that was that was that was a thing of beauty well my my bag's empty so yeah that's all he's got yeah i didn't put ryan on the spot he had no idea that was coming by the way

I mean, sometimes that helps, though. Don't get me wrong. I mean, yeah.

Nepo babies.

But yeah, I mean, yeah, sometimes it takes a bit of working.

You immediately died. You had to reload, all of that kind of stuff. Then gravitated to Duck Hunt, then a NES, then a Mega Drive, then a Super Nintendo as well. I managed to straddle that device. Oh, nice. And then PlayStation. I kind of jumped straight there. I had a little dalliance with a Sega Saturn, but that didn't go too far. I'm not going to lie.

Yeah, so I'm now team PlayStation, unless Xbox have any exclusives they want to cast me in. And yeah, have been since then. But it's interesting how my journey has changed, because I think in terms of my own time that I have, it's increasingly limited as a 43-year-old man with various bits. falling off at this stage and other kind of responsibilities.

So the games that I'm most passionate about actually probably being a part of are also the games that I probably have the least amount of time to play, which are the ones that actually have the time to explore a longer narrative, more in-depth characters, all of that exciting kind of stuff.

What that actually means is that 90% of my gaming right now is like FIFA in my pants for 15 minutes before bed because I'm living my best life. Yeah.

Yeah, it keeps you responsible. It's like an accountability group, which is great.

For slow fighting.

Exactly. I wish, you know, I mean, it used to be, it used to be able to justify it as like, oh, okay, I'm doing research. So, you know, all of the different kind of takes on characters or how do you play a protagonist where they could be good or they could be evil?

You know, the whole Jennifer Hale in Mass Effect Masterclass where it's like, you can be, you don't want to be boring and monotone, but at the same time, you don't want to be too evil or too good if the player choices kind of go that kind of way. But now it's kind of like with YouTube playthroughs and everything. It's like, you can just watch. It's fine.

And with Poppy's Playtime, the last thing that you've name-checked, thanks very much for that. I mean, I didn't realize quite what a culture that whole playthrough thing was. Like, the game was released a week ago, and it's got playthroughs with no commentary or minimal commentary with, like, millions of views already. Yeah, yeah. Why? How? I mean, great.

But I mean, the thing with disco also is that I found that it took me a long time to get into it. I think I played that first section, you know, when you're coming to and do you want to just settle in the darkness so you can actually find your tie off the top of the light and look at your weirdly grimacing face in the bathroom. I think I played that through about six times.

Before I really pushed through and was like, okay, what is this game? And, oh, actually I really need to role play. I need to decide what kind of character I want to be rather than trying to, I want to get, there's a right answer to these questions and I just need to figure out exactly the right combination.

So as soon as you actually embrace the gaming element to it and that kind of very Dungeons and Dragons role play aspect of, yeah, I'm super cop. I'm absolutely, I'm the best. I'm amazing. It's great. And actually embrace it on those terms or the alternative. That's when it really comes into its own.

That's when the art style and the vocal performances and the writing and everything just kind of seems to come together. But the first few times, it was the game that everybody told me I should play. And I was just like... There's that really annoying kid I want to beat to death.

Yeah, exactly. So, yeah. But no, I mean, to me, I mean, obviously the fallout of the studio afterwards is kind of like the tragic thing of it. But, you know, of its time, there's nothing quite like it, I don't think.

I don't try to hide it. But, I mean, again, it's one of those things, it's one of those games that when you revisit it, and I've probably replayed that about three or four times with the remastered, remastered, remastered, whatever the hell version it is now. And you do kind of go like, they have cleaned a lot of this up, but some of it's a little janky.

Or you see, in terms of the actual mechanics, you go like, okay, if I... if I want pure adrenaline, this ain't the game. Or if I want pure stealth, this isn't necessarily the game. Or I was much more conscious of the improvements, the mechanical improvements that the sequel made.

Regardless of what you think in terms of like the narrative ambition of the second one, which I personally am a fan of, you know, whether or not you think it succeeded in what it was trying to do or whatever. But yeah, it's not the basic game mechanics that really sell it. for me.

And so I can understand, like, and I think it's especially when someone does, when a title like that is bigged up so much, there's part of me which is like, well, screw you guys. I've got my own sense of taste. I was a bit like that. To be honest, I was a bit like that with Baldur's Gate, which, you know, is a revelatory, don't get me wrong. It's just not my type of game. I get that.

And I think it's a time poor game.

aspect of it but I was just like I fell down into a dungeon and got my ass handed to me like 12 times consecutively and I was like I don't like this and it's like either I make it really easy to the point where the stakes are minimal and I'm like I can't do that or you know or I've got to spend time getting good and that's my problem as a gamer right now is that I don't have the time that I used to have to get good

Hi. Lovely to be here.

And there's something between the difficulty levels of kind of going like, no, this is too easy. And this is bludgeoningly hard. And I only have a limited amount of time. And I'm supposed to be relaxing now. And it is not relaxing. And at the same time, I know countless people who are in that game. It is now very much a reference point for a lot of the casting breakdowns that come out.

through the number of times that I see Astarion as a casting breakdown and you're like oh you know that kind of thing so you've got to be aware of the performances in that game but yeah for the actual mechanics of it I was just like this is overwhelmingly big but an amazing achievement but

So yeah, you can catch up with friends and all of that kind of stuff. And it's like, great. It serves a different purpose.

Yes!

I really can't. I mean, I own both of them, so well done, Nintendo. You got me. You got me good. Capitalism wins. As does all my childhood memories and associations. Because, you know, big fan, especially in the Super Nintendo days. N64, I was away doing other stuff. But yeah, I dropped back into those worlds. And again, there was just overwhelm.

And also, I think, and this is where the kind of narrative experience is, I'm kind of like, what's the story in these games? I'm not, apart from the most formulaic boilerplate, I'm kind of like, what personality has this kid? He doesn't have one. Oh, because he's an avatar of me and I have no personality.

I mean, they are sprouting up. There are quite a few of them. So I think you're timing it absolutely perfectly. Right this way. As every other person goes, that would be a really cool thing to do. I could get into that. I'm sure it's not very difficult or very hard. And here I am to prove that that's the case. They'll let anybody in now.