discussion Why aren't more games voiced?

[bobby7887]

how does one advertise a job for voice actors. the 1st thing that comes to mind is a post on one of them job sites.
look for voice actor,
the role - small female gets fucked by big brother, looking for someone with previous experience in voicing hardcore scenes including non consenting.
must be able to moan, scream, cry (will consider real life experience for the right candidate) ?

 

[DreamingWizard]

Because It's expensive and takes time. Not to mention that if the game allows for your character to have a custom name, you'll have to write all characters to either never mention it, or refer to them as a fixed surname aka. "Commander Shepard" in Mass Effect. AI might cut the costs nowadays though, but I'm not aware of any game that has used it publicly.

 

[Montimer]

Because It's expensive and takes time. Not to mention that if the game allows for your character to have a custom name, you'll have to write all characters to either never mention it, or refer to them as a fixed surname aka. "Commander Shepard" in Mass Effect. AI might cut the costs nowadays though, but I'm not aware of any game that has used it publicly.

Sure thing. AI does cut costs but it's low quality. Lot of the actual good tools cost money too. Certainly less expensive than voice actors but still an expense.
One of bigger issues is time. You still have to make voices for each individual character. You have to generate those audio files. You have to download and save them. Then over time arrange them in order to be coded into the game.
Every single line is an additional line of code that you have to write in order to assign a voice file to a text.

Lot of work for very little gain. That's why, unless it's focus of the game, voice acting comes last.

 

[DreamingWizard]

Sure thing. AI does cut costs but it's low quality. Lot of the actual good tools cost money too. Certainly less expensive than voice actors but still an expense.
One of bigger issues is time. You still have to make voices for each individual character. You have to generate those audio files. You have to download and save them. Then over time arrange them in order to be coded into the game.
Every single line is an additional line of code that you have to write in order to assign a voice file to a text.

Lot of work for very little gain. That's why, unless it's focus of the game, voice acting comes last.

Even with all that you said, that can still require less work than working with an actual voice actor, and the quality of an AI-generated voice varies a lot, it can indeed be very good from what I've seen/heard, and though it can cost money it is still, as you said, less expensive. It doesn't help the fact that many studios seem to think that you need to almost always hire well known voice actors for anything, that's probably why you can see that few actors dub many many characters in many different pieces of media, I wouldn't personally mind if they just hired some nobody or some developer themselves did the voices so long as they do an ok job at it.

I do agree with you that voice acting adds not that much to a game though, most people can convey whatever intent they want with text alone.

 

[Autolycus]

I don't think it adds much, personally, but I'd try it if a game actually went big on it.

 

[Karamchad]

look up VAs prices
specially when games have to be rewritten
it significantly constrains the development
half the size of bg3 is uncompressed dialog

 

[Republican Bear]

Well it costs more money. waste time, and sometimes it's just easier to not add voices.

Though A.I can help I personally don't care for voices in my porn games.

 

[cbarnes1551]

I have experience, technically! Also, I got rated ok compared to other actors but the voicing really destroyed the game's rep. I was paid like $40 but it wasn't worth it on my end since the story wasn't completed before the recording and had to redo entire dialogues unpaid.

My university friend wanted to create a sfw gauntlet(?) like game (rpg/pixel/rogue like) and got pretty far. He also had a couple of backers but only had royalty free sounds. He decided to employ his friends for voices and it was a shit show. Mic quality differed wildly per actor and it was hard for him to follow up for rerecordings. I was his friend so I was always available.

Anyways, 6 months later and he got a workable alpha out and it was terrible. Backers asked for refunds and the friend was out like $9,000. It was sad but the game was ok, just the voicing killed the momentum. It's literally a make or break aspect of game development.

I don't play avn with the sound on anyway since royalty free music pisses me off but if I was a developer, I wouldn't include voicing unless it was a multimillion dollar professional development process.

Just checked for the name of the game but I can't find it. It's initial name was something like, "riders of harmhell" or something but I can't find anything about it. Friend must've scrubbed the game from history.

Wanted to add: I'm open to voice work again but my portfolio was lost when my desktop died. I have only done book reading (a little erotica) professionally and amateur with some translation voice work for children shows (that only aired on douyin) years ago but I can do a try out. I stopped because I was paid less than minimum wage (~$4/hour) but I'm down for anything at this point. This economy is shit

 

[Paradigminant]

Reddit. "gonewildaudio". Literally a community of people whose hobby is voice-acting porn scripts. The collab is just waiting to happen.

 

[BananaJack]

Funnily enough most japanese games i've played tend to be voiced but only have still images with no animations which i found kind of strange.

 

[Seo In-guk]

Bien Well, that takes more time for the developer and also increases the cost, because if you're going to add real voice acting, you have to pay, or at least they have to add AI.

 

[PaganGods08]

VA cost money , it extends time for updates, both in recording and in codeing it into the game , and adds some quality control issues. I would also argue it can take people out of the game if voices don't match the characters.

 

[bigusdickus233]

Reddit. "gonewildaudio". Literally a community of people whose hobby is voice-acting porn scripts. The collab is just waiting to happen.

Damn how has this not happened already, surely rates would be slightly better getting commissions from there.

Slightly off topic, but I"m surprised there haven't been more games trying to incorporate AI voicelines into their games. Not saying I'd be on board with it, the voices to me just sound off and can't imagine they're anywhere near the level of a good lewd VA, but the lack of them is odd considering how popular AI is becoming in this space

 

[Paradigminant]

Damn how has this not happened already, surely rates would be slightly better getting commissions from there.

Slightly off topic, but I"m surprised there haven't been more games trying to incorporate AI voicelines into their games. Not saying I'd be on board with it, the voices to me just sound off and can't imagine they're anywhere near the level of a good lewd VA, but the lack of them is odd considering how popular AI is becoming in this space

I'm sure there's a lot of amateur VA's who would contribute for free to a fun project. Maybe a balance is the answer. AI voice for narration, unimportant stuff. Get some good VA for the scenes where it counts. Or take lines from porn vids, just write your plot around them, there's a lot of games using whole videos already. But I'm not a Dev and don't know what's viable or not.

 

[bigusdickus233]

I'm sure there's a lot of amateur VA's who would contribute for free to a fun project. Maybe a balance is the answer. AI voice for narration, unimportant stuff. Get some good VA for the scenes where it counts. Or take lines from porn vids, just write your plot around them, there's a lot of games using whole videos already. But I'm not a Dev and don't know what's viable or not.

Lot of good points here. I think the hardest part is linking amateur VAs to projects they'd be open to working. Lowkey there might be a business/website idea here

Post automatically merged: May 9, 2026

Man I haven't played a game with real porn clips in a while, the ones that were well done had fitting scenes. I think it's just a hassle fitting your game to a scene/finding a scene, a lot of work. If you could index porn videos on context.... hmm. Man you're giving me some ideas lmao

 

[tias]

How many people want their games to be voiced anyway?
I've played a few games that have moan and giggle sounds, and I always thought they weren't good and ruined the immersion.

 

[Paradigminant]

How many people want their games to be voiced anyway?
I've played a few games that have moan and giggle sounds, and I always thought they weren't good and ruined the immersion.

There's been at least one, but I can't remember the name, where the voice really did improve it.

 

[tias]

There's been at least one, but I can't remember the name, where the voice really did improve it.

I agree that it definitely can be good, but I'm worried that if everyone expects voice acting in their games, a lot of it will be mediocre at best.

 

[bigusdickus233]

How many people want their games to be voiced anyway?
I've played a few games that have moan and giggle sounds, and I always thought they weren't good and ruined the immersion.

idk man, NLT Media games are peak and they're just half-voiced, imagine if they had more

 

[Paradigminant]

I agree that it definitely can be good, but I'm worried that if everyone expects voice acting in their games, a lot of it will be mediocre at best.

I mean, acting is acting. And there's a lot of bad acting out there. Just the nature of art, there's gonna be good stuff and bad stuff. You hope the audience will curate their consumption, but it's just too easy to advertise and MAKE people like your garbage cause you've conditioned them to. Luckily this isn't a corporate-captured market and it's still possible for amateur hobby devs to be passionate, creative, individuals and still access an audience.

Edit: And remember, the acting can only be as good as the writing/directing allows it to be.