np NP Monday, May 27, 2019 [FantasyWasteland-22]

[hkmaly 490]

http://egscomics.com/egsnp/fantasywasteland-22

Those videogame developers are lazy. Seriously, the game is already huge, they COULD include some speech engine for saying the player name. Or, they can just make the player say it and record it. Or, like, not bother with voicing. I'm going to read subtitles anyway, don't want to risk missing something.

And yeah, it's totally raiding. However, it doesn't make them bandits. It's preemptive defense.

[ijuin 572]

If the character is being voiced by an actor, then adding an engine to make the character speak the player character’s name changes the legal nature of the acting contract. Instead of buying the rights to replay a recording of the actor’s speech, they must now also buy the rights to put words in the actor’s mouth, i.e. to make the actor seem to say any arbitrary short utterance. Given that players are wont to putting any sorts of uncouth and obscene phrases as their avatar name, the contract must also then contain protection against defamatory language thus created. For example, such an engine could be used by players to make a famous actor/actress say whatever they wanted, including false incriminating statements, which then get posted online to defame the actor.

[hkmaly 490]

1 hour ago, ijuin said:

If the character is being voiced by an actor, then adding an engine to make the character speak the player character’s name changes the legal nature of the acting contract. Instead of buying the rights to replay a recording of the actor’s speech, they must now also buy the rights to put words in the actor’s mouth, i.e. to make the actor seem to say any arbitrary short utterance. Given that players are wont to putting any sorts of uncouth and obscene phrases as their avatar name, the contract must also then contain protection against defamatory language thus created. For example, such an engine could be used by players to make a famous actor/actress say whatever they wanted, including false incriminating statements, which then get posted online to defame the actor.

... good point. I don't think noname actors can be picky, but in lot of cases the games contains actors famous enough to matter. In fact, I can totally see that NPC voiced by famous actor would use nickname, title or something while less important NPC with noname actor (or off-the-shelf speech engine) will be able to say your name.

Also, I think that player names have limits on length, so you would need to be really creative with that incriminating statement ... or hack the game. However, famous actors would likely consider the risk of hacking the game serious enough.

[ijuin 572]

Heck, just having clips posted on YouTube of them being made to say "I f***ed <insert name here>" would be enough to tarnish some actors' image . . .

[Scotty 1,061]

Just now, hkmaly said:

Those videogame developers are lazy. Seriously, the game is already huge, they COULD include some speech engine for saying the player name. Or, they can just make the player say it and record it. Or, like, not bother with voicing. I'm going to read subtitles anyway, don't want to risk missing something.

Fallout 4 does try by having a number of names recognized and voiced by Codsworth*, which is understandable considering he's the main character's Mr. Handy from before the bombs fell and to everyone else, you're a complete stranger. If they had other characters learn and say your name that would affect the game's file size. Subtitles would work if the voice dialog was off because it'd be kinda jarring to see the name, but hear something else like in "My Time at Portia" where written dialog shows your name, but everyone refers to you as "The New Builder" or there's a pause as an "Insert Name Here" kind of thing.

Just now, hkmaly said:

And yeah, it's totally raiding. However, it doesn't make them bandits. It's preemptive defense.

The raiders themselves have obviously raided before so it's also belated justice.

Just now, ijuin said:

Given that players are wont to putting any sorts of uncouth and obscene phrases as their avatar name, the contract must also then contain protection against defamatory language thus created. For example, such an engine could be used by players to make a famous actor/actress say whatever they wanted, including false incriminating statements, which then get posted online to defame the actor.

Given the above link I gave, I don't think it's possible to created any obscene phrases to defame famous people, though there are some choice words in that list (and I've confirmed they do exist) but my understanding is they're references to other games or movies (there's a bunch from Mad Max for instance).

[hkmaly 490]

12 hours ago, Scotty said:

Fallout 4 does try by having a number of names recognized and voiced by Codsworth*, which is understandable considering he's the main character's Mr. Handy from before the bombs fell and to everyone else, you're a complete stranger. If they had other characters learn and say your name that would affect the game's file size. Subtitles would work if the voice dialog was off because it'd be kinda jarring to see the name, but hear something else like in "My Time at Portia" where written dialog shows your name, but everyone refers to you as "The New Builder" or there's a pause as an "Insert Name Here" kind of thing.

Such method however wouldn't work in MMORPG ... or with players so used to MMORPG they put numbers in their name in EVERY game.

At least until someone finally realizes that there is REASON why people in reality don't have just single name. I mean, lot of games don't allow you to put space in name and NONE will realize that if you put your name as "Carmen Elizabeth Juanita Echo Sky Brava Cortez" you expect to be called just Carmen, and if you put "Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus" you expect to be called Claudius. At least as far as I know.

(Obviously, the game would need to ASK for both full and short name, as even full AI will have no chance to guess correctly.)

12 hours ago, Scotty said:

17 hours ago, hkmaly said:

And yeah, it's totally raiding. However, it doesn't make them bandits. It's preemptive defense.

The raiders themselves have obviously raided before so it's also belated justice.

Might not be THAT much belated. Usually it's not that long since they raided last time.

 

[ChronosCat 155]

The whole issue with names and voice acting was the main reason that for several years I thought that voice acting in video games was a bad idea. Of course I now realize I was overlooking games where they don't let you change the character names; in those cases voice acting works fine (though old-school gamer that I am it still feels like an unnecessary embellishment to me). I still think that games where you can change the names are better off without voice acting (or with very limited voice acting); after all if the names you give the characters aren't used in the game, what's the point in naming them in the first place? (To this day, it still bugs me that Zelda calls the player character "Link" no matter what you named him in the first quest of the original Legend of Zelda.)

[hkmaly 490]

4 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

The whole issue with names and voice acting was the main reason that for several years I thought that voice acting in video games was a bad idea.

4 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

after all if the names you give the characters aren't used in the game, what's the point in naming them in the first place?

Unfortunately, some people would conclude from those two that allowing player to (re)name characters is bad idea ...

Seriously, nothing against Ellen McLain, but speech synthesizers are getting better and better: why couldn't game be voiced completely by synthesizers, especially in settings where those would be used in-universe?

[ijuin 572]

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Unfortunately, some people would conclude from those two that allowing player to (re)name characters is bad idea ...

Seriously, nothing against Ellen McLain, but speech synthesizers are getting better and better: why couldn't game be voiced completely by synthesizers, especially in settings where those would be used in-universe?

Voice Actor's Guild rules, probably. Any company who tried to use speech synthesizers to avoid using human actors would get boycotted by the actors and would thus have to rely on ONLY ever using speech synthesis.

[hkmaly 490]

2 hours ago, ijuin said:

5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Unfortunately, some people would conclude from those two that allowing player to (re)name characters is bad idea ...

Seriously, nothing against Ellen McLain, but speech synthesizers are getting better and better: why couldn't game be voiced completely by synthesizers, especially in settings where those would be used in-universe?

Voice Actor's Guild rules, probably. Any company who tried to use speech synthesizers to avoid using human actors would get boycotted by the actors and would thus have to rely on ONLY ever using speech synthesis.

Hmmm ... based on the recent voice actor strike, I suspect that there would be enough non-unioned voice actors available ... of course, they could lose small but profitable group of actors who are in union.

[ChronosCat 155]

18 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Unfortunately, some people would conclude from those two that allowing player to (re)name characters is bad idea ...

Well, there's always been plenty of games that don't allow you to rename the main character. I'm perfectly fine with it in games where the player's actions have little or no impact on the course of the story or the personalities of the main characters (whether it's a plot-light action game where the story is an afterthought, or a highly-railroaded RPG)

The types of games where I think being able to name your character are the most important are the ones where the main character is a blank slate for you to shape as you see fit, and/or where the choices you make have a big influence on the course of the story. In other words, games that put the "role play" in RPG. I'd hate to see the ability to choose your name to not be included in that sort of game just because of the voice acting challenges (particularly as I don't really care about voice acting), but on the other hand it's not like people usually get to choose their names in real life, so I don't think it would ruin the game either.

(Actually, one idea that occurs to me, similar to what Scotty was mentioning with Fallout 4 but more limited if I'm understanding it correctly: the game's writers could come up with a small selection of "in theme" names for the player to choose between. If it's not too many names, it shouldn't increase the file size that much to record them in all the necessary voices.)

[hkmaly 490]

5 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

Actually, one idea that occurs to me, similar to what Scotty was mentioning with Fallout 4 but more limited if I'm understanding it correctly: the game's writers could come up with a small selection of "in theme" names for the player to choose between. If it's not too many names, it shouldn't increase the file size that much to record them in all the necessary voices.

The thing is the Fallout 4 list is NOT official. What you propose seems more like actually giving player choice which of predefined set of names he would use.

... I don't think any game tried, but it might be interesting alternative ...

 

[ChronosCat 155]

8 hours ago, hkmaly said:

The thing is the Fallout 4 list is NOT official. What you propose seems more like actually giving player choice which of predefined set of names he would use.

Yes, that's what I'm proposing. And I did gather that the way they do it in Fallout 4 is different, I just wanted to give Scotty credit for mentioning something that sounded similar.