Seven practical steps to becoming a voice actor in games

gamesindustry.biz:

This article is part of our Get into Games special, offering students insight on life in the games industry and advice on how to get into the business

As a huge global business rivalling the film and music industries, there is a lot that goes into the making of a game, and as we've seen more games focus on being story-driven and having an emotional connection with players, quality music, writing, and acting has become even more important.

Voice actor and coach JD Kelly believes that the opportunities are abundant and varied in that field, even if you might not think a certain game's main focus is on voice acting.

"You've got games like Half-Life where the lead character has no voice, but you need the other voice actors to create the world around them so you can put yourself in that silent protagonist's shoes," he explained during an EGX 2023 panel dedicated to voice acting in the video games industry. "Then you've got named characters that you sympathise and empathise with, like in The Last of Us; characters where you put yourself in some of their shoes like in Saints Row, and where you get to choose a voice, or Baldur's Gate 3, which has either a custom character's voice, or you've got the other companions where you can play as those characters, and they have their own backstories so the voice actor needs to happen in multiple different ways."

The possibilities extend to voices for smaller non-playable character roles, actors who specialise in creature voices, or even just as a narrator or announcer for a trailer or an awards show. And if you worry you only have one kind of voice, like a nasal voice, there's going to be roles for those parts too.

But while voice acting can be very fun work that Kelly described as "the best feeling in the world," and the ability to work remotely in your own home studio makes it an accessible profession to get into, there's also more to it than just getting a microphone and becoming a character. Here's seven practical considerations he