Mistakes that could have been avoided with high-quality video game dubbing

video game dubbing
By July 21st, 2021 | Voice-over and dubbing | 0 Comments

The video game industry keeps on growing worldwide and there are more people who enjoy this type of entertainment. The year 2020 saw many entertainment activities decrease, but companies dedicated to the creation of video games have hugely increased, up to 20% more than in 2019, reaching a total of 174 billion dollars in sales according to Games Industry data.

Video game dubbing plays an essential part in a new video game succeeding in the markets. Gamers are more demanding and technological solutions make it feasible to offer a positive immersive experience in the game.

For this reason, all factors are important: a good story, good development with quality visuals and game resources and, of course, quality dubbing that will not ruin the product.

What are the benefits of a professional video game dubbing service?

Players would rather play in their language to understand the whole story and the characters’ dialogs. In response to this type of audience, a quality professional dubbing service for video games can be put on the same level as any film production and provides the player with many benefits:

  • It does not distract players from the game’s action because they don’t need to read the subtitles.
  • With voice, the player’s reaction capacity is faster.
  • The player’s experience is more intense.

How is professional dubbing carried out?

Quality professional dubbing involves a process that has several stages that are essential to guaranteeing good results:

  • The text to be dubbed is translated being true to the original, adapting it to the language and culture of the target country if it is required by the idiosyncrasy.
  • After all the texts are reviewed, the most appropriate voice actors for each character are selected and the recording sessions take place.
  • The last step is testing the video game to check the performance is satisfactory.

It is a process that requires voice actors who have high concentration capacity, and who respect the strength and purpose of the original version.

If your company develops video games, you shouldn’t underestimate the importance of dubbing into the countries’ languages where you want to commercialize them. Trying to save on this matter could ruin your internationalization efforts.

And since the best way to put something forward is a good example, we will explain several situations in which bad dubbing ruined some video games’ reputations.

Bad video game dubbing that makes you want to cry

Most of the time, voice dubbing has been given the importance it actually has, but there are some examples of video games that have gone down in history for their terrible dubbing.

Forbidden Siren

A horror and survival video game that’s even scarier when you hear its dubbing into Spanish.

Max Payne 2

A ‘90s classic considered a cult, so you can imagine the reactions to its flat dubbing, more common in documentaries than an action story.

Section 8

This is an example of what good dubbing is not. A combat video game with firearms where the player feels the action through the main character's eyes. Dubbing into Spanish is so bad you want to lose just so you won’t have to keep on listening to it.

Syphon Filter

This action video game is the first one in a series with several installments. A good spy and adventure video game which is even better if you mute it. It’s too bad that the lack of energy and expression in Spanish dubbing ruins the whole game experience.

Arizona Sunshine

The last video game we will mention in this article assures total immersion in an apocalyptic adventure through virtual reality. The dubber’s lack of interest makes that impossible.

Leaving your video game’s dubbing at the hand of amateurs or paying little attention and dedicating few resources to this job is a bad decision that will only ruin all the work and effort put into its development. Consider professional dubbing and don’t risk it.

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