And the mask comes off.

[Power Gamer]

downix,
VO is way over charging at $100/min. You are paying for the shiny logo and smiles.

Having sold advertising and marketing in large metro areas, I can tell you that voice talent is not paid by the minute.

They are paid by the unit of work.

I hired voice talent for extremely reasonable prices.

[hopelives]

1. I don't understand this idea that the day Windows 9 is released, it will drop a nuclear warhead on CoX from which the game will never recover. What? I don't recall any other Windows release that bothered us who were playing this game, why is 9 some unthinkable Armageddon/DOOM?

2. Do YOU run out and buy the new Windows the day it is released, and install it right away? I sure don't. In fact, I don't bother upgrading until.... I buy a new computer. I would be more than willing to maintain two PCs JUST to run this game, were that necessary.

But we don't yet know that it will be.

3. Windows 9 will be here looooooooooooooooooong before CoT/CoX2. Not much of a transition, if you ask me.

   I will just say this about that,lol, if i23 comes back to us alive,and somehow it couldn't be made to work on win-9, then to blazes with win-9, I'll stick with 7 and be happy

[Surelle]

For the record...I could give a crap less about voice acting..

I'm with you.  I couldn't care less about voice acting either.  Quite frankly, if we get i23 CoX back without any account data, that alone will be a miracle.  All this other silly stuff being repeatedly stubbornly over and over is completely unimportant.

[Goddangit]

And it can be done much cheaper. Some quality voice acting talent work for 25 dollars a page for non-broadcast work.

Hell, I'm not a professional, but I have a pretty versatile voice and I'd PAY to do it.  All I'd ask is if someone asked "Who is voicing that guy?" you let them know.  Who knows?  It may bring me more voice work.

And do I think it needs it?  No.  But if you add it those who don't like it should have the option to mute it.

[ivanhedgehog]

There is no $6k investment here. It's a $10,000,000 investment.

swtor spent a rediculous amount on VO, and skimped on the rest of the game

[RedWarlock]

APR and the i23 server are completely separate. The i23 server (what some have started referring to as "Legacy City of Heroes" when also talking about APR) is going to be running City of heroes, Issue 23. It will not/can not be updated, as the source code is not being made available. (This is required for modifying either the server or client in any meaningful way.)

Atlas Park Revival (A.K.A: APR, Revival, CoH 1.5, CoH 2, "Wow, That's pretty.") is a project that is re-building the entirety of City of Heroes inside a more modern game engine. Specifically, Unreal Engine 4. It will be the same City, same game play, same lore and enemies. But it will be running on new technology that will allow us to update the game almost indefinitely, as well as do things that were nearly impossible with the old engine.
If you'd like to know more: http://apr.pc-logix.com/index.php?/topic/62-revival-faq-and-discussion/

Thank you Irish Girl for the clarification. I was a big supporter of the CoT Kickstarter campaign because I got inspired. Your project looks really amazing too - if you do a Kickstarter campaign, I will contribute to yours like I did for CoT. Count me among those who thinks that well done Super Hero MMOs can coexist and have a workable business model that can fund them. What I love about this whole effort is that we are re imagining the possibilities for creating and funding games. We are pushing back against the idea that big companies need to set the agenda for what we all will pay to play. We can set the agenda.

Thanks for all the great work all of you are doing to create the next generation of our creative world.

[downix]

Excuse me?

Did you say 10 million dollars?

Is that the asking price for what NcSoft is offering?

No, that is how much it would cost to meet the level of voice acting suggested, using standard rates.

[Mandrake]

PRE-EDIT: Wrote up a huge industry post about this since I have worked in it and still do on the side. It doesn't matter, I will just say this:

The money being talked about here is not even close to being realistic. If you can find real voice actors to do a good job that do multiple voices for $6k for an entire MMO? Please send me their names because I could make a friggin' fortune off of those people. Literally a fortune if they are really any good at all. As in, I could retire inside of 2 years.

So if you want to pay bottom dollar and get a crappy sounding game - I guess. If not, then the price is ridiculous for this kind of project when it is completely not needed. Remember you need more than one man and woman. Most can only do 3 to 5 believably different voices if they are good. There are a lot of toons in CoX and a ton of content.

Some people might like voice work - to me and many others it just shatters the role playing experience because it breaks whatever voice you have created and attached to that character in your mind.

I would say that if you really want voice over work, then research it start to finish with all content required, get with the companies, find out how much it will cost, and get it funded - then approach whoever about making a version of the game or an option within the game for that or something. I for one do not want voice overs in the game to ruin what I already have in my mind for the characters I love in CoX. As far as the new projects coming out - it's up to them but I hope there is an option to disable any voice overs if they go with them.

Later!
Mandrake

[downix]

downix,
VO is way over charging at $100/min. You are paying for the shiny logo and smiles.

Having sold advertising and marketing in large metro areas, I can tell you that voice talent is not paid by the minute.

They are paid by the unit of work.

I hired voice talent for extremely reasonable prices.

$100/min of finished audio VO work is cheap. I've seen it go to the tens of thousands.

VO work is more than just the voice actors, it is the producers, the sound engineers, the mixers, the studio rental.

And realize that you need to run the same dialog over multiple times, one for each language supported. It is not hard to see how you can get 100k minutes of dialog quickly.

[downix]

I would say that if you really want voice over work, then research it start to finish with all content required, get with the companies, find out how much it will cost, and get it funded - then approach whoever about making a version of the game or an option within the game for that or something.

That's close to what we did, only we did several breakdowns - for all VO, for just cutscenes, for tutorials, and used preliminary estimates of the content volume involved.

[Tiberian Fiend]

Voice acting is nice, but I turned the sound off in CoH after the first 3-4 years and started tuning in to internet radio.

[HEATSTROKE]

On a completely different note..

Downix how do you see the current wave of press affecting negotiations if at all?

[AlienOne]

Me thinks the people can negotiate this with NC Soft while also paying them X amount of dollars just to access the data. They will say, we don't want access to the information, but we will negotiate a price for the end users to have access to that data. If that end user is willing to pay to have their data retrieved, then you can charge them X more amount of dollars individually. In a sense this will have NC Soft double dipping for the same piece of information and will probably be incising enough for them to release it.

I like the way you think.

[Sugoi]

First of all, let me apologize for stating the following, which may upset some people, but they're based on my opinions, which I believe I'm entitled to, as much as you are to yours.

So, Catching up on several discussion threads here:

1)  AAA MMORPGs?  All I can say is "One Person's Treasure is Another Person's Trash"  Spare me another over-hyped Elf, Troll, Demon-laden fantasy world.  It may be mean of me, but I've gotten a bit of enjoyment out of reading all the spin-meisters at MMORPG.com and other sites trying to
sell the next "latest and greatest of all" MMOs to what seems to be a bunch of drooling, mindless followers, who give a game they haven't even played yet almost perfect scores on the website's game lists.  Of course a month after the latest MMO has been released, most of the players who just couldn't wait for the "Ultimate Experience" have run off to the next MMO 'event'.  Ah, the public can be so fickle.

2) Voice acting in MMOs.  Personally, I consider it to be a nice option for those who read at the pace of a snail, or have other reading disabilities.  As long as it's included as a bypassable option, I can live with VOs.  My main problem with Voice Overs is that I can read the text quite a bit quicker than it is normally spoken, and I usually know where it's going to end up anyhow, so I consider VOs to be a waste of my time. YMMV.

3) Quite a few people seem worried about the transfer of account data (which may or may not still exist) between NCSoft and the prospective new IP Owners, for the purposes of Awards, Badges, etc.  Tabbing to another window, thru the City Info Tracker site I've got a pretty comprehensive list of my characters' badges, etc, with ownership validated via communication with the game when it was still active. Is there any way that info could be used by the prospective IP Managers to reinstate earned items to our re-created characters? I'm really surprised I haven't seen any mention of that option here, since people keep asking about Sentinel data transfers (which aren't accepted for various reasons.)

Next Year in Paragon City!

Sugoi

[opprime2828]

I wouldn't have a problem with everyone being a "veteran".    I might even suggest that most of the players will be long time vets.   It was that way at shutdown and everything was ok.   I can't see a downside.

I think the simplest way to do it is to have a "sped up" vet reward system upon launch, in reverse.  You can basically "rebuy" your vet rewards at launch for a one time fee for a limited time.  x amount per tier.  The first week of launch you can rebuy up to the last tier, for x amount.  The second week, you can buy up to the second to last tier, for x amount, and pay and additional y amount for the final tier, the next week x amount gets you to the third to last tier, and you have to pay extra for the last two, etc.   
 
This way the game gets some much needed capital, players are incentivized to return quickly because the faster they are back the cheaper the vet rewards are, etc. 

 
I would also extend this temporary sale to players who can purchase unlocked level 50s, recipe sets, etc. for a limited time, to help get the game back to full, thriving, hussel and bussel. The faster we have hamis going, incarnate trials, etc. along with new toons the more likely this is to succeed.

 
 

[opprime2828]

Your argument falls apart. You said $6k for everything, but then $25/page. Both of these numbers are suspect, so let's go and look at what real professionals cost, and how much VO runtime real game titles have.

For a typical MMORPG, we are talking about 100,000 minutes of dialog to voice. According to Interactive Voices, Inc, one of the largest VO management groups in the US, the going rate is $100 per minute of recorded dialog. That's $10 million to record.

Downix I'm not sure where you're getting your figures from, but the figures I used are direct quotes from actual companies. As I said, I have experience with this.  And the 25 dollars per page is for total narration (as in audio book,) not pages of dialogue.
 
It's honestly NOT an expensive feature, as the poster who said their wife actually works in the field as well verified.  And Interactive Voices is for broadcast level, unionized voice work.  That's like saying we can't use Unreal 4 because it would be too expensive for players and citing an Alienware quote for $5000 per PC.
 
Also, as I pointed out, you wouldn't be doing a TSW level voice acting install, which would be 100,000 minutes. We're talking, at most, 2 hours for all TFs, plus a few hours of ambient dialogue. 
 
Just enough to removed the "Dated" feel from a text based game and make it seem less like a "quality" issue and more like a designer's choice to rely heavily on text.
 
If you'd like, I can post -links- to companies that provide quality voice over work/talent at the prices I'm describing.   
 
And again, that ignores the option I gave of tapping into the community.  Having worked in the production field I'm promising you you could EASILY come up with a volunteer voice over group that would record these for free, and you can still play quality control and make sure it sounds professional, just like you're doing right now with Irish Girl and APR. 
 

[opprime2828]

No, that is how much it would cost to meet the level of voice acting suggested, using standard rates.

 
No disrespect Downix, but you're wrong on this one. 
 
 
Just plain wrong. 
 
And you've now got three people who have worked in this exact field telling you so.   You're comparing budgets and companies used in AAA productions to what we're talking about, and that makes no sense.  If we had that mentality, CoT would never have made it out of kickstarter. It's like someone saying "you can't make an MMO for less than a million dollar kick starter.  Star Wars The Old Republic cost 200 million to make."
 
Sure, it did.  But you aren't making ST:TOR and it didn't HAVE to cost that much. 

[Power Gamer]

$100/min of finished audio VO work is cheap. I've seen it go to the tens of thousands.

VO work is more than just the voice actors, it is the producers, the sound engineers, the mixers, the studio rental.

And realize that you need to run the same dialog over multiple times, one for each language supported. It is not hard to see how you can get 100k minutes of dialog quickly.

I've done just that for nowhere near the outrageous prices  you have been quote, using WELL KNOWN talent, employing sound engineers and so on.

Your prices in no way represent the actual market value.
 Peace on!

[opprime2828]

And for the my last post:
 

 
If you were actually going with big-screen actors, the SAG rates for voice-over work are $760 per four hour session.  Four hours.  Those are the guild rates.  I'm not sure what the heck someone is doing paying 100 dollars per minute. This rate, by the way, is for big name screen and VO stars like Keith David, etc. 
 
Which I don't think anyone would even think of suggesting be used.


Also, voice-over recording is very simple, technically, and doesn't require a professional studio any fancier than what the game will already be using to create sound effects.
 
 
I mean heck, in my basic IB Film class I require students to do a sound design project where they have to create an entire scene, complete with voice-over talent, complete foleying, and score, and they do it in three days as high schoolers.
 
And the most of it is better than what you hear in Champions Online and DCUO. And they're only using the Adobe Creative suite, pop filters, shotgun mics, etc.

 
Ok, I'm done now. It's really not a deal breaker for me. Just something I think would bring in more, in the long run, than it would cost to implement, and help any game released survive a little longer into the future. 
 
Also Downix, for the record, good work. I'm incredibly excited for WHATEVER you guys come up with, whatever happens with this deal. You guys rock.  :-) 
 

[lapucelle]

Okay, guys. No dying on this hill. Right now, with our _extremely_ limited budget, we're not looking into doing voice acting. We are leaving the potential for adding such into the game later, but it's probably not something we're going to launch with, for a number of reasons, not all of which involve purely monetary matters.

If we were, in fact, to add voice acting, it would be for cinematic moments, and for short greeting phrases, much in the way Wildstar does - I independently thought of the concept before it launched into beta. Enough flavor to get the feel of the person you're talking to, but not to read the entire dialogue.

We cool?

- Warcabbit