about 3 years ago - Ev1n_NA - Direct link

Thanks for this suggestion! :)

It's obviously something we've thought about before and tried to do a few times - sometimes more, sometimes less successfully.

There are multiple problems we run into with celebrity VOs. For most of the list you posted, who are big Hollywood names the problem is cost. We reached out to Sir Sean Connery (may he rest in peace) years ago and the quote we received was a staggering (though not surprising) 7-figure number, which is simply out of budget for just a voiceover. The numbers vary with the relative "fame" of the actor here, but in general are still much too high in many cases, while the lesser known the actor, the fewer players across the world will know them or associate them with those classic naval movies.

We also were in contact with Bavaria Film for licensing for Das Boot, but that license was already sold to another gaming company. We reached out to them as well, but didn't get to any meaningful stage of negotiations. That's just how it goes sometimes.

Our EU team actually just announced a new commander with the voice of the German voice actor known for multiple dubs, most famously John McClane, so we do try and see whether we can get famous voices on board where possible.

However, we need to strike a balance there between cost, recognition (niche core audience wants this) and distinctive sound (general casual audience thinks this is cool).

Sir Sean Connery for example meets criteria 2 & 3, but didn't meet 1. Cost also scales the other two criteria - i.e. we can do a unique VO that doesn't really satisfy criteria 2 & 3 to the level we want, if it's simply very cheap (in licensing cost). If the licensing cost is low, we can also decide to make it available for in-game resources, while if it's high we usually need to recoup the cost by selling the commander. The production cost and workload is still the same though, and requires that we have room in the production pipeline to put this content into the game.

Other than that our licensing staff also needs to have the time to work on such deals and that's simply not always the case, for example if we're working on something big like Transformers.

All that being said, we're always looking for those options and ideas, so feel free to keep suggesting cool commander options, but keep those criteria i mentioned in the back of your head.

Best,