Voice Cloning for Video Games: How Game Developers Can Benefit from Synthetic Voices

In order to develop a quality video game, developers should employ VO actors. Finding and hiring these actors takes time and requires a significant financial investment. However, with voice synthesizing technology, things are changing.

Let’s dive into voice synthesizing technology to see how it can change the video game industry.

What is voice cloning, and how does it work?

Voice cloning is the process of synthesizing a human voice through the use of an AI-powered system so that it sounds like the real one.

There are two main methods of synthetic voice generation:

1. Text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis. In this case, the computer reads the written text, which, in turn, is recorded.
2. Speech-to-speech (STS) voice synthesis. This process is powered by AI and ML, which create a model of the original voice based on the recording.

The STS generation process is extremely valuable when you need to dub a video game character, but the original voice actor is no longer available, or you don’t have access to them.

This is how STS voice cloning works with Respeecher:

1. You should have one high-quality hour-long audio recording of the voice that needs to be cloned.
2. Voice cloning software feeds this recording into the machine learning algorithms. Make sure that the original speech contains the required number of emotional highs and lows. Assuming this requirement is met, the synthetic model will be more accurate.
3. Once the model is ready, it is possible to generate as much audio content as you want. All that is needed to do is to record the necessary speech.
4. In the end, the software transforms the person’s recorded voice into the original actor’s voice. This step involves morphing every speech characteristic into the real actor’s voice.

With the help of synthetic voices, video game producers don’t have to depend on dubbing actors as they can create any necessary audio content whenever they need it.

How synthetic voice generation revolutionizes game production

Some of the most significant benefits of voice cloning technology for the gaming industry include:

• Celebrities taking part in your project. You get their voices and save time and resources on meeting with them for every new dubbing session. A star can provide a single, hour-long voice recording. Based on this, voice cloning software will generate unlimited audio content using another voice actor’s voice as the source.
• Resurrecting voices. If you are developing a game and characters based on historical events, you may need to have original voices from those times. All you need is a recording of those voices and a voice actor whose voice is then transformed into the target voice.
• Child actors dubbing is made easy. When children grow up, their voices change. This can become a real problem when your project needs the same voice as the child. With the help of voice synthesis, you can keep the original voice and generate new content based on previous recordings.
• Easily adding adjustments to game content. In case of edits, there is no longer any need to work with a voice actor to fix something or add changes. A sound engineer can simply implement the necessary modifications.
• Using your best VO more often. The nature of the voice synthesis technology is gender-agnostic, allowing female-to-male voice conversion and vice-versa.

Respeecher allows you to take advantage of all these benefits and more by providing you with a library of pre-existing target voices. These voices do not belong to any particular person but are a combination of characteristics from several voice actors. Respeecher’s marketplace is the most accessible source of synthetic voices in the world, allowing you to minimize the price of sound production for your game without having to worry about copyright infringement.

You can find more information on the Voice Marketplace page. It is available for free for your first seven days, so you can experience every benefit for yourself.

This article has initially been published by Respeecher as a guest post on NY Press News.