Dear Gaming Industry,
Some days ago I bought myself a copy of Burnout Paradise for our new PlayStation3. Awesome game, really. But once again you managed to screw it up with a horrible german dubbing. If you don't know what I mean by this, I dare you to try to listen to the introductory voice-over without cringing or turning into a hysterical giggling mess.
Burnout Paradise Intro with german dubbing (audio only). For comparison, here's an examplatory video with the original english voice-over which actually is no model example of good voice acting either but still better by lengths than the screwed up german version.
Horrible, isn't it? And it even gets worse.
First steps in Burnout Paradise, again with german dubbing (audio only).
Ah, the wonderful world of german dubbing in video games. Yes, this isn't the first time a game has been ruined by horrible accentuation, monotonous talking, want-to-be-hip denglish or wrong emotional engagement. You see, it actually is a standard problem with games being translated to german: most of the voice acting simply sounds like your employees just pulled some random people off the streets, stuffed them into a lousy sound studio and gave them some sheets with dialog to babble into the mic, leaving out any hints as to HOW to do this of course.
If you now ask yourself why this is a problem, I'm tempted to doubt your competence in terms of what makes a good game a good game. But just for clarification: Sound, including the background score, the sound effects and especially the voice acting, is an important part of the atmosphere in a game (you might be surprised, but fancy graphics indeed is not everything). Take this example from Half-Life 2.
Gruesome german G-Man.
I don't know about you, but I simply can't help but to giggle uncontrollably at that voices, and that is probably not exactly the reaction intended by you for this scene, right? I didn't think so. Thankfully, most game studios seem to get it right these days with the original version, just listen in to Mass Effect or Bioshock. But as soon as dubbing is involved, it all goes to hell very quickly. You can see this especially in Germany, were most games are dubbed, and badly. Additionally throw in EA as the publisher, and you can get the most horrible experience out of it.
How can you solve this problem, you ask? An easy first step would be to stop that paternalism of yours regarding the language I can buy my games in depending on where I live. Just have the common decency to include the english1) and the original (e.g. japanese) dub of a game on the disc as well, or at least provide it as additional downloadable content. We live in times of broadband internet and enormous amounts of disc space, so the logistics of pulling this off should really be a no-brainer, irregardless of whether we are talking console or PC here. And please make sure any included subtitles are optional if you don't dub the game, because the quality of the (german) subtitles is equally questionable.
In the meantime, I did order a second copy of Burnout Paradise in the UK and am trying hard to ignore the stupid babbling of Miss “DJ Atomica” in my german version until it arrives. As soon as it does, the german disc will be sold again, I can assure you of that. It would be great if there was a near future where I could save myself that hassle.
Kind regards,
~ foosel
PS: Oh, one more thing… while you are at it, could you maybe also talk to your buddies over in the movie industry? Because, honestly, the same is true for dubbing of movies and tv shows2). The situation there isn't that bad though as with video games thankfully, because DVDs are already at the point where they contain the original sound track as well. But still… I can haz quality assurance plz?