Exploring the Benefits of Speech Synthesis in the Gaming Industry

In our increasingly technological world, the video game industry is at the forefront of innovation, pushing the boundaries of what is possible with interactive entertainment. One of the latest developments to find its way into games is speech synthesis. Speech synthesis, or text-to-speech (TTS) as experts call it, is the process of creating artificial speech from text.

This technology is already opening up new possibilities for developers, such as more interactive interaction or immersive immersion. Let's break down some of them.

The most notable benefit of speech synthesis is the ability of game characters to communicate with players in a more realistic way. In conjunction with the core AI technology that animates a non-player character (NPC), speech synthesis can act as that character's vocal cords.

Together, such technology allows for a more realistic gaming experience than ever before, as players can interact with NPCs in a more natural way. This stack of technology also allows developers to create games that can respond to players in real time, creating a more interactive and engaging experience.

Also, as a standalone technology, without bringing non-game characters to life, speech synthesis can be used to allow the player to change the name of the character they are playing as to their own. Even such a seemingly small feature can have a strong impact on the game experience, as the connection between the player and his character (his actions, experiences) will become even closer.

Another advantage of speech synthesis is that it can help reduce the cost and speed up the process of roughing up games.

Draft dubbing is a process that happens during game development. The story is constantly changing, the script is rewritten, words are selected, and tests are run. Vertical cutscenes need to be voiced in order to run them, to fully appreciate the experience the player is having. Often these phrases need to be rewritten several times a day or an hour to test as many options as possible before "clean" voicing.

By automating this process, developers can save time and money while creating enough realistic audio tracks to properly test the game scene.

Mods are the eternal youth of any video game.

Most games are forgotten a few months or weeks after their release, even if they were initially successful. This is especially true for single-player games, which offer little replay value after the player has finished the game.

Thanks to speech synthesis, the vast community of mod developers gets a tool that allows them to voice their stories in the original voices of the game's characters. This creates an almost inexhaustible stream of content that keeps the game interesting. Look at Skyrim and you'll see 😊 Or check out the trailer of The Witcher 3 add-on, where SteosVoice coolly voiced the lines of Geralt of Rivia.

A lot of small projects come out with voice-over only in English or without it at all, because it's quite an expensive service.

Thanks to the speech synthesis technology, small teams can give voice to the game in more languages. For example, in English the game is voiced by actors, while the other languages are voiced by speech synthesis.

And thanks to the SteosVoice feature, which allows you to transfer voices to other languages and synthesize audio, the voicing option takes on new colors. For example, the studio can voice the game in another language with voices from the original English voiceover, which can further cement the voice and character connection as a brand.

As you can see, there are a wide range of benefits that voice synthesis can offer the game industry. By allowing developers to create more realistic interaction scenarios, reducing the cost as well as the complexity of voice acting design, speech synthesis is an invaluable tool that can help revolutionize the game industry.