Facebook likes to remind us of ‘anniversaries.’ Today, one popped up (click on the image to the left). And I thought … wow, this is a time capsule isn’t it. Read on, as I share with you a “Bittersweet production tale with a silver lining… ie how an Alexa Skill helped keep me ‘in the Game’
Bittersweet production tale with a silver lining… ie how an Alexa Skill helped keep me in ‘the Game’
This was my first time presenting at GDC without being tied to game company, having parted ways with Schell Games a couple months prior. Even though I was going through a hard time, now on my own, and no longer part of a company that I had given more than half a decade of my life to, I was still very proud of the projects I was involved in during my time there, and thankful for the relationships I had built.
This included an Alexa game that I produced, the “Baker Street Experience”, a fully voice acted and sound designed interactive audio play that my small but passionate team created during ‘Jam Week’ the summer prior. This was right on the cusp of when Alexa was being turned into a game/playable device. I remember pushing over and over again for the company to let us actually hit the button to publish the game, i.e. Alexa Skill, and the pushback was ‘there’s no money in it’. Finally, it went live, and gained popularity. I found out after I was gone, through a colleague still onsite, that Amazon did eventually send them a check for not-a-small-sum for the skill being very popular.
I had submitted our talk, “Telling Story Through Sound: Building an Interactive ‘radio play’“, along with team member Michael Lee, shortly after we finished the project, targeted for the Narrative Summit, which I intentionally submitted to INSTEAD of to the Audio track, because… well… you can talk to audio people saying “audio is great, use real voice actors instead of robovoice!” and… well we all agree. Talking to Narrative Designers and Producers and other non-audio types was critical.
The talk was accepted after I was let go, which was bittersweet to say the least… but, after checking with legal, I was still ‘allowed’ to talk about the project as it was public/published, and our names were tied to it. So, a title change on the slide deck to establish that I now worked for myself, and my soon-to-be-official LLC, BlackCatBonifide, and we were good to go.
Our presentation was a huge success, and helped introduce me to a new world of opportunities, interviews, speaking opportunities, projects, clients, and colleagues. Six years later (wow.. how has it been six years???) I have worked on more games, audio drama and interactive audio productions than I can count. If we hadn’t created such a fun project during Jam Week, if I hadn’t pushed for them to let us make the game public/publish it online, and if I hadn’t submitted that proposal to GDC… I don’t know where I would be right now and if I would have stayed connected to the game industry at large and have gone on to form my own biz.
(The talk was one of two carryovers of projects I worked on at SG that were featured at GDC, as the theme song we wrote for I Expect You To Die was nominated for best (pop) song of the year for the audio industry awards. Seeing that game title up on the big screen and hearing a sample of my voice singing during that awards ceremony was just so… (insert anime teary eyes here). We did not win, but to be one of the finalists and get that recognition opened doors for oodles of voice work that came after)
The audio fiction and gaming industry has changed so much in six years, and, for voice actors and sound peeps, for the better. I look forward to continuing to encourage and promote live voice actors for audio fiction projects, instead of the AI-RoboVoice-Synth Voice empire which is now looming over us more than ever.
Every project has people behind it, and I am thankful to have been a part of each project, big or small, like this tiny Alexa game, I have been a part of. You never know where those experiences and relationships will take you.
I am glad to still be a part of the game audio and voice community, and can’t wait to see what comes next.