Comment by bluepod4 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bluepod4 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Exactly.

> and I often will play the game on silent with some other source of audio playing alongside.

GP doesn’t listen to any sounds coming from games. That means sound effects, background music, etc.

That claim is so interesting to me. I don’t doubt it. But following GP’s logic, he must also think music composers for games aren’t important either.

Imagine Ocarina of Time being played without sound lol. Or even a music game being played without sound.

Or even games like Overwatch. There might be accessibility modes but if you don’t turn them on, you’re going to be SOL when someone on the enemy team does an audio cue and is about to ult and you can’t see them.

I do play games without sound sometimes. (For example, you don’t really need audio cues for League and I won’t listen to sound if my hair is drying and I don’t want to put the headphones on.) But it depends on the game and the circumstances, of course. That’s what I think a reasonable person would say lol

Back to specifically voice acting, I do recall the Overwatch voice actors having a huge fan base early on.

I agree with the GP,

When I play games I turn off Music, and skip cut scenes, I want to play a game not watch a movie. If i want a movie I watch a movie...

the FPS I only leave on sounds required for the game, and most of the time I have my own music, youtube or some podcast on in the background as i am playing.

For non-FPS games, I turn off the sound completely.

I suspect my style of game play is more common that you would believe.

If voice actors disappears from gaming, I would not notice at all.

> I suspect my style of game play is more common that you would believe.

What % of people playing games do you think play it this way?

Probably most TBH. Thin to the puzzle game players and ranked competitive ppl it's mostly about the mechanics.

The number of ranked competitive FPS players that play without sound cannot be more than 50%.

Most FPS games that have ranked competitive modes put very significant audio cues in. If you’re playing without sound, you’re freely giving up a significant advantage. Often audio is mechanically important.

To add my 2 cents, when I play a text heavy game like a RPG and it has voice acting, I miss most of it because I skip the dialogue as soon as i finish reading it. If you make games please provide a skip button for those of us who can read.

However our preferences aren't the point of the article. It's the actors being cloned by the generative stuff that's in fashion without compensation that is.

As a gamer, based on the output of the image generators and chatgpt that i've seen, games making use of "AI" generated content will be borefests and I'll skip them anyway.

> I want to play a game not watch a movie.

But then you miss out on the story. (Also, cut scenes usually aren’t that long lol.) I do sometimes speed up when NPCs speak because I can read faster. But when I do this too much, it actually begins to feel like the game is pointless.

> I suspect my style of game play is more common that you would believe.

Nope. If you read my original comment, I also acknowledged that I sometimes play games without sound. I also use YouTube while playing games.

>>But then you miss out on the story.

Very rarely do I care.. I am wanting to blow things up, shoot something, etc.

if I want the story I can just go find the YT Video someone made of all the cut scenes played back to back...

//for the record, I am the type that loves spoliers, and reads about the ending of a movie while I am watching it... it does not "spoil" it for me.

I enjoy spoilers also. But if the game is story-driven, then I do feel skipping cutscenes makes me miss out on the story or become confused and start to care less about the game (e.g. Diablo IV)

But yes, a point I made in my original comment is that this all depends on the specific game and your circumstances whether and how much sound you listen to.

What I love about Baldurs gate 3 is how you can skip easily dialog and cut scenes, but what I love is just walking away from the game to do other random stuff and because it's turn based I don't have to pause and I just come back and play a bit whenever and so i take many frequent little breaks.

This is a good point about the music, I do find it important.

But I also pay for musical soundtracks separately if I am able (Bandcamp.com), those musicians can get money from me by making the album available for purchase and I do.

But if I recall the musicians are not on strike and not the topic of the article that was shared.

> But if I recall the musicians are not on strike and not the topic of the article that was shared.

I know, but you said in general that you don’t listen to any sound. Maybe you shouldn’t have ended your original comment like that lol.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com