When it comes to monsters or creature sounds in video games, even long-time gamers might not immediately stop and think about how those kinds of noises are created. However, that’s the sign of voice acting done well, asThe Monster Factory’s CEO and metal vocalist Sébastien Croteau told Game Rant at Gamescom LATAM. The Monster Factory is a company that specializes in sound creation for monsters, zombies, aliens, and more across the video game, film, and TV industries. This includes voice talent heard by millions in over 40 projects, with one recent example being the voice of the Flying Entities coming out of Vecna and the Mimic Chest inDead by Daylight’sDungeons and Dragonscrossover.
Having worked in the industry for 19 years, Croteau himself also has an extensive list of roles to his name, includingAssassin’s Creed 2,Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy(the video game),Hellblade 2, andBaldur’s Gate 3, among many others. While these are well-known franchises, it seems the work of a vocal stunt performer is less about being in the spotlight. Game Rant recently had the opportunity to speak with Croteau atGamescom LATAMabout what it’s like being a creature voice actor today. Croteau also talked about how voice acting has changed over the years and how to have a successful career in this sector of the industry.The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
The Monster Factory CEO’s Thoughts on Heavy Metal in the History of Video Games
Q: What are your thoughts on the unique relationship that heavy metal has had with video games over the years?
A:The relationship betweenheavy metal and video games, for me, has always been somewhat of a natural one. Because when you look at video games or some themes in video games, there are elements of heavy metal. Metal music is mostly about dark stuff or rebellion: rebellion against the system or even dark satanic serial killer stuff. It’s everything that is weird and dark.
When you listen, we have more and more metal music. When you think aboutMetal Hellsinger, more and more now you find that there are tiny bits and pieces of metal music that are being implemented in games. It works because sometimes you are in a very intense scene, and you want the music to match the intensity of what’s happening. Metal music can provide plenty of intensity.
There’s more if we look back at just voices. Mike Patton, for me, was one of the first metal vocalists to voice one of thecharacters inThe Darkness. After that, there were a few people here and there, but there’s more if you look at what I started to do - I started to do voices for monsters in 2005. I’ve been doing metal voices for creatures and monsters for almost 19 years.
In video games, people have been hearing metal vocalists without knowing that it was a vocalist. You know, inAssassins Creed 2, I did the voice where you poison someone, and they’re choking on their mucus, right?[Does choking sound]
That was me. They paid me to choke for two hours because they couldn’t find an actor who could do that for two hours and not vomit after 20 minutes of that.[laughs]
After that, they asked me forPrince of Persiaand other stuff. In the last 19 years, I’ve probably voiced more than 300creatures and monsters in video games. The funny thing is, for people in general, when they listen to a metal voice with metal music, they’re like, “Urgh, it’s just screamy. It’s just noise - I don’t like it.” They feel aggressed by this type of music, but the funny thing is, if you take out the music, you take that voice, and you put on a monster in a video game, now the same people say, “Oh, that is a good monster sound.” It’s kind of a sneaky way that I found to give those people metal voices without them knowing it.
You’re getting the metal one way or another.
Yeah, exactly. It’s one of the things that I love about voice acting. When you’re playing any music or are in ametal band, you seek attention. You have to be on social media all the time. You have to publish because it’s always seeking attention on Instagram, on TikTok, and on this or that. You have to always be present there because there are so many bands out there. If you want to keep the focus on your band, you’ve got to produce a lot of content all the time, right? You need to be under the spotlight all the time. That’s the game when you’re in music.
In voice acting - I cannot talk about what I’m working on. I cannot show what I’m working on sometimes for a year, two years, three years. I live in the shadows, and I don’t care about how many likes I have on Instagram. I don’t care about how many likes I have on TikTok. I do publish on TikTok and Instagram, but it’s by default. I don’t need that to get a contract because the people who hire me don’t look at my Instagram like, “Oh, he doesn’t have a lot of followers, we’re not going to work with him.” That’s not how it works for the stuff that I do. You look at our portfolio, the games that we work on, and that’s it. That’s what people need to know to work with us. This is our past achievement, so the number of followers, the amount of stuff we could sell like merch, we don’t care about that. I’ll enjoy the fact that, since I’ve been working in video games, if you count all the games that I’ve been working on and all the people that bought those games, there’s probably, I don’t know, 150 million people who have heard my voice.
Q: Oh, easily, easily. You didBaldurs Gate 3,right?
A:Yeah, but they don’t know who I am. It’s fine. I don’t want them to know who I am. I don’t care about all this “I’m famous, I have a lot.” I don’t care about that. Because for me, doing metal music was never about being popular. It was always about being passionate about it because, for me, it resonates. It tells me something when I listen to this music. When I do it, it makes sense to me, right?
Croteau Explains Vocal Stunt Performers Vs. Standard Voice Actors
Q: I know you work with a lot of vocal stunt performers. Could you explain the difference between a standard voice actor and a vocal stunt performer or creature actor?
A:Absolutely. Well, consider if we take that example to the movie industry. Are all the actors doing their own stunts? MaybeTom Cruisebecause he’s like that, but the reason we have stunt people is that there’s more risk involved. The people who are training to be stuntmen and stuntwomen, it’s difficult. It takes a while before they can actually be good at that because it’s something very specific. It’s really physical, it’s more dangerous. They don’t want to put the actors at risk because they’re big stars, so they put in stunt doubles.
You take that concept, and you apply it to voice acting. You have voice actors, and you have people who can do the vocal stuntwork. This is why I call what we do vocal stunt performances because we are trained to produce vocal distortion, we are trained to scream, and we are trained to make inhuman sounds for hours and hours and hours. If you ask any untrained voice actor to scream, he’s going to scream for 15 minutes. Done, that’s it. He’s not trained for that, you know? If you ask us, well, we can do that for sometimes two, three, four hours. That’s the difference, so we do that stuff because other people are not trained for that. It’s the same thing.
This is why the training of the people that I work with matters a lot, and this is why I primarily work with metal vocalists - people who have training in vocal distortion and who have learned the sensation and how to sustain that. Voice actors are not screamers. It’s not because you know how to do voice acting that you know how to scream. The contrary is also true. It’s not because you’re a screamer that you are, by default, a voice actor. No, you need as much training to become a screamer as you need training to become a voice actor. Being a metal vocalist for a creature voice actor is only part of the equation. You know how to produce vocal effects. Fine, but now you need to train to do the acting part.
Of course, if you go to a metal concert and you look at the vocalist, and he looks at you like he wants to kill you - it’s acting. Acting is part of the music we play. We take on the persona on stage, we take on the character on stage. We have part of what we need in voice acting, but nonetheless, we still need to train for the acting part.
The main difference is that we work with sound, not with scripts.Voice actorswork with words. We rarely ever script. Rarely, except sometimes when we need voices for an orc or goblin, but most of the time, we don’t have any script. We need to learn to act with sound, like how to make a realistic attack sound, how to do a realistic greeting sound, and how to make a realistic dying sound. We only have sound to convey those emotions, so we have to learn how to play with vowel and consonant noises because this is all we have.
This process takes a while. I’m training people for that specifically because, again, it’s just one part of what it takes. You know, they can sustain vocal effects, but I’ve trained them for the other part, to be able to do the acting part, because it’s still acting. In creature voice acting, versus let’s say regular acting, being able to sustain the vocal effect matters more than acting. If you are playing an orc voice and you can no longer produce the vocal effect, no amount of acting skills will compensate for that. You cannot do that and go, “Okay, I’m going to try and do that instead.” Well, that’s it, you just lost the character, because the vocal effect is intimately tied to the character. If you lose the capacity to sustain the vocal effect, you lose the character, so this is why sustainability matters a little bit more in creature voice acting than regular voice acting. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still acting, but sustaining the vocal effect is number one.
Organic Vs. Computer Modified Sounds In Voice Acting
Q: Could you talk a little bit about the pros of making these organic sounds as opposed to computer-modified ones?
A: I often have that discussion with sound designers, and people can use like an animal sound library or software plugins to modify a voice. The thing, at least with software and plugins, is there’s still a human involved. You can modify a human’s voice with computer effects, but the thing is, probably 99% of all creature and monster sounds, even today, are done with animal sound libraries. The problem with that is that when you voice something that is supposed to be alive – a creature, a sentient being, or an alien - and you lose some emotion when you take it from an animal sound library. I’m not saying that animals don’t have an emotion, that’s not what I’m saying, but with the sound that has been recorded in the sound library, we don’t know why the animal did that sound.
There’s supposed to be a reason why this animal made that sound. This is what I call the intent, right? There’s an intent behind the sound. The problem is, we don’t know that intent. Maybe the sound of a bear is it scratching its back on a tree, and it’s happy. That would be the satisfaction of happiness. Maybe the Walrus sound is it doing something to attract a mate; there’s always a reason for that sound.
When you take that sound and that sound, and you try to create an emotion from these sounds that are unrelated to that emotion, it doesn’t create that emotion. You cannot take different intents and emotions, mix them together, and create fear. This is not the process of creating emotion. You need to feel the emotion, and you need to feel the intent to produce a sound that is coming from that emotion. When you don’t know where the sound is coming from in an animal sound library, it’s just a bunch of random sounds together.
As a sound designer, you might listen to those modified sounds, and you might think “Oh, yeah, it sounds like anger.” But it’s still your own perception of the sounds. It’s not intent, and your perception of a sound cannot be imbued in the sound. You could put that sound anywhere else and ask someone to listen to it. They will say, “Oh, no, this is fear, or no, this is that." The perception will change because it’s still a perception. The thing is, with intent, it has to come from within. This is why, for me, you need a performer. Only a performer can get sadness, fear, rage, and all those different colors of emotion.
After that, if sound designers want to play with the sound, modify it, or put other sounds in it, at least they have something with intent at the heart of the sound. There’s the right intent for the emotion of the action that needs to be voiced; for me, it makes a huge difference. This is why I’m still a huge fan ofYoda when he was a puppetor of Gollum. For me, the most memorable creatures have been voiced by a human. Gollum - for me, it’s one of the most epic ones. If you listen to the interview of Kevin Durand for thePlanet of the Apesmovie, he’s doing the voice and he doesn’t need any computer effects to do that.
You know the video game industry relies a lot on technology. It also seems the more technologically advanced, the more we’re trying to replace humans. Now we have software that can do the job of three people, so let’s say bye-bye to them and that’s just it. It’s driven by technology. For what I do, I’m trying to convince people that humans are still better than Plugins and animal sound libraries.
I’m trying to keep humans in the loop and show that. I think that I’ve achieved part of that because, of all the games that I’ve worked on, I have never heard of any client of mine going back to animal sound libraries, Plugins, changing the voice. Once they taste the real stuff and they can see what we can achieve as creature voice actors, they don’t go back. It’s interesting because of all the talk aboutAI taking over voiceoverand people fear that AI is going to take the job. I’m trying to prove that humans can be even better than computer effects and whatever can be created artificially.
Q: I know AI is obviously a big issue for a lot of regular voice actors. How is it specifically affecting you as creature actors?
A:It hasn’t really. Someday it will and maybe sooner rather than later. I mean, AI is here to stay. It’s not going to disappear. It needs to be regulated. Not even for arts, but just in general. If you think about scams, if you think about the deep fakes and all its uses, this can go absolutely crazy. For me, I’m more worried about AI, in general, as a tool being used likely to create awful things than I fear for my work as a voice actor. I understand why people are worried about that, though.
But I think this is where we need to show how creative we can be. I think that having something that can imitate us will drive us to think about what makes us human. Because if we have something that imitates us, what is the difference between this and us? Reflecting on what makes us human, I don’t think is a bad thing. I think we need to think about what makes us human. I think, that even if people fear AI and voice acting, it’s going to drive us to think about how more creative we can get in the long run. How can we surpass this thing? We can because we created it, right?
That’s my perception because I know that I have a lot of colleagues who do regular voice acting and are worried about it, and I get it. For creature voices, it’s still such a niche market. It’s so small that I’m probably not on the radar of those companies, so it’s not an issue for me now. If you look at the number of games that we’ve been working on more and more and more, I think we have proven to an extent that humans can do it without AI.
The Evolution of Video Game Voice Acting
Q: What do you think has changed the most over the past 20 years?
A: Well, the positive thing I think is that - this goes back to what I was saying - what changed the most is that now people consider humans to be good resources for creatures and monsters much more now than 20 years ago. Now, we also get involved in the creative process, so we are consulting how the monster should sound. It’s not just us going to the studio and them saying, “Hey, we need zombies.” Okay, perfect. Again, we can do that—I love doing that, don’t get me wrong—but being involved in the creative process is something that we’ve been doing for the last three or four years. This is something quite unique, and I love it because we get to be much more creative.
We’re not just doing voices. We can also think about, “Hey, you know, that character, maybe we should try this and this and that voice" because there are vocal archetypes of different types of creatures and monsters. This is our expertise. It could help you to make sure that the voices are realistic and believable for that type of character, so the interesting part is that we’re much more involved creatively speaking than we were 10 or 15 years ago. I absolutely love it.
If youplayHellblade 2and you listen with headphones and binaural audio, holy hell! We did voices for that. I just recently played the game because I wanted to record some footage and then get footage of the stuff we did for the game. It’s just wow. Playing this game is proof of the things we can achieve in terms of audio and monsters, and now the amount of time we can spend on creating those things. It’s much more than what it was at the beginning. It’s a really interesting and a positive thing we can do now, compared to 15-20 years ago.
Q: When you’re consulting, how do you pin down the sounds or the audio that would be associated with similar but maybe different creatures? As an example,Baldur’s Gate 3has Mind Flayers, Ghouls, and Sea Hags. How do you separate those as creatures?
A: Sometimes we are provided with audio references, so a sound designer within the company did some work and said, “Okay, we have this character. This is the kind of sound we’re looking for. This is the character, this is the kind of sound.” It makes our jobs easier when we are provided with those audio references. Sometimes we’re not, and we have to think about, “Okay, what would be the best voice?” The process is to really look visually. You have to take a good look at the creature. You look at facial features, you look at body features, and you look at a lot of different things that can give clues to what the sound would be. If you think about it, let’s say a character that has no mouth. How can we voice a character with no mouth?
There are ways that we can do that right. Examining facial features is one, but after that, what is the function you see of that character? Is it a sniper? Is it a warrior? Is he a priest? That information will change the way we make the sound for the character. That’s actually like the same kind of process we would do for any character or any actor who would want to find a character that, “Okay, what happened to them when they were a child? What is their story?” We kind of go through the same process, but we tend to look more at visual facial features and body features. Then, we look at their function, their history, or if it’s something like they’re a warrior race. If they are a warrior race, the way they will deliver the sound might be different from a peaceful race.
That’s the process, but then sometimes you need to invent the language. That’s what I did for part of theGuardians of the Galaxyvideo game. I had to know, depending on the voice technique that we were using, what vowels and consonants were the easier to pronounce. Based on that, I started with a few words that became building blocks that I could use to extend the language. That was a three-month-long process, just to create those and make them believable. You don’t want to go into a game, listen to an intelligent creature speak an alien language, and it sounds like gibberish. It needs to be more intelligent in the design and the way that the voices are being delivered.
I had to work a lot on that and then train the voice actor, so they could pronounce the script the right way or as close as possible. We didn’t have time to build a complete natural language, like some fantasy Elvish languages orStar Trek’s Klingon, but I wanted to make sure that when you are listening to the conversation among aliens, you have a genuine feeling that it’s a conversation among intelligent beings. It can’t just be like[alien gibberish]. It needs to be more elaborate than that.
That is one of the processes I love the most. I don’t do this job to do accounting, invoicing, and contract reading. That’s part of what I need to do as a service provider, but I do this job to be creative, to have fun behind a microphone, and to have fun directing my fellow creature voice actors. That’s the reason why I’m doing it. You know, this is where I get to express my passion. I manage by default, but I create by passion.
Just sitting down and trying to make a whole language is just mind-blowing.
A: And you may go “Wow!” because it’s an alien, and with aliens, we can really be like[makes alien noise]. It’s not going to be the same frame at any time. The interesting thing - I’m going to give you an example - is that, let’s say an alien is asking a question. I have to put myself in the place of the player. How would you know what is a question? You know when you’re asking a question, “Hey, how are you doing?” Or “What do you need?” Like, this little inflection at the end of a word? When you hear that, it’s a question. I needed to keep that very human element, so when we were doing[makes quizzical alien noise]- whatever kind of voice, we have to make sure that people would get that it’s a question. I need to do that inflection, even in analien language. Because we need to keep some elements of the human language, even when we’re creating an alien language, so that people can understand that it’s a question. There’s a point at the end of a sentence, so we have to play with certain human rules, even in alien languages.
Croteau’s Thoughts on Gamescom LATAM
Q: Has anything about Gamescom LATAM really caught your eye so far?
A:I was here last year when it was BIG Festival, but for me, it’s the same people. The thing I love about Brazil and the Brazilian people is that they’re passionate and generous. Before a business, you build relationships because a business is a relationship between two parties, right? Here, I’m playing the long game. It’s just about building relationships with people, and if that gives you business, it’s a bonus. In a very short amount of time here, I’ve made friends with tons of people. When you’re passionate and you have topics in common with passionate people, we tend to connect like that.
For me, I think that people look at the market of video games in Brazil and not everyone grasps how amazing it is. Video games are a huge thing here. You know, sometimes people go “Oh, yeah. United States. Oh, yeah, Europe.” They tend to focus there, and Brazil is not something that is maybe necessarily on their mind. But yeah, people here absolutely love video games. I love the partnership with BIG Festival and Gamescom. I believe Gamescom, which is usually in Europe, understands the importance of what’s happening here. I think the reason they partnered up with BIG Festival is because the people were there, and they saw what happened last year. They had to be really impressed with the organization. It’s only starting, and I’m already excited about the things I’m going to hear, the workshops, the talks, the people I’m going to meet and everything. Because, again, it’s all about meeting people and sharing the stuff that we’re passionate about.
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