"The overarching antagonist of this story is money. Voice isn't cheap."

That was how Saint's Row: The Third audio lead Ariel Gross opened a talk at GDC 2012 about how, exactly, he and the rest of the team at Volition wrangled all the dialogue in the game. 

According to Gross, Volition spent roughly $1.2 million on getting about 82,000 lines of dialogue from about 125 voice actors.

In the course of implementing that audio in Saint's Row: The Third, the studio built a lot of new tools and learned valuable lessons about the costly pitfalls of dialogue implementation in game development.

Now you can watch his talk completely free over on the Official GDC YouTube channel and learn those lessons too, potentially saving yourself some future headaches.

About the GDC Vault

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its new YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC Next already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

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