Another interesting thing to consider: why is Japanese voice acting so much better than dubbing?
The answers:
- The Japanese have a voice acting tradition going back
at least as far as the Bunraku puppet theater
- Voice Acting for Anime is >highly< stylized. There
are various stereotypes that can be plugged into
most Anime stories. This allows the characters to
be put across very clearly.
I wonder if the highly stylized use of archetypes from western culture would improve voice acting in English versions of games? (This would require some re-writing, as many games originate in Japan and other non-western cultures, so the archetypes do not match up exactly.)
I agree that the quality of dubbing has greatly increased. But there still seems to be just that little bit of impedance mismatch. I think it's because the archetypes don't match!
Japanese female archetypes are just weird to Americans, and often don't have good analogues in our culture. When you have the tragically strong woman who will never be desired by a man, in English dubbing, she often comes across as the female badass that everybody wants, but is too afraid to try for.
Military types often don't match. Anime portrayals of Western-style Squad leaders/Sergeants are Japanese caricatures that have become Japanese-archetypal. The Japanese expect slightly different things from their fictionalized Generals than Americans or the British. (Like the degree to which they are allowed to display battle-lust, versus having to couch it in terms of "their duty.")
I think that when "voice acting isn't in your own language" it's also often the case that the archetypes aren't your own culture's. I think your first point is just another part of the same cultural mismatch.
Voice acting does not sell games. Pretty screenshots sell games. Companies optimize accordingly.
(See also: Why do companies with engineering budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars come out with websites that look like they were designed by an artistically talented 15 year old in flash in 1998?)
The answers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BunrakuI wonder if the highly stylized use of archetypes from western culture would improve voice acting in English versions of games? (This would require some re-writing, as many games originate in Japan and other non-western cultures, so the archetypes do not match up exactly.)