Have you ever heard wooden voice acting in a game and thought you could do better? Me too. That’s why when 2K Sports offered me the chance to record crowd chatter for next year’s MLB 2K10, I jumped on the opportunity like C.C. Sabathia pouncing on the last hot dog at Yankee Stadium. I decided to invite former Mobcast guest, Shanker Srinivasan, along for the trip because...well, I needed a ride from the ferry terminal to 2K’s offices in Novato, California.

Once we arrived at 2K’s airplane hanger-turned-office, we were taken back to the sound department where we met with the audio director for MLB 2K10, Joel Simmons. He shared some details on MLB 2K10’s sound design, which you can listen to for yourself in the short audio clip below.

Joel Simmons, audio director:

As you can tell, 2K Sports has very ambitious goals with regards to recreating the sounds of a real Major League Baseball game -- clearly they needed the talents of Shanker and me to achieve those lofty goals. But before we could start making audio magic, we had to sign a standard voice-acting agreement.

I was so excited to get into the studio that I signed the contract without reading a word. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized I might want to find out what, exactly, I had agreed to. As it turns out, 2K Sports basically owns me now, but I do get my name in the credits, so that’s pretty cool. (For the record: Now that I’m in the game, I won’t be reviewing MLB 2K10. That would be a bit shady, no?)

After we signed our lives away, it was off to the recording studio, where we met sound editor, Justin Rothaug. Justin explained to us exactly why MLB 2K10 would have somewhere around 10,000 clips of crowd chatter.

Justin Rothaug, sound editor:

It was now time to show the world that I was a star. I was taken into a recording room that looked just like every recording studio I’ve ever seen on television -- I felt like a talented version of Diddy. Justin explained to me that my lines would appear on the television monitor in front of me; I was to wait for a beep and then say my line.

It sounded easy enough.

My first line as a voice actor was “Let’s go, Cubbies!” It’s too bad that it never got recorded because I forgot to wait for the beep. We did another take, and it went fine. Unfortunately, every time I got on a roll, I’d forget to wait for the beep and we’d have to do the line over again. You have no idea how hard it is to wait for a beep when you’re pretending to be excited about a baseball game that only exists in your mind.

I settled into a groove after a dozen-or-so lines. It was then that I remembered Justin telling me that above each line was a description of the in-game situation for that specific bit of dialogue. It might be a simple bit of positive encouragement at the beginning of the game, there might be runners on base, the player might have done something great during his last at bat, or the line could have negative connotations. Because I totally forgot about this little detail, I’m pretty sure some of my “positive” lines came out sounding pretty negative and vice-versa.

Confident in my ability to wait for the beep, and armed with the knowledge that the lines were situational, I was able to finish my dialogue for the Chicago Cubs. Now it was Shanker’s turn.

Shanker’s one of the loudest people on the planet, so it was funny to hear him tentatively mutter his first few lines in support of the Oakland A’s. Justin offered a few words of encouragement from the control room. He said to just have fun, and pretend like he was really at a game, trying to make his voice heard over 50,000 other cheering fans. That was all the encouragement Shanker needed.

After Shanker lit a fire under the Oakland A’s, I went back into the studio to cheer for some all-time greats. It was a little weird to scream words of encouragement to Ty Cobb, Dizzy Dean, and Honus Wagner, but I quickly got back into character. I was perhaps a bit too excited when I saw Andrew Dawson’s name appear on screen. "The Hawk" is my favorite player of all time, but because I never was able to see him play in person, this was as close as I’d ever get to cheering him on. I think I did him justice.

Next up, it was time to get nasty and record some jeers. Justin reminded us that we were free to improvise. He also felt compelled to remind us that the game’s rated “E”, so we couldn’t get too crazy with our insults, nor could we specifically mention the umpires. Those guidelines didn’t slow us down at all. I mocked a pitcher’s base running skills; Shanker screamed for a player to drop a pop-up. I told the opposing team that payback was coming after they hit one of our players; Shanker informed the opposing pitcher that he had seen Girl Scouts with better arms.

Joel and Justin seemed pleased with our work, so they gave us the go-ahead to record as long as we wanted. Unfortunately, after screaming around 300 lines at the top of my lungs, the spirit was willing, but the voice was weak. I tried to record the line: “Let’s take one for the team!” three times, but my voice cracked every time I tried to say the word “team.” It was time to throw in the towel.

How did we do? The 2K Sports guys said we did great, but they might have been buttering me up because I was writing a story about the experience. I honestly thought I did fairly well. Once I got comfortable in the recording studio, I just cut loose and pretended like I was really at a ball game. I was a pretty accomplished heckler back in the day, so I feel as though my performance was a pretty good representation of me at the ballpark during my college years.

What, you don’t believe my self-evaluation? 2K Sports sent along short clips of what Shanker and I will sound like when mixed in with ambient crowd noise in the game. They were even kind enough to include my voice cracking at the end of my clip -- thanks so much for that, guys.

Aaron:

Shanker:

Note: You won’t hear our voice anywhere near as often in the actual game, and you won’t necessarily hear individual people with as much frequency, either.

While I had a fantastic time during my stint as a voice actor, I have an all-new appreciation for the work that goes into making a game like MLB 2K10 sound as close to the real thing as possible. I was tired after a few hours, so I can only imagine what it’s like for the in-game announcers -- they’re there for 5-6 hours a day, sometimes for weeks. Then, folks like Joel and Justin have the task of implementing tens-of-thousands of dialogue lines into the game. And just when they finish, it’s time to do it again for next year.

MLB 2K10 -- and my amazing voice work -- hit store shelves on March 2, 2010.