WGE MAG: 09
Rebecca: As a gamer you were testing things? JS: Yeah, I was working with all those products and then they kind of discovered that I did all of these funny voices and could act. Rebecca: As you were playing the game and just joking around, hanging out, entertaining them in your own way, making voices. JS: Yeah! As they started looking at how they were introducing audio into the games. It started out like simple sounds – “plinkah, plinkah plinkah…” and it moved into ‘how are we going to get voice in here’? They were working on developing what are called Kodecs [to make space for the audio] - to squish down the voice and put it on disk and introduce it into the games. So as they were developing these things, they would have me read and do different voices [to test the technology]. I was sort of a voice ‘guinea pig’ for some of that early stuff and got to know the developers. Then as that moved into actual game work, they would ask me to come in and voice the games.
Rebecca: This was fun for you I assume? You were a gamer so this was like living and breathing what you love when you were helping these companies. JS: Yeah! The early stuff, when they would bring me in and ask me to do some voice work or whatever, they were paying me off with products! They would give me new software or a new printer or whatever. At one point I had everything you could own for the Atari 2600 Game console! I had every single thing like early wireless stuff or a Pen Plotter and three or four different kinds of printers! I had everything that you could imagine because that’s how they were paying me. Oh, it was great! Rebecca: So the gaming industry develops audio, then besides effects some voice gets involved. Then it becomes dialogue. Then it becomes more, and more and more. You did voice-over in Battle Toshinden, Pitkin, Panzer General, Thunderscape, NHL Hockey, NFL Football, Dark Wizards, Star Ocean Sites… you have a large list of credits. JS: Most of the work that I’ve done isn’t even credited! Rebecca: Right. You said that it’s there in a whole bunch of internal libraries. JS: At that point voice-over was getting to be a little bit more of my world. I’m actually contacting companies and getting to do some different things. At this point I’d done some work on a couple of documentaries, commercial work, corporate work, some narration, a couple of books on tape. So all of these things have been done basically just marketing myself. I still had not obtained an agent at this point. In fact, I don’t even think at this point I really even had a demo, quite frankly.” Rebecca: Interesting. You really fell into it organically as you said. JS: This was a time when if you were auditioning you generally went to either the ad agency or the client - you went somewhere and they would hook up a tape recorder and you would just read into it! I knew the questions to ask