‘What do you mean real actors?’: Astarion’s VO, who shared an awards category with Idris Elba after Baldur’s Gate 3, remembers the dark ages of mocap

Neil Newbon has made somewhat of a superstar debut after the runaway success of Baldur’s Gate 3—and having spoken to the man myself in the past, it’s all rather deserved. I remember being quite proud of the medium as a whole when I saw him run away with an award, while also sharing a building with known Hollywood superstar Idris Elba (who was on the docket for his role in Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty).

Though that pride also came with a bit of internal conflict, though. Gaming is one of the biggest entertainment industries, with some outlier companies like Valve making more per-head than Apple despite their relative size. It pulls in more revenue than music and film combined. And yet, for the longest time, its creatives—its actors in particular—have been chronically underestimated. Yes, it was neat that Newbon was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Hollywood. But also, why the hell not? He’s just as much an actor as anyone attending the Oscars each year.

It’s been a steady climb for recognition, according to Newbon, who spoke to Entertainment Weekly in a group interview centred around the “Pixel Pack”—a vanguard of big-name voice actors joining fights such as the one SAG-AFTRA is currently embroiled in, to ensure their recognition and proper dues.

Newbon recalls a time when he was doing mocap for Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, back in 2012. While he has a pretty positive memory of his cooperation with the U.S. Navy SEALs, calling them “lovely and terrifying simultaneously” and the work fulfilling, he also remembers feeling downright slighted by other professionals.

“I had conversations about, ‘That’s going to look really good when we get the real actors in.’ I was like, ‘What do you mean real actors?’ I’m a real actor. I went to the f*cking Edinburgh Festival, man!” It obviously wasn’t for lack of trying, either. While Newbon’s winning awards today, back in 2008/9 he very nearly quit when he wasn’t able to make ends meet via the ‘typical’ route.

“So then I realized there was a disconnect between ‘motion-capture artists,’ which was the old technical term for us, and actors, which meant people still hadn’t quite got the idea of what an actor could do here.” This sort of disconnect even extended to the people who were meant to be representing him: “I’ve had agents turn down three-week mo-cap gigs that I didn’t even know about. They just didn’t want me to do it, which is not cool. But this was a long time ago. I got rid of those agents.”

It really is staggering, given Newbon’s later success—and a grim reminder that videogames have been put through a long, arduous, and oftentimes silly struggle for recognition as an artform. Mind, as the article keenly mentions, actors now have a different problem: their work being undervalued in the wake of AI. It never ends.