He isn't wrong, if they wanted to save money, they could do VO with AI, it would be rubbish tho, bigger issue might be that VO charge a lot for doing voices when it is actually easiest things to do in a game, focus should be on animations and gameplay, stuff where you need to put in a lot of work and have like actual... what's the word... SKILLS, yeah, I mean VO can be done by a bad VO artist but it would still be passable on the budget.
Better way to go about it - make the game - gameplay and animations first, get one VO to do placeholders (or AI), VFX packs for moans - release the game as early access with "beta" audio, if people want better voices - do 2nd fundraiser to meet next goal - "premium VO actresses and actors for all scenes" or just raise the budget a lot to allot it for both quality animations and game development and good VO's right from the start, 2 mil sounds like a lot (and it is, like it is a lot of money, no matter where you're from and how much you earn) but to develop a game? I mean a game needs many people to make, coding of the gameplay/engine stuff, optimization, level design, story, animations, 3D models/materials/textures/props, split that among say 15 people working on the game, multiply by number of months it takes to make, slap taxes on top, suddenly it's not a lot for all the people. Still we don't know how much was actually spent on VO (which VNLXV suggests was like... dunno majority, I doubt it was that much, they had few VO artists do voices for few characters didn't they? or did every character have separate actress? still, it ain't no mass effect, this game doesn't have that much dialogue, and moans for all scenes could be done in single recording session).
Truth be told, this game just didn't have large enough budget to be like Mass Effect, no way, ME1 (which is by far most RPG-ish game of all 3 but also shortest and with worst models and animations and least fancy CGI sequences and lowest advertisement budget) supposedly costed 2.7 mil to develop (which I find unlikely) but it was 2008, adjusted for inflation that would be about 4 mil in 2025... BUT, it was developed by a talented team of artists that already had experience working with the engine, so there was less time spent on messing around and learning how to do it and hiring people to do it than studio FOW probably did, outsourcing can be cheaper in some cases but I bet in this case it was costing the more vs if they were actual game studio with experience of at least doing one previous similar game in the same engine (and they weren't), so half the budget + first video game + lack of game dev experience = larger losses and actually higher development cost + NSFW game so less talent to choose from (not all devs would work on such game comapred to regular title) + expensive VA compared to amount of work they had to do (which is funny since VAs that did work for ME were already kinda known and established and much bigger names, but guess what = more experince = got shit done faster = lower cost, even if they got paid more (probably, no data). ME 2/3 apparently costed about 40 mil (advertisment included), so for this game to be even close to something like ME (that means a 3rd or 1st person action rpg, with branching story and high quality animations) would need to have a budget of at least 5-10 mil or longer development time.
