Introducing the Pixel Pack: Meet the actors changing the game… for gaming (exclusive)

[Gizmo_Duck]

In mid-December, two Indiana Joneses met on stage at the Game Awards in Los Angeles, an annual event celebrating excellence in video games that has become a highlight of the industry’s awards season. If the BAFTA Games Awards are like the Oscars, this ceremony maintains the fun of the Golden Globes (in its heyday) with the thrill of the Super Bowl (in terms of the sheer amount of trailers that drop throughout the livestream). The entire auditorium at the Peacock Theater rose in a standing ovation when a surprise guest emerged.

Harrison Ford slowly took his place next to presenter Troy Baker, the actor who portrayed Ford himself — specifically, the 1980s version of Ford's Indy. Baker channeled the Hollywood icon with a spot-on vocal and performance-capture act for the fast-selling 2024 adventure game Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, set between the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade films.

"It's a fever dream," Baker recalls to Entertainment Weekly months later in February. "We knew that it would've been great for Harrison to, in some way, give us the thumbs up." In typical Ford fashion, though, Baker remembers "having no idea what that man was going to say," noting, "He waved off the teleprompter and just riffed." But Ford graciously quipped to Baker in an aside, "I think this guy did a great job. If I'd known he was so good, I would've done it myself."

Says Baker, "I was like, ‘That's all I need to hear, man.'"

The Last of Us(2013), the widely praised series featuring Baker as Joel and Ashley Johnson as Ellie that went on to inspire the equally lauded HBO TV drama, comes up repeatedly in various conversations with members of the Pixel Pack. Mercer, who was involved in the game as "additional voices," calls The Last of Us "a watershed moment for what video games could be as a storytelling medium." Salim notes how "they captured the nuance and the power of…almost like film, TV acting where there was a lot of subtext." Ishii was breaking into the industry around the release of The Last of Us, and she likens that experience to "being there at the advent of cinema."

"It became like the fridge, it became the Kleenex, it became the brand name for quality and storytelling within games," Baker reflects of The Last of Us. "Then you started having all subsequent stories that were told from there." He points to French game designer David Cage, the founder of studio Quantic Dream, behind such titles as Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human. Baker also references a fellow member of the Pixel Pack, Sam Lake of Finnish gaming studio Remedy Entertainment, which released Alan Wake and Max Payne. "That is straight up the same kind of film noir, dark mystery stories that I loved within TV and film."

Salim is also in a unique position as both an actor and developer. In addition to roles in mainstream TV projects like Raised by Wolves and House of the Dragon, he launched his own studio, Surgent Studios, in 2019. Their debut gaming title, Tales of Kenzera: Zau, a fantasy epic rooted in African myth, became a highly personal project inspired by his own dad's passing. Salim voices its central character, who goes on dangerous missions for the God of Death to barter for the life of his late father. "One of Surgent Studio's missions is essentially to tell stories that are human, that go beyond race, gender," he says. "It's very raw. It's very real."

Abubakar Salim.
IvanWeiss.London

Before House of the Dragon, actor Abubakar Salim debuts his first game, Tales of Kenzera
He hopes to turn the Tales of Kenzera into a multimedia franchise. The current state of the industry — i.e. the mass layoffs from gaming studio to gaming studio —

Introducing the Pixel Pack: Meet the actors changing the game… for gaming (exclusive)

Neil Newbon, Troy Baker, Maggie Robertson, Jennifer Hale, and other big names in gaming are redefining what it means to be an actor in this field. Together, the Pixel Pack offers a state of the union on their profession.

ew.com

 

[Neuromancer]

I hope he makes more games.

 

[Gizmo_Duck]

I hope he makes more games.

I hope he makes more games.

 

[Diunx]

Only recognized Max Payne, motherfukker still has the same face and expresion

 

[Neuromancer]

My favorite type of horror game

 

[Artificial Intelligence]

Hire more nikkas