The video game industry, an area of marketing that has been growing for the past ten years. Starting out with low budget hardware and cheap sound effects, video games captured the attention of both youngsters and adults. As the years progressed, the younger generation remained fascinated while the older generation began looking the other direction. Today, game development can go as far as $50 million! From top of the line hardware and industry-standard software, games are beginning to feel like Hollywood movies. Not only are the graphics developing immensely but so is the sound.

Back in the early fays of Atari, games only had brief "brrps," "cheeps," and "cracks" for sound effects but today, Hollywood actors are being hired to voice digital actors. Yes, the thug who is shooting at you from across the street with an uzi could be voiced by Wesley Snipes, or even Eddie Murphy. This is sending the gaming experience to a whole new level of interactivity. The good old way of capturing your audiences attention was with good game lay. Then, it was a good story, after that, it followed with good graphics. Today, sound is almost a must.

Certain games back in the 90's were brave enough to hire Hollywood actors to perform for games and, likewise, certain actors were brave enough to do so. Although not all these game were successful, they revealed a whole new world of gaming experience and you could say that, back then, any game that did this was ahead of its time. An interesting bit of trivia, systems such as the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 used the B sides of tapes to include music or sound effects. Unlike today, games could not be loaded onto compact discs or even DVD's. There was a limited amount of space and not everything could fit. Only what was essential was added.

An innovative game that featured a full length soundtrack and music was Deus Ex Machina. Released in 1984, the game was shipped with a tape you played while playing the game. The first game to actually feature a human voice was Dragon's Lair, in 1982. The catch is that these voices were from the very animators of the game, and not some professional actor. As the years progress, it is my belief that professional voice actors will begin appearing more frequently in video games. Although the public was at first skeptical, I think that video games have finally provoked a significant enough impact to be considered "professional" work worthy of a resume.