Myths, Games & Meaning
What do Greek gods, video games, and popular culture actually have in common?
I'm Dr Dani Shalet. In Myths, Games & Meaning, I sit down with scholars, performers, storytellers, and creatives to explore how ancient myth keeps resurfacing in the culture around us today. We look at how these stories move from antiquity into video games, films, books, and the worlds we build through play.
From Medusa to Middle earth, from the Hero's Journey to Tomb Raider and Baldur's Gate, we dig into the threads that shape contemporary storytelling, and the ways we express our hopes, fears, and identities through storytelling and imagination.
If you're drawn to mythology, folklore, narrative design, or the tales woven through the games and stories we love, you'll feel right at home here.
More at https://www.mythsgamesmeaning.com
Join the conversation on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mythsgamesmeaning/
About the Host:
Dr Dani Shalet is a theologian, mythologist, educator, and lifelong gamer who explores how humans make meaning through story, from ancient legend to modern games. She brings a warm, thoughtful approach to conversations with actors, scholars, creatives, and fans, drawing on her academic background to make complex ideas feel accessible, cosy, and alive.
Through Myths, Games & Meaning, she invites listeners into a queer aware, emotionally intelligent space where narrative, culture, and identity meet.
New episodes released throughout the year.
Myths, Games & Meaning
Pax Romana's Aqua Vitae: A Myth of Revelation (with Tom Nolan Kelly TIVA)
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Rome is burning. The Four Horsemen are riding. And somehow that's the same story as a Fallout quest.
In this special episode: I sit down with writer Tom Nolan Kelly, co-founder of TIVA (True Indie Voice Art) "a collective of artists who create audio plays and give them away for free, funded entirely through Patreon and a 'pay what you want' system."
We dive into why the big audio platforms are quietly starving indie creators, why Book of Revelation apocalypse imagery is the secret engine of Pax Romana's Rome, and why the aqua vitae shows up as a plot engine in the most unexpected place: a Fallout quest.
Then we get into Tom's modding Oblivion and Fallout 3 as a kid, why Mass Effect is still the gold standard for choice and character attachment, and why Tom writes hopeful sci-fi.
And we close on the fight that matters most right now: AI, corporate greed, and what's left for voice actors when both come for their credits and royalties.
- Founding TIVA with Alix Wilton Regan. "A collective of artists who create audio plays and give them away for free," funded through Patreon and 'pay what you want'.
- How major audio platforms punish independent creators.
- TIVA Patreon, bonus material, and actually getting close to the actors behind your favourite games.
- Tom Modding Oblivion and Fallout 3 as a kid.
- The Four Horsemen and the Book of Revelations inside Pax Romana's vision of Rome's collapse.
- The aqua vitae: Fallout's Revelation quote and why "water of life" is the plot engine that really inspired Tom's work.
- Writing optimistic sci-fi.
- Mass Effect and what it can teach us about choice, diplomacy, and attachment.
- AI, corporate habits, and the unfair treatment of voice actors' credits and royalties.
You can find Tom's work and those of your favourite game actors at tivoice.art
And you can find more Myths, Games and Meaning at mythsgamesmeaning.com and on Instagram @mythsgamesmeaning.
We would love to hear from you.
Music: Intro and outro — Spirits of the Woods by Rotem Moav.
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Welcome Back And Guest Intro
SPEAKER_02Hello and welcome back to Myths, Games, and Meanings. We are finally on episode 10. Thank you for sticking around. I am so sorry about the delay in episodes. I have just been in the States for a loss in the family, but I am now back. And I am delighted to be interviewing Tom Nolan Kelly, who is co-founder of Tiva, true indie voice art. He co-founded this with actor Alex Wilton Regan, who you will probably know as the new Lara. That's Lara Croft, not Laura Croft. And he speaks to us about how myth, Roman myth, has inspired his work, Epox Romana, and also how the ruins around his town has also been influential in his new writing. So I hope you enjoy this episode. Alright, hello everyone, and welcome to Myths Games and Meanings. I am here to talk to my first writer, which is fantastic, Tom Nolan Kelly. Hello there.
SPEAKER_03Hello. Wonderful to be here.
SPEAKER_02It's wonderful. We have been talking for about what a half an hour prior to this. So getting to know each other a bit more. So thank you so much for coming on, and I really appreciate it. And I appreciate all the work you're doing as well and your creative spaces. And I was hoping you could tell us a bit, and of course, the um uh the audience a little bit about what you're doing, especially in Tiva, and how that all started and the whole purpose of it.
SPEAKER_03I'm
Why Tiva Went Truly Indie
SPEAKER_03very happy to. So my name's Tom Nolan Kelly, 33 years old from Germany. I'm a programmer by day and an avid writer and audiobook guy in all my free time. And together with Alex Wilton Regan, Laura Croft, we founded we founded an initiative, an collective of artists called True Indie Voice Art, or Tiva for short. And the background behind it is that we were simply fed up with the way that a lot of large audio platforms are working at the moment. For example, if you go to Audible as an independent and you don't sign an exclusive contract, they take three-quarters of your money for literally nothing but burying you in the algorithm. Or if you sign exclusive, they only take 60%. How generous, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, I didn't realize that.
SPEAKER_03And so we decided we'd go truly independent. We are we have our own little website where we publish everything for free. And anyone who wants to support us can do so on patreon.com slash Tiva, where we offer like anyone can listen for free, but we offer some goodies at all times. So anyone who wants to support us can do so there. We have tiers with bonus material, and sometimes we also invite people to join in our recordings as guests. And so yeah, we try to bridge the gap between what people think is the ivory tower of these grand actors, BAFTA winners who are not as far removed from the general people as one might think. And well, you, the gaming audience, of course.
SPEAKER_02That's funny. That's what we do.
SPEAKER_03That's how we do it.
SPEAKER_02And to be honest, I've just signed up for your Patreon as well because I wanted to sort support you guys in what you do. And to be honest, I don't do many Patreons, but I was like, I'm supporting you guys. I really like your work. And um, I've listened to a lot of of your stuff so far, and I've really enjoyed it. Uh so I'm curious though, because you say about uh Audibles, did you guys try to do things with Audible? Is that how you found out about this? Or did you do your research or or how did you know about the ridiculous amount of money they take?
SPEAKER_03I considered it back in 2024 when it was literally just Alex and me recording. Like I looked over how can we best put this out there? And Spotify and Audible were like the go-to quasi-monopoly options, to the point where if you go to the Frankfurt Book Fair, for example, everything is completely overshadowed by Audible. Like they literally have 200 square meter side banners on the walls and these big 10-meter tall Audible headphones in the in the big plaza, so you can't escape Audible. And then I looked at what Audible actually offers. So as unless you have like a big publisher with a foot in the door, it's yeah, non-exclusive. 70 they take 75% of the cash, and they bury you in a pile of like literally over a million audio productions, and nowadays AI slop.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god.
SPEAKER_03Well, they call themselves.
SPEAKER_02Well, I want, because obviously this is also on myth, and I'll and I want to utilize your background in science fiction as well. So,
Fallout And Oblivion As Creative Fuel
SPEAKER_02and and now that we're talking about um we're talking about uh technology, I know you were saying in uh when we were discussing things on Instagram that you're a big Fallout fan. So was Fallout one of the games that got you into uh interest in science fiction? Was it your physics background? What what was it? Was it just growing up with loads of science fiction around?
SPEAKER_03How did you it w it was a bit around the corner because I had my first running experience was on Aldo Scrolls 4 Oblivion with the funniest NPC interactions we've ever seen.
SPEAKER_02They were great.
SPEAKER_03And Fallout.
SPEAKER_02We were talking about that, weren't we?
SPEAKER_03Oh yes.
SPEAKER_02Walking around in your leather armor with no money, and then you get jumped by a glass armor-wearing bandit.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Who then steals a hundred gold from you, and when you sneak up to him and steal it back, he will say, Take it. It's useless to me anyway.
SPEAKER_02I know. Ridiculous. And then you just kill it, and then it got to the point with me where I was just like, either you're gonna uh I'm gonna kill you and take your armor. Um, but that was around the same time, wasn't it, when the game first came out, and they had a real disparity between leveling. Do you remember that?
SPEAKER_03Oh yes, I did.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that was awful. Because the game kind of leveled with you, didn't it? But then in a way, but then you didn't actually have the no, it didn't level with you, did it? It was like beyond your level, and you didn't actually have a way to to deal with your random glass-wearing bandit.
SPEAKER_03It had this thing called leveled lists, and it's still used nowadays. It's yeah, essentially like if you do intelligent leveling, like if you start if you start with all of the do all of the side skills rather than the main skills, and you wait until you level up, then you can then you could get the attribute points high enough that you actually outscale the enemies. But if you don't do that, if you just I don't know, if you're a swordsman and you fight with a sword and you level up that way, then things get away from you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And that's what I was doing. That was that was rough. That was really hard.
SPEAKER_03And Fallout 3, like as a technical successor to it, like I dove into it because I'd been modding Oblivion for over a year at that point, and I wanted to see how Bethesda was taking the technology next, and I just got lost in Fallout 3. Must have been 2,000 hours in the database I spent on it.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, really?
SPEAKER_03Over five years, yes.
SPEAKER_02Jeez. And I thought I played, and I thought I played Skyrim for a long time. There's not a thousand hours on Skyrim. That's sad. That's a lot.
SPEAKER_03I've got to be. Well, always with new mods. Always with like so cool. The thing is, if you edit the database, you can get a lot more mods to run than the game would usually handle.
SPEAKER_02Alright, yeah.
SPEAKER_03So by the end, I had a game with where the folder had ballooned from 6 gigabytes to 70 gigabytes. And there was like 3,500 weapons scattered in the leveled list across the entire game. And so much extra quest content that a single playthrough took 200 hours.
SPEAKER_02That's crazy. I wonder if I played any of your mods. What mods did you do?
SPEAKER_03Um, I mainly designed there's a mod called Total Tamrail, which I did for Oblivion, which essentially expanded the height map to include the other provinces outside of the main.
SPEAKER_02Was that you? That was cool. I didn't know that was you.
SPEAKER_03First raw version of that was me, but I used the Oblivion Height Map editor, which was ridiculously buggy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And someone put did a Tamrail Height maps project later on where they like crafted it into professional software and then imported it. And that looks a lot better. So I'd advise people to use that from now on.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that's amazing. I didn't know that was you though, that you started that. That was really I used that load. That was good. That was awesome.
SPEAKER_03And that was a case of, yeah, there's the game engine can handle a lot more if you know how to squeeze it. And back then the main limitation was the the whole thing about random access memory with 32 bits that you could only that the engine could only use up to 2 gigabytes or 3 gigabytes if you tweak it. And I was so proud that I'd gotten a thr a machine with three gigabytes of memory nowadays. Which nowadays every phone has more now.
SPEAKER_01It's ridiculous.
SPEAKER_03But back then it was this whole game of how much can you coax out of this engine before it breaks and before the three gigabytes of memory are used up.
SPEAKER_02You must have been really young though, because you said you're 33, didn't you?
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_02So you were you were in your teens when you Yeah, I was I was in uh I was in year 11 at high school.
SPEAKER_01Wow. That's really impressive.
SPEAKER_03I remember this landscape generation program where I had to let my computer run overnight for a full week to let the system populate everything with grass and with trees and such. And nowadays, just a few weeks ago, I was so shocked when I opened up the editor for Unreal Engine 5. And it just does that in real time. When you click somewhere, it immediately populates it.
SPEAKER_02That is crazy. That's so crazy. And did you do any did you do any modding for um did you do any modding for Skyrim at all?
SPEAKER_03Only like for my own use. Like I never published anything big. Like I was hoping to publish like this collection I had made of the pieces, but it would have been a whole rights issue with every one of that 100 plus authors having to agree, so I decided not to do it.
SPEAKER_02Fair, okay.
SPEAKER_03But I still have it on my hard drive somewhere.
SPEAKER_02That's cool. Did you ever play Marrowind?
SPEAKER_03Oh, I did, yes. Actually, still have Oh yeah, my original Elderscroll 3 Marawind on CD.
SPEAKER_01It's on C DVD, rather than DVD.
SPEAKER_02That's that's so fun. Did you see it? I think that's how I had it as well. I had it on DVD.
SPEAKER_03Did you see the new engine they built for it? OpenMW.
SPEAKER_02I did, it's amazing.
SPEAKER_03Just the idea that they could just replace the attire engine and still have it run and run better than ever.
SPEAKER_02So cool. Those games are those games are timeless though. They're amazing. I love them. And and like you though, like I I enjoyed Fallout. I enjoyed Fallout 3, but I really, really got into Fallout 4. Well, Fallout 4 was like, I loved it. I loved it. I don't know what it was about it, but it was great. I don't know.
SPEAKER_03Somehow somehow Fallout 3 stuck with me because, at least in modding terms, it's really robust. Like the main quest doesn't have that many variations, but that also means like if you pile mods in, it's it's very resilient to them. Whereas like Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 4, they break easily because main quests can easily get broken if they're complex.
SPEAKER_02Okay, that's fair. Alright, so you're looking at it kind of from a modders perspective rather than uh rather than the player's perspective. But you know, saying that as a player who used like endless mods when I was playing like all of these games, I just remember spending I it was getting to the point with my mods that I was spending longer testing each mod to see which one was broken and that was causing issues with my game rather than playing it. And then I thought, you know what, I need to I need to take a step back to getting a bit of an obsession.
SPEAKER_03Well, there was this program called FO3 Edit, where I which where you could load your entire mod order and then you could see in the databases each point where there was like a contradiction between several mods. Oh you could also merge them nicely. And I must have spent over a thousand hours in that program alone.
SPEAKER_02That's insane. Where do we find the time?
SPEAKER_03Well, that was during university when I was yeah, not doing too well. May have been collected, may it may not not sure what the chicken and the egg is here.
SPEAKER_02To be honest, you know, you say that and I'm laughing because I'm surprised I passed my PhD. I spent so much time playing computer games when I was doing my PhD. Ridiculous amounts of time. And to be honest, um, if I had a choice, I would have done my PhD because I did it on on uh I did it kind of on uh science and religion. Uh popular culture, science and religion, and focused on film, but to be honest. Because games were such unfortunate, I hate saying it, games were such low culture back then, I would have loved to have been able to do my PhD on game gaming at the time. But no one understood it.
SPEAKER_03Actually, a friend of mine is currently she's a faculty therapist and she's going to do her dissertation on gaming.
unknownOh wow.
SPEAKER_02Is she doing that in Germany or is she doing that elsewhere?
SPEAKER_03No, no, she she's doing that in England. I I'll I'll send you I'll send your name later on off the record.
SPEAKER_02Yes, please do. That'd be great. Yeah, I'd love to hear what what um what she's doing. Um and she probably knows a couple of people I know as well. So, myth.
Revelations And Pax Romana’s Myth Lens
SPEAKER_02Do you have any specific things that you bring in to your own work um uh that's been inspired by mythology at all or any type of mythology?
SPEAKER_03With with Pax Romana Volume 1, definitely. Like I was looking there at the entire book of the book of Revelations in particular.
SPEAKER_02Oh, nice.
SPEAKER_03And I was like in the first five chapters, I have this religious scholar coming in who is let's say a proto-Christian, because at the time, like the the the Bible wasn't canonized yet, and there was like all of these apocryphal books that that didn't make the cut in the end. And he essentially is trying to study what happened in Rome, like this great disaster, which we know now is a mushroom cloud, so we can identify it. But for someone in the third century AD, I'm looking at the different approaches people have, both the scientific and the mythological, where he like compares everything that happened with the mushroom cloud to revelations and is trying to find a correlation there.
SPEAKER_02No, that's really cool. Um, for those who haven't uh listened to it, it's really good. I will put a link to it here. And you've got low, you've got such a massive, a wonderful cast for that as well. On that, that was absolutely amazing. Um, but can you for the audience, can you give us a little uh a little insight on what particular myths you used?
SPEAKER_03Well, with the with Revelation, I wrote it in German back in the day. I did the look at the Four Horses of the Apocalypse in particular.
SPEAKER_02Nice. You wrote it in 2018, and then did you publish it? You only published it, was it a couple of months ago, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_03The printed version I published in 2023.
SPEAKER_02You published the printed version in 2023, but the audio version recently. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. Like we started our platform in November last year.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and that's when it started coming out, wasn't it? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, death, famine, war, and conquest. And essentially, our character, especially when it comes to pestilence and such, he's looking at all these notions that the water the rivers would run red with blood, uh all the a third of all the animals would die. And at the same time, we have these very real things like radiation sickness, poisoning the fish, and such. Which and he's trying to put these into context and is realizing if this is really the end times, then the order doesn't fit. So either the myths have to be off or there is ground for hope.
SPEAKER_02What got you into uh the book of Revelations?
SPEAKER_03I was I think a lot about end times. It's actually partly linked to Fallout 3 because it has a quote of revelations in it as its core plot point.
SPEAKER_02That's true, yes, it does. Because it's the Sons of Adam, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Is it the Sons of Adam and is that Fallout 3?
SPEAKER_03That's where they start, yes. But but moreover, I was thinking about that quote that that your child Avatar has in in the herb, which the father kept keeps bringing back to you. I am Alpha and Omega at the beginning and the end, I will give onto him who that is a thirst of the fountain of water of life freely. And that ends up being the final code to start the water purifier. That's 216 for the Bible verse.
SPEAKER_02That's right, I remember that. And that boss fight at the end was sorry, I'm like getting going.
SPEAKER_03The Liberty Prime, yes.
SPEAKER_02Oh, it was so hard.
SPEAKER_03And then, but I really love this part of the game because like I always imagined in terms of fictional if I was to write a fictionalized version of it, I would bring that in, especially a scene earlier where Colonel Autumn is trying to question you to get the code out of you. Yeah. And did you ever play that secret ending where you give him the code and he just shoots you? Yes, it's horrible and unexpected. And I was thinking like in a novelization with the player trying with the player character trying to hide it from Autumn, how he would argue around and like go for 704, like 4th of July, independence from everything. And then when the code is typed in and the guy just loses another man, you can turn this into either a moment of triumph of the player character or a moment of trying to keep the rules going. Whereas that and that is really something the 216 is something that literally, because knowledge is so gone at that point, only the player and father know. So that's like literally the one core secret at the core of it. Like this one little spark that connects the very beginning to the very end. And you can see that.
SPEAKER_02Clever plot point.
SPEAKER_03And just this notion of give giving water freely to people, which i in our western areas is something that sure everyone has a everyone has a tap and drinking water is free. But just something that in so many areas of the world and in the Fallout universe is something that doesn't exist. I I I really think that really stuck with me. That really inspired me.
SPEAKER_02And that gave you the and that actually gave you inspiration to write. Was this your first story?
SPEAKER_03The first one I really published. Like I did some non-fiction books about computers, and I have a a four four-volume science fiction series in the far future that I'd written, but I'm never going to publish because it wasn't very good.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that's a shame. You don't you don't think you just go back and uh read and edit it or i it it's very rough and it's very overwritten with technical stuff, and I I feel like in the end it's very it was very good as a learning experience. And I guess carry on.
SPEAKER_03Like during that time, I was also playing a lot of Fallout, and a lot of that a lot of the leftover ideas I had then crystallized into Pax Romana. Also just this notion of what one choice can matter.
SPEAKER_02That was really no, it was a good story. I really enjoyed that actually. And I really enjoyed your as I listened to your recent uh wasn't a very recent, was it it came out in um Valentine's Day? Was it the the house, talking house? That was good.
SPEAKER_03Ah, dated methods.
SPEAKER_02The data methods, that was good. That was a bit that was crazy. I felt I I kind of felt for the I kind of felt for what antagonist? Protagonist? I'm not quite sure.
SPEAKER_03Um in that case I wouldn't say there really is one apart from the system they're stuck in.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. It was very Twilight Zony. I liked it. I did like uh, you know, and obviously someone who's a bit older than you growing up with the Twilight Zone, there's a couple of episodes that kind of stuck with me kind of similarly, and also I think um Black Mirror did it really good. Was it the simulations they did, which were really quite creepy, kind of simulation uh episodes. But if people were stuck in
Writing Optimism Against Black Mirror
SPEAKER_02them or not, yeah.
SPEAKER_03That one with the V VR simulation, which is so immersive it kills the guy. Yeah, I I love Black Mirror, but I'm also trying to with Sparks of Hope to write kind of an anti-Black Mirror which is more optimistic.
SPEAKER_02Which is good, because you know, there needs to be more optimism because you know, uh as someone who studied some science fiction as well, you know, and looking at science fiction films. I mean, there are obviously some um there are kind there's a little bit of optimism, but you know, there's there's a lot of there's a lot of pessimism and there's a lot of end of days in um in modern science fiction to be um and to be fair in past science fiction as well. So it's nice to see some positive leanings.
SPEAKER_03Also think of Brave New World from out by Aldous Huxley a lot in that regard. Comes as the end of the end of the world just not being the end like an apocalypse, but more just the fizzling out of any innovation and any spark.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Might even be more creepy than just a nuclear bomb going off.
SPEAKER_02Well, yeah, I I agree, you know. And you know, I this is and when you know, going back to the AI, we need to make sure that we're not heading to a future where all of our creative sparks and everything that makes us human is actually stripped away from us by machines. Which is quite terrifying, really.
SPEAKER_03Well, one more reason to quote Interstellar Rage Against the Dying of the Light.
SPEAKER_02No, true. Absolutely, absolutely.
SPEAKER_03Um God, I love that movie.
SPEAKER_02Oh, so good, isn't it? What's your favorite is that your favorite sci-fi?
SPEAKER_03It's it's definitely in the top five. Like Everything Everywhere All at Once came along in 2021 and kind of yeah, shook things up a bit because I love that one as well.
SPEAKER_02That's good, yeah.
SPEAKER_03But Interstellar, yeah, one of the best.
SPEAKER_02What's your uh what's your top five?
Mass Effect Choices And Story Craft
SPEAKER_03Good question, because like Star like when it goes to franchises, like Star Trek is one of the is one of them definitely.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Mass Effect is in there, no doubt. Of course. Then the Fallout series.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And then Interstellar. And then yeah, for the like if we if we include stuff that goes more into this multiversal theory, then everything everywhere is number five.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that's really cool. They're all fantastic. They're they're pretty much my favorite as well. And when did you did you play? Did you play that? Did you play all the Mass Effects?
SPEAKER_03I played them cover to cover, like Mass Effect 2, I played eight times.
SPEAKER_02Mass Effect 2 was really good though. Fantastic game.
SPEAKER_03And it's also the reason why Jennifer Hale is my personal hero, and I and my brain almost melted when Alex reached out to her and she said yes.
SPEAKER_02God, I'm I'm actually really jealous because I love Jennifer Hale. I really do. Like I I I adored her when she was, and this is showing my age, and I really is I'm sorry, but I'm really old. Um when she did Gene Grey and X Men.
SPEAKER_01That's when I was just like, Oh, I love Jennifer Hale.
SPEAKER_02I was like ninety god, ninety two or something. It was ages ago.
SPEAKER_03I was born in 92.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I yeah, we we don't need to be reminded of that. It's like I was like 11 or 12.
SPEAKER_03I I was about to say you must have been three years old. Were you even allowed to watch those kinds of cartoons?
SPEAKER_02Oh please, thank you. That's so kind of you. So sweet. Oh no, I was like, yeah, 12? I don't know. Um I'm I I don't even know how old I am nowadays. But um yeah, I mean, and I I honestly she was she was my hero from there. And uh she really made me like love Jean Grey as well. She became my like that was my geek, like X-Men was my geek when I was younger.
SPEAKER_03Mine was definitely Mass Effect on Commander Shepherd.
SPEAKER_02Oh Commander Shepherd was great though, wasn't she?
SPEAKER_03Oh yes.
SPEAKER_02I I take it you played Jennifer Hilver. You played FemShep, didn't you?
SPEAKER_03Always. Always. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Not saying, you know, Mark wasn't great, but yeah, I played, I played uh FemmeShep was my hero as well.
SPEAKER_03It's also like as a as a young autistic teenager, it also teaches you a lot about how to interact with women and how how to be diplomatic. Like Mass Effect, when it comes to being diplomatic, Paragon Commander Shepherd has a lot of good lines, a lot of great stuff.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah. I'd love to know how much Yeah, go on.
SPEAKER_03It also teaches you, like, if you ever want to find out how not to act, then the Renegade options definitely have you down. Stuff you should stuff you should never say in polite conversation.
SPEAKER_02Actually, yeah, I forgot because they were the old, that was the old kind of like uh Paragon Renegade, wasn't it? Where you were like either really bad. And I think that actually Star Wars adult did that as well, didn't it? Which is another great Jennifer Hale character.
SPEAKER_03That's the old Republic, yep.
SPEAKER_02Oh, she was amazing. She was an amazing character in there as well. I love that character.
SPEAKER_03Oh yes. Just I found it very sad they with that morality system, they in in Kotor they kind of lost on the nuance a bit because like it's it became very binary near the end, also to the point where like if you tell Basila at the end, I don't trust you, I'd rather just eliminate you. That that is the moment that turns into the light side of all things because by fighting her, you're locked out of the dark side ending. So it immediately like gives you so many light side points that you've bumped up, even if you've played unto as a dark Sith until that time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it was it was weird that system. And you know, they did a similar one in um Oh yeah, there was the really odd one. And I they have No, they don't because I why am I getting confused with I'm getting confused for some reason with Knights of the Old Republic. But as in the uh Republic um the MMO.
SPEAKER_03I I never played that one. I'm not much of an MMO guy. I like playing I like playing solo on my own time where I can press pause at any moment.
SPEAKER_02Oh, this is it, you know. I think um it's good that you kinda you're not really into the MMOs. And and to be fair, they're not as big as they used to be, but when I was you know, when I was in my twenties, they were massive. And um and yeah, you did meet some nasty, nasty people in there. I mean some lovely people. You met some wonderful people, but also so those the same issues that exist now existed back then, but we had less and less the people had less ways to express their negativity.
SPEAKER_03Although a a dear friend of mine, she she's lesbian and she met her girlfriend playing Call of Duty. Did she? Yes.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god.
SPEAKER_03There are exceptions apparently to the horrible toxicity on the internet.
SPEAKER_02Wow. I can't believe she met her on Call of Duty as well. That's fantastic. Good for her. And at least they're and at least they both like gaming. You know. So what was your favorite Mass Effect? Was it Mass Effect 2?
SPEAKER_03Mass Effect 2, in particular the Overlord DLC, where you have the story about the autistic young man. Like that just really resonated with me completely.
SPEAKER_02That was really good. That was really fun. Yeah, they were great. Great games. I think uh three went a bit. I didn't I think I eventually finished three, but I didn't really want to sacrifice Shep, so I was a little bit kind of like, I don't really want to do this.
SPEAKER_03Well, after they released the extended cut DLC, I think the ending became okay in my opinion.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, agreed. But before then, I didn't I I I will admit I didn't complete it because I was like, I don't want to kill off this character I've been playing. Like a a character I've been invested in for what seven years or something?
SPEAKER_03It was it was four years from 2008 with ME1 to 2012.
SPEAKER_02Oh, was it four years?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Maybe I I'm just thinking it's seven because I played it endlessly.
SPEAKER_03And I actually I was talking to our CGI artist Cooper Rose about that because she just recently dove into Mass Effect and yeah. Oh, nice. We're having a live chat about her encountering the ending. What did she think? Well, she also felt horrible about sacrificing Shepherd, but she also didn't have enough war asset for assets for the good ending where you get like the one you she didn't get the synthesis ending as choice. And if you go for the destroy ending and you have enough points, there's at least the implication that Shepherd is might still be alive.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_03And she didn't get that.
SPEAKER_02Oh, how'd that make her feel?
SPEAKER_03She was devastated.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, because like you said, because at the end, the the synthesis ending is isn't the one when you have like a building drop on your head and you can kind of see Shepard. Is that the one where you see Shepard kind of digging out of it? Is that the right ending?
SPEAKER_03That's the destroy ending.
SPEAKER_02That's the destroy ending, that's right. Okay, okay. Right, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Like sometimes I would imagine I use these things as practice, you know. I as a writer, I often think of, yeah, if I was to do a novelization, what would I do differently? How would I adapt this into a different format? Yeah, like that Afrofuturistic series I mentioned, a lot of that started out when I was thinking about Mass Effect, really.
SPEAKER_02That's cool. So, how would you change it? What would you do?
SPEAKER_03Well, the thing is, as it like if I was going to adapt it into a story from a game, it would be more of, yeah, for example, Liara I'd say would definitely be Canon and Femchep.
SPEAKER_02Okay, fair. Yep. Yep.
SPEAKER_03And then when it comes to the ending, like you could. I introduced one specific plot twist based on the Citadel DLC. Remember that the evil clone? Yes.
SPEAKER_01Yes, that was good.
SPEAKER_03And you remember in Mass Effect 1, like your character, you had one scar, which the character always had, which you could choose. Yes. And the character and your character in Mass Effect 2 doesn't have that scar.
SPEAKER_02Good point.
SPEAKER_03So now imagine if you have in the story the big twist be the reveal of the clone, and it has the scar. Oh, that's cool. So, in a way, like your Mass Effect 2 character was the cloned version, and the your adversary in the Citadel DLC was the protagonist of Mass Effect 1. And you can then like in the beginning of Mass Effect 2, you could then drop some hints, like someone emptied your bank accounts with forging your authorization, and then in Mass Effect 3, you and someone's been using it to set up a mercenary group of their own because they've been disavowed or something. And then you can have the reveal at the end of Mass Effect 3 that in fact that was the Mass Effect 1 protagonist, and she's been working behind the behind the scenes a bit, and she's maybe less hostile towards Shepard.
SPEAKER_01Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_03And then like I was thinking the ending twist could be like them like having romance Liara for the whole trilogy. Like imagine that they end up on the Liara Liara comes with Shepherd up to the up to the Citadel, and and then you could have it assumed that rather than meeting that that godchild, which I didn't like myself, you could have like Harbinger saying, thinking Shepherd is now sufficiently indoctrinated and having them aim the crucible at bringing another Reaper to life. And then comes a twist, and it turns out that the Shepherd on the Citadel is actually the Mass Effect one who was never on the derelict reaper and the likes, and wasn't indoctrinated. So Shepard uses that to trick Harbinger and yeah, finds the crucible at the mouse relay, which then actually destroys the Reapers. But then, due to their cybernetics, has to die in Liara's arms.
SPEAKER_01Oh, well that's sad.
SPEAKER_03You could even have like this interval from the wave is coming from the sit from the relay, and you know like they've only got a few minutes, and so they say their goodbyes, and Harbinger then just yeah, expresses its own regrets, like speaking for the Reapers. And then the red wave just hits, and yeah, everything's cybernetic dies, but Liara lives.
SPEAKER_01Okay, that's fine. Alright, as long as Liara lives. I like that, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Shout out to Ali Hillis, by the way. She is as much a darling as Liara is. Oh, she is.
SPEAKER_02Oh, Liara's a great character though. God, you're so lucky you met all these wonderful people.
SPEAKER_03We met almost all of them at this point. Like for the press day in London, we had 11 of them there. And I was so glad that Jennifer and Ali they were there for Comic Con and they had been able to drop in on the way there a few hours early. So we got them in like the press shoots and such.
SPEAKER_02This is like a dream come true, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it it was like being a child at the candy store.
SPEAKER_02Have you did you ever did you foresee this? Did you think any of this was was gonna happen at all?
SPEAKER_03No. I mean, seriously, five years ago, like I was going through a depressive phase and I was watching the N7 Day podcast, which yeah, really helped me through those times. And I said, hey, I'd love to at least chat to them online and thank them for it one day. And now here I am, and I could just send Ali Hill as a WhatsApp.
SPEAKER_02That's amazing. That's amazing. But you're just a really nice person though, as well. You know, it helps.
SPEAKER_03You too.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. And you know, I did want to thank you as well for um really um coming on and chatting to me. And and I think this is this is the the nicest thing about doing this as well, is I get to meet so many like really nice people, you know, and and like you were saying earlier as well, that um some of the people I have spoken to, like yourself as well, you know, it's just you don't realize it sounds weird, but you don't realize how real these people are, you know, until you actually speak to them.
SPEAKER_00Oh yes.
SPEAKER_02Um, and obviously it it it that that sounds a bit that sounds like a bit of a redundant that sounds like a redundant thing to say, but I think at the end of the day, it it's just basically like you you you look at these you look at these people, you look at these characters, and you think, gosh, you know, uh you ever get an opportunity, in your case, to even chat to them and to do and now you're working with them, and it just goes to prove that um that there's many you know the the creative outlet, especially with games, like the community is really nice. I really love the community of people.
SPEAKER_03Like, I mean, acting always has a certain tint of dishonesty by its very nature, sadly. And like it's something these people have to work within, especially because yeah, the backstabbing is real, the corporate greed is real. But somehow, like the simple notion of just, I don't know, just not being a dick to people is something very rare. And people are actually surprised by that in the industry when someone approaches them and says, Hey, look, if you want, you don't have to bargain for your pay, you just tell me how much you want, and I'll make sure you get it. This is it, yeah. Like it can't be that easy, and it's and it's still like it isn't like it costs me an arm and a leg to pay these people. And just like treating them with a modicum of respect is something that's rare in the industry.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and the thing is, I mean, you'd have a better insight than of course I do and my my listeners do. Um, but from what I do here, it can be it's quite uh it's quite tough, especially for especially for actors who were once called voice actors who actually do so much more than voice act. Um, yeah, it doesn't sound like it's an it's an easy ride at all.
SPEAKER_03It's gotten
AI, Royalties, And Respect For Actors
SPEAKER_03worse since AI, a lot worse. Like what Jane said on record during uh during an interview we once did is that especially like corporate media, like if you want, for example, if it within a corporation you want a training video for your employees and such, those jobs used to be like a good reliable income to supplement it. Yeah, and that's completely dried up because they use AI Slop instead. And like one of our talents, whom I won't name at this point, but that talent was like had a really big career and everything. And when we worked, that person was homeless. Like they'd been homeless for a while.
SPEAKER_00Oh my god.
SPEAKER_03And this is someone who'd been in big series, being both audio and on screen, and still it was and still they couldn't afford a home.
SPEAKER_02It's absurd, isn't it? Especially when people are just trying to make a living as well. Um yeah.
SPEAKER_03I mean, like frankly, that's why I do Tifa. Like, even our Patreon at the moment, uh, I I've been on record at this. At the moment, it's running at a loss, and I'm supplementing a fair bit for my own income. But that isn't a big problem because like it isn't that expensive to pay these people. And I wish more people would rip us off in a way and would also start hiring these people for independent projects because they're there, they're willing, and that like even the best in the business with ridiculous amount of skills are happy to do it. What do you think?
SPEAKER_02Where do you know I I I know we're I know we're kind of going off on a tangent here, but I'm quite fascinated. Where do you think this disconnect comes within the within the kind of corporate mindset? Where is this disconnect with these actors?
SPEAKER_03Well, a lot of them some of them don't understand. Like at the beginning, when it started out with like the elder scrolls and they got like three voice actors to voice every single person and it all sounded the same. Like that was something where people didn't see what the pit how what kind of a hyperinflation of good talent there is out there. Like, have you heard of a game called Date Everything?
SPEAKER_02No, I haven't actually.
SPEAKER_03Like it's an independent dating game, like uh it's it's nice and charming, it's it's a decent game. But what's most important is they have a voice cast of like 90 people.
SPEAKER_02Wow, okay.
SPEAKER_03And they treat one, they give those people royalties, which isn't done otherwise, like almost never in games. And again, and on top of that, they credit them in the game menu. Like in the game menu, when you go to your characters, you have this character voiced by Ali Hillis, this character, voiced by Angeli Bimani. So if you like who you talk to in the game, you know where to look for that for their other projects. And that's nice. But that's the exception. Like Dragon Age Inquisition, if you want to know who your protagonist is, you have to wait for somewhere near about 15 minutes into the credits or something. As opposed to like in a Hollywood movie, just front and center. Bam! That's what these people deserve, and what are they not getting? It's like seen as an afterthought rather than the core of it.
SPEAKER_02Well, I agree as well, because you know, and I think that people do tend to forget as well, a lot of these individuals are actually classically trained actors.
SPEAKER_03Frankly, I'd love for you to chat with Emma Gregory one day because she's been acting more than either of us have been alive. And she's been spent so many years on stage, she does two audiobooks a week nowadays.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_03She has a ridiculous amount of skill and talent. And she has to fight for every bit of recognition and respect. Like she has maybe 4,000 followers on Instagram. She should have 10 times as much because she's she is such an amazingly skilled person. And that applies to all of them. We should be singing their praises rather than digging their names out of some register.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. Yeah. And I have to say, I think uh another reason why I wanted to do this as well, like this this podcast, is because I I wanted to talk to these people, and I also want to talk to academics and people like yourself as well, who are, you know, because you've got the actors, but you also have the people studying and you have the people like yourself writing. And and you know, there's there's there's not a great deal of credit given out anywhere. But you know, and I'm not saying this is this is gonna be a massive podcast. I do hope one day it will be, but at the moment it's just to, you know, to just talk to people and to gain some recognition for people that don't get any recognition or gain enough recognition. Unless, of course, you have a major you have a major headline and character, but then even then, you know, it's it's I'm not so sure they get the credit that they're due anyway.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and it's tragic really because also often enough they take like one big name and put all the money into that name and forget about everyone else. Like I was horrified with have you seen the pie chart of the budget for Avengers End game, for example? I did, yeah, that was Especially like I mean Robert Downey Jr. got his 75 million, which is as much as the entire movie production CGI and everything put together. Like that should not be happening. All of those people No, it shouldn't. All of these people should be paid double or triple at that point.
SPEAKER_02Well, you know, this is why we need more people like you to actually start, you know, you even people like you and Alex to actually start doing stuff for the talent that's you know, where everyone is kind of treated equally and and paid equally and and given equal credit for what they're doing.
SPEAKER_03Like we've we've actually like it's a lot easier than I thought. I delved into my data analysis background. Like it's literally you put in the number of words that each talent does, you have a pie chart, and then you just type in how much money you've earned, and you immediately get the output of how much each of them has earned in royalties. Like it's not rocket science in theory, those people could do it, but they'd rather just pay a buyout fee, and I don't know, our friends at Baldur's Gate 3, they never got a cent in royalties. You generous 10 plus million copies.
SPEAKER_01They're not.
SPEAKER_03I'm not joking. Like outside of Tiva and Date Everything and a few other examples, none of those people ever get a cent in royalties.
SPEAKER_02Are you kidding me?
SPEAKER_03They get a one-time buyout fee and that's it, and that fee isn't exactly generous.
SPEAKER_02I'm actually uh I'm um dumbfounded by that.
SPEAKER_03So was I when I first heard, believe me.
SPEAKER_02I had no idea. I had no idea. Thank you for bringing that to our attention. I absolutely know.
SPEAKER_03I would scream it from the rooftops if I could, because it is insane.
SPEAKER_02And we're talking about games that make more money than than films as well, which is absurd.
SPEAKER_03I mean something like what was it, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 back in the day, which on day one sold 500 million quid. It was a case of or I mean something like Life is Strange, for example, like those voices make the game. Like Hannah Tell and Ashley Birch, they make that game.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03And uh frankly, I wish Ashley Birch would get a lot more credit than she's gotten for because like I've worked with her as well. Her stories are coming out in autumn, and she is great, she is such a great talented actress, like both on screen and and in voice. And like those people, you sit down with them for two hours and they just turn through one script after the next after the next with very little prep time at all. And you just think, hey, for less than a grand, I can have my stuff voiced by an absolute professional. So why don't I give them some part of the success, which they're no small part of?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's gotta change, doesn't it? I'm glad to see you guys making some changes, at least.
SPEAKER_03I definitely hope so. I mean, yeah, we won't stop doing what we're doing. Well we have uh like the writing I've got on my hard drive at writing from James is like it's got we have at least enough writing material until 2030. And hopefully beyond that, nice like I I'm going to keep writing while we're producing. Got another novel almost done. And then even if I ever run out, we're we can always bring on contributors and such. I'll keep this going for as long as it lasts. As long as I as long as my stamina lasts in any way.
SPEAKER_02No, that's that's fantastic. And thank you so much, Tom, for talking to us. Um and I do hope that we can actually chat again soon in the future as well, maybe with some other people as well, which would be really cool. Obviously, we're not going to we we can't we can't solve all the problems of the world, but at least we can start by educating people. Exactly. And you know, and and and just showing the the the amount of talent that's out there and and the things that they're producing and the stories that they're producing, you know, because people like yourself, writers, are writing those stories, but you know, these actors are actually acting these stories and bringing these stories into into our popular culture and popular imagination, and that itself is really valuable, you know.
SPEAKER_03Oh yes. Especially the thing about acting and especially voice acting is it's a multiplying factor. Like, I mean, I'm happy with the quality of my writing, but I know it's not Shakespeare or anything. But when uh this one time I dev literally made me cry when she read my material, like she was that good in Axel Mano chapter nine. Like, I was just sitting there sniveling as she was reading, and I was, oh my god, I wrote this? She just made it sound unbelievably, unbelievably brilliant compared to what I thought when I put the words on the page. Of course, when it comes to missed games and meaning, no one does it like Emma because she she knows my characters better than I know them. Yeah. And she always has like these additional insights and such from her rich history of Shakespeare and classical literature and such.
SPEAKER_02Everyone, please check out um Tom's stuff. It's amazing. And do, you know, and do contribute, especially if you're a big gamer and you like what they do, and especially all these wonderful actors and your writing, please give a bit of contributions um to Tom and his team and know that it's going for a really good cause as well. So thank you so much.
What Tiva Builds Next And Farewell
SPEAKER_02And that brings us to the end of episode 10 of Myths Games and Meaning. A huge thank you to Tom for joining me and sharing such a great conversation. I had a great time. Also, thank you all for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a rating or review, and share it with anyone else who'd love it. You can find us on Instagram or at Myths Games Meaning for more. Until next time, take care and keep questioning the myths around us.