Veteran actor Keith David is a legend in Hollywood, and in recent years has begun to attract a similar status among game fans thanks to his ready willingness to lend his voice acting and likeness to a range of games including “Halo 3” and “Mass Effect 2”. With his new role being in “Modern Warfare 2”, almost certainly the most anticipated title of the 2009 gaming calendar, David talked to GameSpot’s Tor Thorsen today about his involvement in the industry. “One of the things that made me want to be an actor was cartoon voices and narration,” he acknowledged. “So I’ve been watching cartoons for over fifty years, and I marvel at the way CGI has come in and turned things around… I am so wonderfully impressed with the quality of the graphics.”
He says he sees no difference between acting in games or movies, especially since “The gaming industry has surpassed, in some way, the movie making industry as far as first day bankability. I don’t know of a film yet that has made a hundred and fifty million on the first day, as some of these games have.”
He says that other actors are now also increasingly seeing video games as a reputable and profitable source of income. “We’ve come a long way,” he says. “It’s not just a disembodied robotic voice telling you what to do (in the game); now it’s the sergeant talking to you personally, the player.”
His major reason for involvement does not really come out of any great love for video games, which he admits to knowing little about, but simply because “I like to work, man. That’s my criteria. I do it and because of the quality and caliber, and the creatives are becoming more creative and therefore it’s more fun to participate in.”
