Troy Baker’s Desire To Launch Game Studio Signals Voice Actors Taking Creative Control

Earlier this week, renowned voice actor Troy Baker, known for his role as Joel in The Last of Us among many others, revealed he's exploring the possibility of creating his very own video game. Speaking to Kinda Funny Games, Baker shared that he wants to build a team to tell his own stories.

"I am excited about building a studio with people that I've worked with, that I trust, and going, 'Here's my idea. How can you make it better?'" Baker said. But according to the Uncharted actor, he has no plans to rush into anything soon and wants to take his time with the process.

Baker's interest in starting his own games studio follows a trend of voice actors embedding themselves deeper into the development process. In a separate interview with Eurogamer, Baker admitted that he was inspired by fellow voice actor Abubakar Salim, who starred as Bayek in Assassin's Creed Origins and released the highly acclaimed Tales of Kenzera: Zau in 2024.

In 2018, voice actors Ray Chase, Robbie Daymond, and Max Mittelman would join together to make Sassy Chap Games, which would go on to release the viral virtual novel Date Everything! in 2025.

Baker signaling his intentions to take on even more responsibility in game development is truthfully an exciting turn, as voice actors have usually been hired guns, often left out of creative decisions for the games they perform in. With voice actors now receiving passionate fan bases eager to hear their favorite performers in video games, it's no wonder we're seeing a push for them to receive more creative control.

How Voice Actors Have Become More Prolific

In recent years, we’ve seen voice actors become far more recognized for their work. Historically, it was rare for voice actors to reach celebrity status, outside famous examples like Mel Blanc or Casey Kasem. This phenomenon would inspire John DiMaggio to release his 2013 documentary I Know That Voice, which put a spotlight on several voice actors and their vast portfolio of famous characters.

It's also not uncommon for voice actors themselves to provide their voice for a project without knowing the character's name or the title of the game they're working on. Voice actor Matt Mercer would share in an interview that he wasn't aware he was playing the character Vincent Valentine in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and only figured out who he was playing in the middle of recording his lines. This is a common industry tactic to avoid leaks of high-profile games and characters ahead of launch, yet it only exemplifies the challenges voice actors go through in delivering quality performances against all odds.

One could argue that the success of series like Critical Role, a DnD web series hosted by several prolific voice actors, has helped expose millions to the personalities of voice actors and encouraged them to seek out more of their work.

As facial recognition becomes more standard in the industry, it's also commonplace to see voice actors appear in the games themselves, taking them out of the voice recording booth and into motion capture suits. The benefit of this process is that it allows studios to capture the entirety of a voice actor's performance, making their in-game characters appear more lifelike.

We’ve seen this from actors such as Debra Wilson, who has gone on to appear in Respawn Entertainment’s Jedi series, Death Stranding 2, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Troy Baker himself is also an early pioneer of this technology, as he would demonstrate with his iconic performance as Joel in The Last of Us.

Baldur's Gate 3's Neil Newborn, who played the beloved companion Astarion, would also be an early pioneer of motion capture in video games. As Newborn would explain in several interviews and panels following the release of the acclaimed RPG, his experience in motion capture not only helped him directly inform the performance of Astarion, but also aided in adding subtle quirks to other characters in the game.

Unusually, Newborn even had the opportunity to collaborate with the game's lead writer to flesh out Astarion's character and help discover where his journey should go. Newborn's performance and dedication to the role, which was four years in the making, would help him sweep nearly all voice acting awards at plenty of awards shows and push the potential for voice actors' involvement in a video game.

Already, Newborn's success has paved the way for other studios to consider a different approach. During PAX East 2026, a panel called 'Not Just Voice: How Voice Actors Became Developers' was hosted by the team behind the upcoming Indie game, Fading Echo. Joined by voice actors Jasmine Bhullar, Samantha Béart, and producer Elise Marchouba, the trio would discuss how the studio brought voice actors into the development process early, and how that has helped inform the game's world-building.

It's impressive that in 10 years since DiMaggio's documentary was released, the profile of voice actors has risen exponentially, making it little surprise that, like Hollywood actors who would go on to become directors, voice actors themselves are gunning for a spot to open their own studios and tell their own stories.

How the State of the Games Industry is Hurting Voice Actors

Troy Baker announcing his interest in opening a game studio is inspiring, but others have called it idealistic, given the current state of the industry. Salim, who Baker listed as his inspiration, would respond to Baker's interest, saying, "Don't do it," and that the space is "ruthless."

Just this week, tech giants Microsoft and Meta announced they will once again enforce job cuts, which are expected to affect over 10,000 roles to make way for AI. This will mark Microsoft's fifth round of layoffs in the past two years, which have significantly hurt the gaming industry. Part of the layoffs have been attributed to over-hiring during COVID, as well as paving the way for AI-focused labor and balancing the high cost of data centers. The announcement stings even more as CEO Natya Nedella committed $25 billion (AUD) to building new data centers in Australia just this week.

The impact AI has already had on the games industry is hard to ignore in the conversation of voice actors. In 2024, we saw several actors from the SAG-AFTRA guild protest for months to ensure that studios would not replace them with AI. Even after screen actors reached an arrangement, voice actors remained on strike for over 18 months, fighting for stronger protection against AI. The result would enforce better compensation for voice actors, as well as require express consent from them before recreating their voice with AI.

Several would be left frustrated by the result, as the length meant that studios enlisted the help of non-union voice actors, affecting long-time roles of union members. Others also felt that even after 18 months of striking, it didn't eliminate the potential threat of exploitation and abuse by studios.

Just last year, ARC Raiders developer Embark Studios came under fire after it was revealed that the game had hired real voice actors to train an AI model, which would then use said actors' voices to address different situations in the game. While the backlash to the game wouldn't hinder its success, the negative PR did scare the development team into going back and replacing the AI voice lines with human actors.

As the industry continues to go through major shakeups with AI, significant leadership changes at Microsoft and PlayStation, and the fallout the strikes had on voice actors, it's clear the industry is in a state of flux. Despite experienced voice actors gaining more notoriety, it's becoming tougher for new and smaller actors to break into the industry and build the resume needed to land meatier roles.

The Rise of AA and Indie Games

With AAA development becoming a more competitive and bureaucratic industry, and with the immense number of layoffs impacting the tech world, we've seen a growing trend in talent forming their own studios to release truly unique indie titles.

As last year's stellar Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 showed the world, game development is more accessible than ever, thanks to affordable tools like Unreal Engine 5 to help streamline the process. As the developers would reveal in a keynote, they didn't even need to write very little traditional code for the game, and relied on Unreal's visual scripting systems instead.

In Baker's interview, he spoke about working with industry titans like Todd Howard from Bethesda, Death Stranding's Hideo Kojima, Neil Druckmann of Naughty Dog, and more, and how he's learned "so much" from them.

"What I am excited about doing is taking those tenets, taking those principles of wildly successful titles – not just in terms of sales and figures but the stories that have defined the industry – and being able to innovate and replicate and emulate those processes and practices into the stories that I want to tell," he explained.

With the barrier to entry in game development shrinking, and Baker being able to lean on his star power and expertise, any game from the veteran voice actor is likely to garner plenty of interest that other indies would thrive from.

Baker just recently starred in the indie video game MOUSE: P.I. for Hire, developed by Polish Studio Fumi Games and published by Australian producer PlaySide Studios. Having just worked on such a high-profile indie title, it's no wonder Baker has his eyes on the field and is looking to make his own mark in the space.

As major game studios shift more towards algorithmic design in favor of delivering fresh experiences, it's genuinely exciting to see smaller studios push to involve more creatives in the process to help tell the best stories they can. While there's no denying game development remains a tough industry regardless of its complexity being streamlined, Baker's intrigue in the space hopefully marks a shift where we'll see more talent looking to tell their own stories and break from the industry standard.