Hey everyone, this is an interview I did with Inuki, who is best known for being the voice of the PC Top 5 for Paladins and Smite. We had to do an email chain for this due to our conflicts of schedule. Thank you very much to Inuki for doing this! Have fun reading and enjoy!

Who are you and what do you do (for the people new to smite)?

I’m Inuki. I’m mostly known for creating youtube videos for HiRez. Working on the SMITE and Paladins titles.

Did you go to school for voice work? If not did you go to school or are currently in school?

I studied music at college and university. Although, the education system in the UK isn’t that great. I had financial difficulties at the time and by studying you were given a grant and a loan. I used this money to study music in my own time because I fully expected that the government overseen education system wouldn’t teach me how to compose glorious orchestrations and going private wasn’t an option. Unfortunately, a lot of this money was used by my family to keep a roof over our head so it wasn’t until the third year that I was able to buy some of the real tools I needed for study. These tools also allowed me to start creating videos like the ones you see today.

Where did you get the nickname, or is it your actual name? How did you come up with the mascot?

I played vanilla World of Warcraft on release. First I made a priest but kept on dying because warriors could not hold aggro in the level 60 dungeons. So I made a warrior to protect all healers and treat them right! Once it got the point of raiding within a guild, I was still playing my priest at this point, we were low on tanks and so I made the switch over to my warrior who was called Inuki. I eventually became the warrior officer and main tank. I played other games with my guild friends such as left 4 dead 2 and they continued to call me Inuki so I’ve used the name ever since.

The mascot is fairly difficult for people to understand. I was studying art at one point and wanted to get into animation. The character is just a part of a story and world that I’ve created. I get bored trying to sleep at night and rather than count sheep I’ve just been thinking up a whole new fantasy world. You know, swords, magic, elves and demons, that kind of stuff. The mascot is part of that world. He isn’t the main character but he is the character that gets to be a bit more silly and fun. The premise is based on a game called Black and White. There are gods and each god has a creature which is usually sent to towns and villagers to persuade the population to believe in their god, granting them more power. The more belief in a god the more power that god has. The mascot is one of those creatures but for some reason he has betrayed his God. I’m in the very early stages of putting together a web comic series for this.

What made you want to get into doing voice work, whether it be the Top 5 plays or announcer packs?

I have never once thought that I was doing “voice work”. Initially I was commentating two games called “Company of Heroes” and “Men of War Assault Squad”. I really enjoyed casting these games and I was getting more viewers than people who played the game. I first started with Company of Heroes because a caster that I watched moved to China which left this big ‘gap’ of Company of Heroes content. So I decided that I would try to fill that gap and do things in a way that I wanted to do.

So for example, I always wanted a ‘multi-cam’. A small camera on the bottom left that shows action going off elsewhere. I wanted a solid intro like as close to it feeling like a “TV show” as possible. I remember watching a British TV show called “Time Commander” where they used Total War for battle simulations and had contestants try to win historical battles. That’s what I was trying to go for but more real time.

I produced and edited all this down. The voice-over part was just a necessity, I didn’t give that much thought. “There has to be someone shoutcasting this otherwise who will watch?” I do love analysing the tactical and strategical side of games so that helps.

What drew you to Smite? Are there any other games that you have done voice work for or want to do voice work for?

I didn’t like MoBA games, but one of my World of Warcraft buddies was insanely into them. I grabbed 3 SMITE beta codes when they were giving them out on the smitegame stream and gave 2 to friends. They sounded like they were having a lot of fun so I decided to join. At the time the only other real MoBA choice was League of Legends. SMITE turned out to be much more action orientated and engaging. I enjoyed it and basically ported what I did for RTS games over to SMITE. However, I wanted to do shorter videos and a Top 5 Plays format was just the thing to try! Like the casts I did for Company of Heroes and Men of War I really wanted to push for some extra production. It is interesting looking back on the very first Top 5 Play videos I did because what I was doing back then is what “Play of the Game” is now. That’s something that’s become very popular.

Would I want to do voice work for other things? I enjoy the production side much more than the voice over, even though that aspect is harder work I find it much more relaxing.

Have you ever thought of becoming a caster?

I have many reasons to not become a caster. I have a lot of responsibilities as a video producer and I believe I can provide much more working on non-live content. I think every time this question is asked it is not known or forgotten that I handle the editing and compiling of the episodes. It’s a lot of work and requires an assortment of skills, but it comes with a lot of perks, and for some I guess there would be downsides too. I get to work from home but I work every single day throughout the year and the hours are extremely long. Though I get more help than I use to but someone’s got to record all those replays before the patches wipe them! The only breaks I take are when all my work machines are busy rendering.

I do enjoy casting very specific RTS titles but MoBA games aren’t quite my jam for casting, although I did a few BattleRite casts for fun recently. This was mainly an opportunity to try some new production tools out which were later used in the new format for the PC Top 5 Plays. I hadn’t planned on doing any commentary for it but the commentary part doesn’t take long at all so I thought “what the hell.” I do this from time to time to brush up new skills but I do not have any plans to continue BattleRite commentary.

Generally though, I’d really like to cast a good RTS title again but no games currently exist so perhaps in the future something might come along.

Did you think that you would be as popular as you are?

I don’t consider myself popular and I’m not seeking it either! When I first got into producing the casts for RTS games I was looking at the productions from a viewers perspective. Since back then I was just a viewer and I had very little technical skills. Actually, my skills were in music production and when I started to learn video editing I found a lot of transferable skills.

What would I like as a viewer and a gamer? It’s awesome having your name called out. It’s awesome when the caster makes a story around your name or your actions and super sweet to see someone has been working and editing to show you off to the world. It’s nice to have and give that attention, but it’s not the same as popularity.

Whilst I do appreciate the audience, the size isn’t important. And whilst the audience is very important, the participants in the show I consider more important. After all, they are the stars of the show!

What do you think you can improve upon?

Many visual related production skills, and learning new skills is one thing which I’d like to do, There are lots of skills I currently have that could be implemented into SMITE Top 5 Plays PC that I can’t do at the moment because of time and scheduling. One of the things I’m focused on at the moment is increasing the size of the team to take tasks away from me so I can then spend time working on new content or increasing the quality of current content. I have a bunch of new content ideas that I want to make happen but struggling with time and manpower.

What is the toughest part of doing voice work for Smite’s Top 5?

When I drink orange juice I end up with slippery lip syndrome and I just can’t articulate very well at all. It gets frustrating but I really like a tasty drink to have whilst I’m working on the voice over part.

Do you have a team of helpers?

Yes although the team changes around a lot. This team has only really started as of last year. Before then I was mostly working on everything myself.

I’m currently working with a promising new video editor who goes by the name Dice. Dice has also taken over the console Top 5 play selection entirely which was being done by 3 people including myself. In the future he’ll be more involved with the PC Top 5 Plays.

When it comes to sifting through replays and noting down information there are a lot of guys and gals who swap in and out to help me with that. Without them it wouldn’t be possible to review all the submissions before patches.

Vox and Alan are part of the Paladins team. I’m getting more involved with Paladins and I’m very much enjoying working just as a producer for it!

Was there anybody that you looked up to when you first decided to do voice over work?

Day9 and HarlequinCoH. Day9 is a storyteller and it kinda works into another thing I like which is improv. Not all improv is comedy though, but fun does come out of it when you really put yourself into the situations you find yourself in within games.

HarlequinCoH was the Company of Heroes caster that I used to watch before he left for work. He had a fun personality and did small things that I think people didn’t pick up on that made the game intriguing.

I think when most people look at their ‘idols’ they are more focused on becoming them rather than improving individually. Like it is a constant work to rise up to the point that their idol is. Though I’m obviously nowhere near surpassing any of the folk people might idolize, I’ve always thought of how to improve or do better. Firstly, I must always do better than myself, but then there were always other things to look at. As an example, one of the folks I watched would waffle on for 5 minutes before the game started. I really liked getting into the action so when I started casting RTS it was a short intro and BOOM into the game! Let’s get started because we wanna see the good stuff. If I want to waffle then I’ll waffle during the down points of the game.

So I’m not quite sure if it is looking up to people or just looking at people to learn from. Either way, I appreciate a lot of people who perhaps aren’t recognized. Weltzeit recently has been helping with the SPL productions and he does some excellent camera work.

Favorite god and Pantheon? Why are these your favorite?

I’m really bad with ‘Favorite’ type questions. I never see something as overall better but rather the good and bad qualities. But if I had to say something then possibly Fenrir? I like mobile characters and Fenrir was around the time I spent a lot of time on SMITE. I also played a lot of Hel mid and miss her spinny disk she use to float on!

This is an easy favorite question for once! The Norse just generally appeal to me a lot. Winter themes, the style of their wooden buildings, their more tribal like apparel, their tattoos. All things that just appeal to me.

Any advice to the people that want to try voice over?

If you want to be a voice artist. Get a suitable microphone and create a demo reel. If you want to be a caster then unless the industry is looking specifically for a caster, then you are going to need to learn production skills to be able impress people with your shoutcasting skills. There’s a lot of things to consider but I think my most favourite tip for newcomers is regarding a question that is commonly asked and commonly the wrong answer is given by people who, I guess, think they know what they are talking about.

That question is “What microphone should I get?”. The common answer is “A condenser microphone” but this is a very general and ignorant answer. The answer usually implying that dynamic microphones are ‘worse in quality’ when it is likely, for a newcomer, that a dynamic would be more suitable. One of the main problems with newcomers coming to the scene and watching their own productions is I can hear their typing, mouse clicks, table vibrations and background noise. Condenser microphones are very sensitive and they pick up all these sounds. Generally speaking a dynamic microphone would be more suitable to entry level guys. Most people go for a USB setup as it is very plug-and-play so my recommendation would be to get a $100 or less Large Diaphragm Dynamic microphone and then a pop shield. Pop shield won’t eliminate plosive “gush of air” sounds but by simply turning the microphone very slightly away from the mouth you can get rid of the majority of it.

Final question: Is that your real voice?

I’m never sure how to answer this. The only vocal treatment applied is standard stuff. Compression, EQ and Reverb. There are no modular effects that change the pitch or tone.

Generally when I talk on voice to people, which is rare, I’m quiet and I have to be quiet because there could be sleeping people around. To which they will then say “Oh you sound so much different”. Of course I sound different, I’m trying not to wake people up which is very different to the voice overs where I am most definetly trying to wake people up!

Something that is interesting to me is people look to the ‘deeper’ side of the voice. The Top 5 Plays though has a range. There are plenty of times, especially when things get real fast and sped up, that the pitch of the voice because quite high and jolly. No one seems to remember those moments though. That lighter jolly side is more “me.” Whereas the deeper, darker side is more for accentuating something cool or just starting us off by describing the scene.