Love in Login VO Recording & Sound Design

This post is a direct transfer of a post originally written on Naver Blog on December 28, 2022.
Hello, this is Muzium.

Previously, I wrote a post about On Fire Games' Love Delivery.

This time, it's about the domestic otome game "Love in Login," released through a collaboration between On Fire Games and Novelpia. Love Delivery also sold over 10,000 copies shortly after its release, and with the great news that this one sold 10,000 copies in less than a week after launch, let's get started with the post.

Project Information

Client: On Fire Games

Recording Location: Studio Zium

Recording Dates: October 2022 / December 2022

Voice Actors: Park Da-hye (Jang Mi) / Lee Myung-ho (Ban Joo-hee and supporting roles) / Shin Na-ri (Cheon Su-yeon and supporting roles) / Kim Hee-seung (Wonseok's older brother and supporting roles) / Hong Seung-hyo (Lee Jun-yeop, PD, and supporting roles)

Mic: Neumann U87ai

Mic Pre: Millennia HV-3C

Audio Interface: Protools Carbon

At the studio, we handled recording, directing, post-production for the voice tracks, remastering and loop processing for BGM, and sound effects (sound design).

Demo Version Work

We were first contacted around October of '22.

Since they wanted to produce a demo version for internal testing first, we started with about 2 hours of recording together with voice actress Park Da-hye (Jang Mi) and voice actor Kim Hee-seung (Wonseok's older brother). It was approximately up to the 8th scene or so.

The approximate number of voice lines was around 450. Since Kim Hee-seung's portion was about 20–30 lines out of those, Park Da-hye handled approximately 400 lines in about an hour and a half.

In most cases, voice work used in collection-type games involves recording multiple versions of a single line, resulting in about 2–3 files per line. However, for games that follow a storyline like this one, most lines are recorded just once, so you can think of it as roughly 1 file per line. Because of this, there is a noticeable difference in working speed as well.

For collection-type games, a single line is typically recorded 2–3 times in succession for a given batch, followed by client feedback and revision recordings. The resulting files are then sorted, and 2–3 files are either used simultaneously (randomly) or selected one by one. In these cases, most voice actors tend to handle around 100 lines per hour. Thinking back on other mobile game projects I worked on recently, since the client was based in China, we'd record 4 lines and then wait 3–4 minutes for feedback, and with revisions, there were times it was difficult to get even 10 lines done in 5–10 minutes.

For otome games like this, as long as there aren't constant interruptions for feedback, the voice actors can generally read through continuously, so it's usually possible to get through about 200–300 lines per hour. Of course, it varies a bit depending on the actual flow and pacing of the script, how long the lines are, and what kind of emotional range is required.

Anyway, after finishing that and sending it off… December arrived, and the long-awaited main episode recording began.

We were told that all the source material from the demo version was being scrapped and the script had been revised, so recording started from scratch. The release date was December 23rd, and recording began on December 9th — a total of 3 days, approximately 15 hours in all. We wrapped up recording the week right before launch. Since the files had to be delivered before release, all the work had to be done within 2–3 days of finishing recording. With so many other schedules in December, I thought I was going to collapse from exhaustion.

Maybe that's why — I always make sure to organize projects clearly so anyone can understand them at a glance — but this project ended up being a total mess.

Due to scheduling conflicts, voice actor Lee Myung-ho delivered his recordings via home recording. The unfortunate part is that the very day before the last day of Love in Login recording, he had visited our studio for another game recording session… quite a shame.

The total number of voice files was approximately 2,000+.

BGM Remastering

Calling it BGM remastering feels a bit grandiose, to be honest. About 30 BGM tracks were used, and there were quite a few with varying mastered volume levels. On Fire Games requested that we normalize them, so we aligned everything to -12 LUFS. I intentionally set it a little on the louder side. The reason… I can't remember. Some tracks had sudden dramatic dynamic shifts during mood transitions, and those were handled with automation as well.

As you can tell from the dates, this was all done during the launch week…

Sound Design

For the sound design, some of the assets were sourced by the production team, and some were provided by us.

Among them, what stands out most in my memory are the sounds used in the drinking mini-game. Given the nature of those sounds, there was absolutely no way to find them in existing libraries, and I decided it would be faster to just go buy a bottle of soju and record it myself than to spend time brainstorming search terms for something similar — so we went ahead with foley recording.

When I heard the sounds applied in-game, they turned out incredibly natural. The sound I was most satisfied with…

Closing Thoughts

And that's the story of Love in Login — worked on practically in crunch mode for an entire week leading up to launch!

I saw the news that 10,000 copies were sold on the very first day of release. That's really great news. I hope that indie games like this (calling them indie, but with quite a hefty development budget…) continue to gain more traction domestically. With the emergence of Stove Indie, these indie games are certainly receiving more attention than before, but I still think there's a long way to go.

Anyway… cheers to all indie game developers and studios out there…