From the Commodore 64 to the PS5: My journey in games.

Brad Shaw - Voice Actor
Aug 8, 2021
4 min read

Updated: Aug 9, 2021

As a jobbing voice actor, I’m about to post up some new gaming voiceover clips I’ve been working on with Stephane Cornicard, a voice actor and director I greatly respect.

As a trained and experienced actor myself and someone who has always been into gaming, it’s an area of voiceover that suits my voice and background. It's also an area that I'd like to get more involved with and one that I really enjoy.

A wonderful collaborative process

It’s a wonderful experience working with Stephane. We generally create the scripts together, he then directs me on those pieces, I then do a number of takes for him to choose from. I then go and produce the clips, we listen together and then either tweak or lock it off. If you're a producer and you want to put me through my paces, let's jump on a zoom, I'd love that.

The journey into the games industry started almost 30 years ago in the early 90's.

In my mid 20s, I set up a promotions agency out of the Business Design Centre in Islington. My first big client was Virgin Interactive Entertainment.

Had a great time working with Sean Brennan, Simon Jeffrey, Andrew Wright & Paul Dowling amongst others. It was the era of ‘better to ask forgiveness, than permission’ and they were doing some really innovative stuff.

It was the time of the Sega Megadrive and Nintendo’s NES and then SNES and then the first Playstation. PC game development was also growing fast.

There was a huge amount of game development and we had a lot of fun promoting games such as Jungle Book, Cool Spot, Cannon Fodder, Command & Conquer, Sensible Golf, Day of The Tentacle and many more.

Free Sensible Golf game with every multipack

Not only that, the first game on CD-Rom was about to come out called The 7th Guest. This was cutting edge stuff in 1993.

Creating a haunted house

The 7th Guest: The first CD-Rom only game

I produced the launch event for VIE, which was an amazing job. I hired an old manor house in Amersham and brought in an events company to turn the whole place into a haunted house. The idea was to scare the pants off 80 journalists for the launch. Great fun. You don’t get event budgets like that any more!

Then the Playstation was launched in 1995 and Geoff Glendening was at Sony doing some great targeted marketing. I especially remember his perforated cardboard sheets with the PSX logo on that were distributed to ‘smokers’ at Glastonbury!!

Red Bull gives you wings

My promo agency also did the first big in-game sponsorship deal between Sony owned Psygnosis and a young new energy drink called Red Bull. It was a 'hover’ racing game called Wipeout and branding appeared on all the bridges in the game. I remember going to a vast open plan Red Bull office in Austria where the entire vast ground floor had sand on the ground, palm trees and garden furniture!

On the pitch at Highbury

A short time later I also did a deal for Virgin Interactive with Adidas to sponsor a football game and we launched a school's football initiative and got both Adidas and the government to back it. As an Arsenal fan, I found myself in the tunnel, excited like a child, ten minutes before a game with George Graham on one side of me, Kevin Keegan on the other, the dressing room doors open, listening to all of the banter from the players about to come out. It was a very surreal but amazing moment!

Brad Shaw at Highbury with George Graham — On the pitch with George Graham at Highbury 1993

From promoting games to playing and voicing them

I've always been a keen addictive gamer often up until the small hours finishing a level, much to the upset of a number of ex-girlfriends!

My new 30mb hard drive was a revelation!

First computer I had was a Commodore 64, spending an hour loading Bubble Bobble from a cassette only for it to error.

Then I think I had an Atari ST. In those days, you were either Amiga or ST! It was an absolute revelation when I upgraded and got a 30mb hard drive! The machine simply flew along. Soon after that, I think I got my first PC with a 14.4 modem. Oh the joy of watching a saucy picture appear line by line over the period of an hour!!

Although I love their kit, I’ve never joined the dark side and gone Apple. I just never really agreed with their philosophy and how so locked down everything was (is).

Then of course I’ve had all the consoles, but stayed on the Playstation side and never went down the Xbox route, which does seem a bit strange as I have a PC.

Still addicted to gaming at my age!

Which brings us up to date. Assassins Creed Odyssey and then Valhalla got me through most of lock down! After being thoroughly addicted to Odyssey, I thought Valhalla would be a new take on the series, but no, exactly the same and equally addictive, if not more. So to now, I'm 4% in on 'The Last Of Us 2' on PS4!

Sold my immersive theatre company just before lockdown and started to once again focus on my voiceover business. I started to get regular work but soon realised that the one area that I was really passionate about was gaming. But the one demo that I lacked was a gaming demo.

So over the next month or two, I’ll be posting up new gaming clips every few days for a while. I've put the vocal details and a picture reference on each clip's video for easy reference.

Now, I’m not doing this for my own vanity. If you are a game producer, director, developer or casting agent, I would love to work with you on your next game release. If you like what you hear at any point, please get in touch. Thank You.