Rundown (11/15/2026) Natalie Vs The CPA Exam – Part 1

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This Week’s Topics:

Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Natalie Vs The CPA Exam – Part 1

I should probably address one of the more specific reasons I am basically throwing Natalie.TF into maintenance mode while denying myself the things I love. It’s a specter that has been haunting me for the past… decade, and I have truly started down this past after YEARS of delays.

I have a Master’s in Accounting, work as a tax accountant, and have earned myself the title of Enrolled Agent, letting me practice tax before the IRS and even represent people in tax court. However, I have always had aspirations of becoming a Certified Public Accountant, which is pretty much the apex of what one expects from an accountant. I don’t truly NEED to be one, but people in professional environments are prejudiced, view the letters after your name as part of your worth as a professional i.e., person, and expect accountants to be CPAs. Also, they can bill you out more because you’re “betterer” than those non-CPA plebs.

Now, this sounds like a fairly mundane thing, but becoming a CPA is rather difficult. Not only do you need to get oodles of education credentials, you also need to take four exams over the span of 2 years. Each of which takes four hours, costs hundreds of dollars to take, can necessitate 100+ hours of studying, and have an average pass rate of fifty-something percent. If that sounds like the BAR exam… eh, it’s not AS bad. With the CPA exam, you can at least break it up, and choose your specialty fourth exam. Though, there is room for comparison, which is saying something.

I was going to take this exam initially in 2020, but then COVID happened. I had to work my medical staff job from home with my mother’s daily freak-outs, and was just not in the headspace to study. (The sky was falling!) Then I got a job as a tax accountant, and not just a part-time seasonal gig. Then I got surgery, became an Enrolled Agent, bought a house, and generally got busy with other shit. I put off the CPA exam because I did not need to become a CPA, and I ultimately don’t care about becoming a CPA. I care about people shutting the fuck up about me becoming one.

For the past five months— with a two month hiatus— I have been studying for the auditing portion of the CPA exam, as auditing was always my weakest area of accounting in school. There’s a lot of theory, a lot of types of attestation work you can do, and the profession is carrying baggage after the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002— the US government’s Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco response. It’s a sub-50% pass rate, I don’t know if I made the mark, but I’ll know for sure in two weeks.

If I screwed up, I can retake it again, and again, until I pass and move onto the next exams, which will all be far easier for me. Financial Accounting and Reporting is a hard test, but I was always good with the fundamentals, and the other two exams are tax exams— which should be relatively easy, as I already passed very similar exams to become an Enrolled Agent. …Also, you know, I’m a tax accountant, so I already know most of this malarky from experience— the BEST teacher!

Ideally, I’ll be able to wrap this ish up in a year and change, but that will also eat up hundreds of hours of my free time. Time that is already limited by the sheer unpredictability of my work, an influx of new multi-year engagements, and my boss’s plans to sell the practice within the next 12 months. Which itself will add a new layer of unpredictability, as I will no longer be working for a quirky old man nearing senility, but mister who-the-fuck-knows. However, I have made it this far with all this CPA exam SHIT, and I may as well go through with it, so I can get on with the rest of my life.

Natalie Muses About Video Game Voice Acting
(The Problem is SYSTEMS!)

The topic of video game voice acting has been on and off my mind for a year at this point. I half-started a segment on it several months ago, waiting for a good enough opportunity. And with the topic somewhat reheated following the waves of discourse spurred by The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake (2026), now seems about as good a time as any for me to make my grand statement.

Voice acting in video games is just another one of the MANY facets in the slurry of interactive audiovisual medium of video games, and I’d say it can be a transcending element. Voice acting can breathe life into characters, convey information while the player is preoccupied with action, better tell a story, tone, or emotion than just imagery, words, and sounds alone. Hell, the voice acting can be the most memorable and endearing part of a game, which sounds stupid, but it’s true as blue.

However, voice acting is not something games were just born with, nor is it something that is expected in every game, which is a unique feature of the medium. You release a cartoon without voice acting, and you’re a dipshit. You release an audiobook without voice acting, you made nothing. You release a film without voices, you’re a jackass, as nobody prefers the medium of silent films, not even the deaf.

So, how do people decide which games get voice acting? Well, money, of course, but the language and history of games— the cultural understanding of the medium— shapes what people want and expect out of games. Both in general terms, but more narrowly in regard to voice acting. To give a framing device to discuss this topic, I think it is best to expand the binaries of games with and without voice acting into a spectrum. That spectrum consisting of games with no voice acting, games with artificial voices, games with voice sound effects, games with partial voice acting, and games with full voice acting.

Games with no voice acting tend to be that way out of budget or certain lower fidelity design considerations. Nowadays, they are typically a sign of indie developers who don’t have the cash or budget for voice acting or voice sound effects. …Also, most indie visual novels, keep it a buck. Many of these games are presented in a structure or style where voice acting is not expected. People would not expect a retro platformer that looks like a widescreen SNES game to have voice acting, because games of that era, that system, generally did not have voice acting. Through a historic understanding of games, people do not expect certain games to have voice acting, and if they did, it would be more surprising than expected.

However, as fidelity rises, and as a game gets proper cinematic cutscenes with characters who look more realistic, the expectation rises. If you are developing a game that looks like it is targeting realism or a high fidelity, the fact that these realistic people never speak, make sounds, or open their lips would be seen as uncanny. Firstly, because it inherently is, but also because most games that aim for realism have fully featured dubs with hours of voiceover work, or at least some human mouth noises. If you have a fully cinematic cutscene that is made to imitate cinema, has subtitles, and has mouth flaps, you will be mocked as being cheap and lazy because, per cultural expectations, you’re doing something wrong.

But if even getting human mouth noises is too much to ask, there is always another option: Use computer effects to approximate voices. The most obvious example of this that I can think of is what’s semi-commonly called a typewriter sound effect. This was a common feature in a lot of older games and modern retro styled offerings too. Every new character presented would have some sort of pitched beeping sound meant to serve as a character’s voice. From NPC text in The Legend of Zelda (1986) to the talking sound effect in the original run of Ace Attorney games to the immensely iconic beeps of Undertale (2015). They could be a uniform way of representing speech, or they could be a way to add a semblance of voice to these characters, give you an impression of what they sound like without imposing any human mouth noises.

Another good example of this is actually most Pokémon games, where every Pokémon has its own cry that is altered, pitch-shifted, and manipulated to convey a status, emotion, or possibly a state. This is not done with any human voices (at least not anymore), but goes to give the Pokémon more presence than if they were just utterly silent. Or, worse, just made the same noise irrespective of species. Some might also be inclined to refer to progression or “page turn” beeps as a form of voice acting, another commonality throughout Pokémon, but even I’m not progressive enough to validate a lone BEEP as voice acting.

Voice sound effects, or voice effects, is when human voices are recorded and implemented into a game, but primarily for character sound effects. A good example is the first wave of fighting games throughout the 90s, where characters had voiced effects for when they used specific moves, took damage, won a battle, lost a battle, and so forth. Come the PS1 era, it became somewhat expected for some voice acting to be applied to games to better convey various conditions experienced in gameplay. Crash Bandicoot made a wide array of sounds in his tenure on the PS1, not even counting the voiced cutscenes. While Super Mario 64 is a game chock-full of voice acting, and some of the best of its era. What? Are you telling me that you don’t have Mario’s kicking, jumping, falling, and various other sound effects ingrained into your brain? That you don’t just know exactly what sound Link makes when he gets hit?

The voice sound effect approach is one that gamers love. Everybody has vocal stims from sound bites or fighting game character “barks.” They are among the most iconic SOUNDS in video games! But just about everybody can also recall a point where these things got on their nerves. This, of course, depends on the quality of the voice line itself— length, delivery, content, context— but also how often it is used in a game and how it plays into the broader soundscape. You typically don’t want these voice effects to be long, generic, or used constantly with no variation, but there is no objective standard for this sort of thing. I personally think the cacophony of deliberately Bri’ish voice lines in Xenoblade (2012) is delightful, but I could also see that ruining the game for someone. So, I guess this may be a high risk high reward sort of thing.

…Also, I forgot to make a category for something like the “typewriter grunts” in Banjo-Kazooie (1998), but I’m going to put them on the high risk/reward camp again.

Next, there is partial voice acting, which is something that really emerged in games with the advent of cutscenes and the ability for movies to be part of video games. You could not voice every line. There was not enough room on the floppy/cart/CD. However, you could at least voice some of them. While originally limited by technology, partial voice acting has persisted as a commonality, and often necessity, when it is unfeasible to fully voice act games, either due to time or money. This is easy to rationalize as the best approach, voicing the critical and main story relevant scenes while leaving the peripheral scenes to only be text, or feature some manner of character voice effect to preface every line. (Which I know drives some people nuts, especially when the effect does not exactly match the dialogue, but I’m crispy with it.)

I’m fine with this, I understand this, and the limited availability arguably causes me to appreciate the voice acting that we get more. Though, this often creates a tier of importance within games with partial voice acting. If there is voice acting, then the scene is probably important. If there is no voice acting, it’s probably not that important. This could go to keep voice acting more exciting, prevent players from getting bored and mashing through the dialogue three words in. But if you forego voice acting, there will always be scenes that people will read and think “boy howdy do I wish I could hear this honky donk tomfoolery with my ears.”

There is of course a spectrum in this category— I’ve seen games that voice act like 10% of the total script, and ones that voice act 80%— so it is hard to make many grand statements about it. …Now, games that voice everything? That’s a bit easier.

Full voice acting is where I see the most extreme deviation in terms of quality across titles, and that’s not too surprising considering the efforts that go into producing them. If you have a tightly constructed 5-hour-long indie game with four voice actors who are passionate about the project— part of the art— the performances will probably be quite good. Voice actors are generally passionate, emotional people who love bringing characters to life and will bring their whole self to the table if given the opportunity. Despite what you might have heard, virtually nobody is in the entertainment VO scene for the money. If they want the money, they do commercials.

If you get the voice actors involved, if they were well directed, and especially if they are allowed to record alongside their fellow actors, they can produce performances that enhance a game in ways you might not even perceive. The voice acting can become the characters, it becomes an inseparable part of the game, and a highlight to playing it. Unfortunately, video game voice acting has not consistently been allowed to be that, and this especially becomes a problem with bigger or rushed projects.

Like with videography, like with music, voice acting is cheap and easy if it’s bland. If the actors are told to speak in reserved or generic voices, without using their full range, on projects where NDAs block them from knowing the who, what, where, and why to their performances, it’s going to suffer. If the voice director— or more likely their boss— wants bland, that’s easy to get, and I believe that this bland, Hollywood (derogatory), or generic voice acting is part of what shies some people away from the concept. Because if all you hear is people talking, with little emotion or cadence in their voice, the negative association is right there.

Enter the load-bearing subject, the Ocarina of Time remake. I have not been playing it— I’m not allowed to play video games anymore— but I did check out the voice acting after parsing the discourse. And the English dub… is pretty bland. The actors are not bad, but they were clearly to perform a specific affect, and I don’t think it does the material justice. This is especially true if you compare it to the Japanese dub, which is nothing special, though it has a notably wider range of inflection and emotion, which does a lot to make these fantastical characters feel substantial.

Why do I think that? Well, because even outside of these voiced cutscenes, players know what these characters should sound like, given the ample amount of character voice effects. Every NPC has their own collection of grunts and mouth noises, and they tend to be more overt, exaggerated, and rife with personality. So you go from characters sounding like weird critters from a Japanese children’s cartoon to some White woman who sounds like she has done auto insurance radio ads before, there’s a dissonance. The game is telling you contradictory things about how these characters sound, while nearly 30 years of Zelda voice effects further skew people’s perceptions of how these characters SHOULD sound.

I know what Ganondorf is supposed to sound like, and it’s not freaking Chrom from Fire Emblem Awakening (2012). I don’t think the Japanese voice actor Kosuke Takaguchi is the BEST voice for the character— he sounds a bit too standard anime villain— but I can imagine a voice like that coming from a slimy power-hungry dastard like Ganondorf.

Now, I am veering away into discussing dubbing, which is its own kettle of Furrets, so let me try to wrap up this spew of thoughts with a final statement.

Part of the reason why there is a backlash to the abundance of voice acting in games, or debate over if games should get voice acting is because of quality. …But another part of it is the fact that we live in a world where voices are in abundance. Podcasts, video, TV, movies, phone calls, voice calls, music— even when you are alone, you are constantly surrounded by voices that have their own inclinations and verbalizations, but all congeal into an amorphous blob of human mouth noises.

Some people, inarguably, play video games to get away from the chatter of human noises, and prefer to experience something by reading, feeling, and doing, not being talked at by people who sound like— ugh— people. I am not saying this is unique to video games either. Some people like to just turn on an instrumental record or read a book after working a human-facing job and relish in the joy of being alone and in the quiet. And this is how video games worked for years and years, where they would have music, but few if any voices. And when they did have voices, they were not the things you would expect to hear during your day-to-day.

Video games used to be quiet, then they stopped being quiet, and for those who remember those times… it can be annoying when voice actors are used to deliver tutorials, exposition, justification, hints, and generally keep the player engaged.

Akumako: “Voice acting is a tool, and if you’re gonna use it, use it well! Use it right! Don’t go for bland, don’t use it to fill the problems with your game design!”

…Yeah, that.

Fairgame$ Got Canceled
(Another Live Service Abortion by Sony~!)

…For what he did to PlayStation, I think that Jim Ryan safely earned his place as one of the greatest destroyers of value in the history of AAA gaming executive decision-making. While Ryan oversaw the short-lived PlayStation games on PC initiative, everything bad that happened within Sony from February 2019 to March 2024 rests partly— chiefly— on his shoulders. The closure of Japan Studio— the second-greatest game developer of all time— is on him. The removal of so much iconography and ethos that went to define PlayStation is on him. And the pivot toward live services is also on him

Sony’s pivot to live service games has been one of the worst, most costly, initiatives in all of gaming. It was not a complete disaster— we got Helldivers II (2024) out of it, but Helldivers was in development before this mandate, and came from the fact that the developers wanted to make a game like that. Just about everyone else though? They were assigned the task of making a live service and all we got was a pile of corpses!

At the start of the week, there were only two known live services still in the pipeline. Horizon Hunters Gathering, a hero shooter spin-off that looks and plays nothing like the Horizon games, which has had its own development issues and Fairgame$.

Akumako: “Uh, I just checked the site records and found zilch. What the fuck’s a Fairgame$?”

Uh, you remember Hyenas?

Akumako: “The laughy-happy dog?”

The game by the Alien Isolation guys.

Akumako: “They were making a dog game? Was it like Dog’s Life (2003)? Sony DID publish that before the developers started making nothing but zooge and carge.”

I fuckin’ wish! Sony would be partially redeemed if they announced Dog’s Life X Afrika (2008)!

Akumako: “So, Tokyo Jungle (2012)?”

Kinda, but also not at all.

I had the darndest time telling Creative Assembly’s Hyenas and Haven Studios’ Fairgame$ apart, because they were going for the same basic thing. They were both team-based competitive multiplayer games built off of the backs of various break-in or robbery shooters, such as Payday 2 (2013) and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege (2015). Both were proto-live services that were able to find a reliable fanbase, became multiplayer staples for millions, and have been cash cows for their respective developers for years.

It was a good model to ape, and with the objective-driven nature of a robbery or break-in, the gameplay had more stages, more dynamism, than what you would typically see in a Call of Duty or Counter-Strike. As such, in the early 2020s, this seemed like a niche worth exploring as battle royales were dying out and investors wanted their projects to stand out in the market. …Also, the marketing teams mandated the devs splatter on “inoffensive conservative quirkiness” in order to make the title appeal to the mathematically broadest audience.

Like many corporate developed games, Hyenas and Fairgame$ seemed lame, cringe, and like they were designed for a “mass audience of people who don’t exist”. As such, I was not surprised that Hyenas got thrown out along with Sega’s other Super Games. And I similarly am not surprised that Fairgame$ was canceled this past week.

So, now that Fairgame$ has been canceled, what does that mean for the developer, Haven Studios? Well, Sony has spoken to the press and stated that they do NOT intend on performing any layoffs— which I find hard to believe. It’s not like Haven has ANY releases under their belt— they were formed in 2021 as an offshoot of Stadia Games and acquired by Sony in 2021. It would be on-brand for them to shutter the studio like they have with so many others.

Instead, Sony are seemingly turning Haven into a support studio. Which, while seemingly random, makes sense as Haven is a Montreal-based studio, and Montreal is the cheapest major city for game development in the US or Canada. Thank you government tax breaks~!

However, part of me feels that Haven should fall apart, as it was founded by Jade Raymond, who is up there with Amy Henning for being a bringer of disaster wherever she goes.

Akumako: “Context pls!”

Jade Raymond was a producer on Assassin’s Creed (2007) who, as a conventionally attracted White woman in games, was seen as a quantifiable big shot by a subset of the dorkier end of the gaming audience in the era. She was a Ubisoft executive producer through 2014, working on some of the biggest titles, before jumping ship to EA Motive where she played a managerial role in Star Wars: Battlefront II (2017) and its disastrous launch. She then jumped another ship to Google Stadia as one of its main managerial faces, right next to Phil “two decades of cocking up” Harrison.

Raymond then left Google to run Haven Studio from 2021 to 2025, when she parted ways with the studio she co-founded and went on to… I don’t know what, but given her track record, I would just get out of games. I sincerely believe that if she was still at Haven, it would have been shut down. I have nothing against her as a person, but her luck has been BAD.

Big Walk Was Made Using AI
(Time for The Big Walk Back)

Well, this is a disappointing thing to hear after I praised the game a few weeks back. The 2026 indie darling, GOTY contender, and definitive video game experience of the decade of many people of lordly caliber, Big Walk, has recently came under fire for using AI.

As part of the process for applying to the Indie Games Festival— an awards outlet by and for indie game devs— the developers of Big Walk disclosed that they used AI to develop the game, albeit in a limited capacity. During the tail-end of development, the team used an AI a pesky technical problem, and followed its instructions. This was revealed through a game of telephone, some vague-posting, and finally broke with an Aftermath article.

Developer House House “estimate that well under 0.1% of Big Walk’s code had anything to do with this usage” while also claiming that AI was not used in any other context. However, in a world where AI is becoming an increasingly sensitive subject to those who make things, this can be seen as a sign of betrayal.

We preciously saw this with the lavishly praised Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (2025) and its use of AI generated “placeholder” assets that made it into the game and was eventually patched out. With that title, I thought it was reasonable to give it a pass due to the time and place where it was being developed. I remember how people talked about AI over the past few years. I write these time capsule articles for a reason. Everybody was figuring this shit out on the fly, and what AI was in 2023 or 2024 is not what AI is in [CURRENT PERIOD]. However, to use AI at the last minute to fix something, presumably in 2026 when you could have, you know, hired someone, or done the work yourself, and not disclose it until months later is… slimy motherfucker behavior.

Anybody who actively uses AI for game development in this current environment is going to taint their game in the eyes of some of the most vocal and foundational people in the core culture of gaming. It sours the experiences that hundreds of thousands of people enjoyed over the past few months, and adds a retroactive asterisk to every bit of praise that the game earned. Do people who care about ethics really want to support something like this? On principle, they don’t. And if developers choose to lie, to forego disclosure then… you are just normalizing AI’s role in game development. You are lending credence to the idea that “every game released nowadays has AI in it.” And do I even need to explain why this idea that digital asbestos has infected everything is… horrifying?

I want to say that blanket AI bans, being outspoken about issues, and holding devs accountable will solve anything, but I know that’s a load of shit, piss, and cum. Principles are for philosophers and communists who suffered insufficient abuse. If, say, Toby Fox revealed that he’s been using AI in Deltarune since chapter 3, the fuck are would people actually do about it? Bitch, whine, and give up what is shaping to be THE foundational RPG for the Zoomie generation? Doubt.

People will bitch about bad systems, about bad things— I know from ample experience— but few want to be stalwart fighters about this crap. It’s infinitely easier to just go with the flow. People have a large capacity for cognitive dissonance, to just write off things that are bad as mere facts of life, and pursue the more entertaining story so long as it is about the right person. You can redeem a serial pedophile, rapist, and abuser if you make him look flashy enough— you could even make a billion dollar biopic if he’s a hot celebrity— and enough people are willing to go with the story. Sure, they might have gotten into a fit that he was a pedophile— it may have been a cultural event a few years ago— But people will ultimately gravitate to stories that are not truthful, but ones that make them feel good.

If they loved Big Walk, and nobody noticed the AI then… AI in game development can’t be all that bad, right?

…And that crack is all it takes to bring down a fucking dam.

When forced to choose between integrity and facts and their emotions and feelings… at least 70% of people are going to go with the latter. And with a supermajority like that, it’s hard as hell to make more than a dent. Even if you do… fucking thing will just go back to virtue by vibes in a decade or four.

In conclusion… people suck and you can’t trust them. There are no true heroes, and when given the opportunity to disappoint you, most people will.

Akumako: “People, amirite? Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em!”

…You’re not getting a laugh track for that.

Akumako: “D-rats!”

Progress Report 2026-11-15

Welp, I got busy with CRAP, including work, and now I have a net-zero chance of getting TSF Series #020 out on time. So I’m delaying it a week. GREAT!

I was also deliberating on adding a segment on the weird societal double-standard for Jensen Huang’s adultery scandal, but I don’t have THAT much to say. You see, here in America, men are “supposed” to be able to have sex with however many women they want— kill ’em even— if they are a sufficiently powerful man. It’s kind of the first unwritten rule you learn fresh off the boat. However, in response to learning about triple adultery, there was enough pressure to tank Nvidia’s stock price and oust Huang as the CEO of his company.

Some are positioning this as a win but… it isn’t. Huang still has enough money to stage six insurrections and is one of the most powerful men in the world. He was following the script, doing what he expected, and he will assuredly land on his feet, because honkies like him are made of feet.

Akumako: “…You DO realize that he’s Taiwanese, right? Meaning… not a honky?”

He acts White, sounds White, and is spiritually Caucasian given his past behavior, so that’s enough in my book.

2026-11-08: Did a bunch of re-reviews of tests for the CPA exam, then realized I needed a break. Wrote 2,400 words for TSF Series #020 and 2,200 words for this Rundown, the voice acting bit.

2026-11-09: 4,800 words for TSF Series #020 just came to me like nothing while I was procrastinating on studying. Look, I did 250 mock questions today, and only got like 10 of them wrong. I think I am prepared.

2026-11-10: Took the CPA exam part one. I AM DIE! Wrote 1,000 word Fairgames bit. Wrote 650 word intro. Wrote 800 word Big Walk bit.

2026-11-11: Worked my ass off on getting the 2026 client list set up, because I was guilty over not working over the weekend. Made no progress on Natalie.TF stuff.

2026-11-12: Effectively transferred my ownership in my employer, yay, and finished the client list project. Edited this Rundown. Wrote 800 words for TSF Series #020. Hopefully tomorrow will be a 5k+ day.

2026-11-13: Managed to SOMEHOW write 10,800 words for TSF Series #020. Wrapped up the end of one character’s bit, did EVERYTHING for another, and started the final major character encounter, including the shotgun scene! Which is like 1,000 words away from my all-time BEST! I REALLY want to get this done so I can move on to the NEXT THING! Not that this is bad, I think it’s really cool, but I know what to do and want to see the ending for myself!

2026-11-14: HELL YEAH! Got to the end of the draft of TSF Series #020! Thanks to how I wrote… 11,300 words! However, I think I need to scrap an incongruous segment that does not fit, and give the ending bit a touch up for the final paragraph. But 1:40 AM is NOT a time for elegant prose. Still not gonna rush the editing pass on it. If it comes out on Wednesday, the gods smiled upon me. If not, I am UNBLESSED.

Natalie.TF To Do List – Q4 2026

  • 2026-10-07: Fate Stay Night Remastered Review (Shiba & Rain Request) DONE!
  • 2026-10-21: Natalie Rambles About Donkey Kong 64 Recompiled DONE!
  • 2026-11-25: TSF Series #020: Chateau de Bitz
  • 2026-12-02: Ecstatica Review
  • 2026-12-09: Money for Girls: Amortized Review
  • 2026-12-16: TSF Showcase: Coffee Buns
  • 2026-12-23: Natalie Rambles About Delicious in Dungeon
  • 2026-12-30: Natalie Rambles About 2026
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