Actor Andy Serkis spoke in a recent interview about the role acting plays in modern game development, saying he doesn’t see a difference between video games or film.

Video games, especially RPGs, have increasingly used voice acting to better embody the developer’s vision. Games like Baldur’s Gate 3, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and even the new Pragmata heavily rely on voice acting to bring their characters to life. Serkis himself had a role in Clair Obscur, which is what prompted the conversation in the first place.

Speaking further, this is what Serkis had to say to Variety:

“I don’t see any difference between that and acting in films or on stage or TV. It’s exactly the same, you approach the character and build a character in the same way…”

“My first engagement with video games was with a company called Ninja Theory and we made a game called Heavenly Sword for PlayStation 3. At that point, actors looked down on video games as like ‘oh, I wouldn’t get involved in a video game’. Now, young actors coming out of drama schools are like ‘I really wanna be in a video game’.”

Serkis is uniquely qualified to speak on the matter, his work includes a variety of roles both live-action and voice acting. Serkis is perhaps best known for his work as Gollum/Sméagol in The Lord of the Rings. His other work includes playing Klaw in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, voice and motion capture for Baloo in the live-action adaptation The Jungle Book, as well as some directorial roles such as the recent adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm.