Nolan North Honors Game Developers With Heartfelt Acceptance Speech

If you missed The Game Awards last night, the show had game reveals, new trailers, and the usual roster of various awards being handed out to various games.

Voice actor Nolan North won the best performance award for Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, and his acceptance speech has gotten an interesting response from the gaming community. You can view his speech above.

Instead of talking up his role as a voice actor and the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, he gave a heartfelt speech thanking the very game developers who have enabled his voice acting career.


Here’s a transcript of his speech:


I have to thank everyone at Naughty Dog, an amazing company that I’ve had the honor to work with for over a decade.

This is the culmination of ten years of my life – the best years of my life. It made me a better actor, a better person. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the creator and the person who cast me, Amy Hennig, who put me in the role.

I’m going to go out on a limb. I want to thank a group of people at Naughty Dog. It’s them as a whole. I’m hearing a lot of talk lately how performance matters. It does.

The performance of every designer, every programmer, every artist, of every hard working and talented person at that office, not only Naughty Dog but all the developers that I’ve worked with, but particularly Naughty Dog because I’ve been with them so long.

That performance is so important.

They are so talented and they are so hard working. And their performance matters more than mine. And that’s important in this day and age, with all this talk going back and forth. Because without their performance, my performance would only not matter, it wouldn’t exist.

I’m so proud to do this, I’m so proud to be up here. Thank you so much for this. I will continue on, if they will continue to keep bringing the things I do to life. I’ll be there for them. Thank you.


Voice actors, their rights as employees, and their working conditions are one side of the spectrum. Developers have an equal if not greater number of issues, so it’s refreshing to hear Nolan praise them.

How do you feel about voice actors and their compensations for working in video games? Should game developers unionize as well? Sound off in the comments below!

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