I mentioned Dungeon Crawler Carl in the book thread – One of the best books I've read in the last 6 months is . - #8920 by Data10 . See the previous post for a description of the book. In this post, I’ll focus on audio book vs written text book.
Dungeon Crawler Carl has had greater success as an audio book than a text book, although both appear on NYT bestseller list in corresponding category. The author appears to writes with the primary focus on the audio book, rather than the text book. He thinks about how the characters voices will sound on audio and in some cases writes detailed description about voices, perhaps in attempt for the text reader to get a better feel for the audio experience or perhaps to give clues to the audio reader. An example is quoted below:
This guy had an Eastern European accent, deepened and grittier because
of his race. It reminded me of Britney and Langley, but a little different in a
way I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
The author has mentioned that he will kill off a character, if he doesn’t like the way the voice comes across in the audio book. I was surprised to learn that all of the voices with the many different accents/tones/inflections… are done by a single voice actor – Jeff Hays. He does males, females, the cat Donut, aliens, the snarky AI, … dozens of regular characters and hundreds of characters in total, including the NPCs and mobs. He does such a good job with the female characters that the author sometimes gets asked if particular well known professional voice actors are doing the female characters, who apparently sound similar to Hays. There are impressive videos of Hays going back and forth between the different voices in an instant, sometimes almost doing 2 voices simultaneously.
Overall I prefer the audiobook experience to the text books. The voices and are big part of this, but I also find the audio makes a more engaging experience… easier to picture the DCC world.
However, the text books also have advantages. It’s easier to choose my own pace (I realize you can change speed on audio books, and I do so). I miss less, particularly when something complex is going on, or when a character has a strong accent, such as cockney British. It’s not unusual for me to read a portion of the text after hearing a chapter on audio to review details I may have missed. Some information is also better portrayed as text, just as some is better portrayed as audio. Back and forth dialogue often works better as an audio book. There are many in game messages, which sound better when read, but details can be lost.
For example, Donut has a habit of messaging Carl and other crawlers in ALL CAPS, when the situation does not call for all caps . She also does things like typing depth charges as “death” charges, presumably thinking that is the what Carl was calling the object (originally being a pet cat, Donut’s starting knowledge of the world largely came from what Carl and his GF had on TV, and household experiences, so no previous knowledge of depth charges). Little things like that come across in text book, but not audio.
It’s also easier to pause and Google something when reading text books. For example, book 6 involves folklore characters in the region where crawlers choose to start. An Icelandic crawler gives Carl and Donut’s team Jola the Yule Cat. When the Jola is released, it looks at Carl and says “Hvar eru buxurnar þínar?” Googling, I see that’s Icelandic for “Where are your pants?”. Further Googling, I learned that Jola is an Icelandic folklore creature who eats children/people that don’t wear their Christmas clothes, so it makes sense that Jola would be sensitive to Carl not wearing pants, particularly given the timing of being near Christmas.
Sometimes things like the leaderboard below appear in the book, which is printed in the text and read/summarized in the audio. Obviously this type of table works better in a text book than as an audio book.
However, the biggest reason why I favor audio book or text book is overlap with what activities I happen to be doing. My dog and I average 8-9 miles of walking/hiking each day. I can listen to an audio book, which enhances the experience. I find DCC audio books are also an outstanding way to pass the time while driving… better than podcasts, as they are more immersive and can go longer as set it and forget it, without clicking buttons. For example, I’m currently on book 7, which has 29 hours of audio. Text books often work better when I am home and want to read.