‘Suddenly I can play anybody’: what it’s like to act in a video game

The stars of YouTube D&D series Natural Six Harry McEntire, Doug Cockle and Ben Starr reveal the challenges and joys of creating characters for roles than can stretch to 40 hours of invisible screen time

As an actor, Doug Cockle is no stranger to unsettling workplaces. From battling Nazis in Spielberg's Band of Brothers to rubbing shoulders with Christian Bale in dragon romp Reign of Fire, disappearing into a role on set - whatever the set may be - has become second nature. Yet when he landed his first video game role in 2001, Cockle found himself suddenly standing completely alone in a vocal booth.

It is bizarre," he says. You just have to be in the character in that moment in that world, in your brain. On stage and screen, you have other actors, you have props, costumes ... all these things that are helping you do this thing called acting'. When you're a voice actor, it's just you in the booth and the director and the engineer on the other side of a glass wall, eating Jelly Babies."