WITH the latest FIFA football game, FIFA 23 released worldwide on Friday the familiar local voice of former radio presenter Dominic Walker features for the seventh time!
The former Wire FM breakfast presenter and voice of the Halliwell Jones stadium for 12 seasons, Dominic, is also the voice of the stadiums for EA’s FIFA computer games franchise.
Dominic, from Padgate and who now works as a Media and Reputation Management Solicitor explains that when he was first contacted by EA he thought it was a wind-up.
“I had been asked to host England v New Zealand at the DW Stadium and a few hours later, I received an email out of the blue from someone claiming to be a producer from EA in Canada. The producer had heard my work as the stadium announcer at Burnley Football Club and wanted a demo from me.
“Despite Burnley’s games being broadcast worldwide, I didn’t have a demo. Even when I worked at Warrington Wolves, my focus was on getting the names right rather than recording anything. Thinking it was a friend winding me up, I just asked the producer to watch the England game on BBC 1. He responded by saying that they couldn’t get BBC Sport in Canada.
“I then searched online and the producer was with EA and he’d worked on some of the best-known computer games including FIFA. The FIFA production team asked me to record a Man Utd team read as an audition. I recorded the read in Wire FM’s studios and I got the gig. The bizarre thing is, such is the secrecy with these things I didn’t find out which game I was working on until the script came through and it was FIFA 17.
“My voice has been on the game ever since FIFA 17 and it’s a real honour. There’s lots of work that goes into producing the audio but the voiceover sessions with the team in Canada is great fun.”
Proud to have my voice featured on the FIFA game for the 7th time. Enjoy playing the game. #FIFA23 pic.twitter.com/vO21eoNfbe
— Dominic Walker (@MrDominicWalker) October 1, 2022
