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Games Losing Their Voices
Gamespot is reporting on a possible SAG strike against the video game industry. The working contract that the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists has with the major game publishers expires tomorrow and negotiations are still underway. From the article: "Academy-Award winner Charlize Theron will lend her voice to Majesco's Aeon Flux, David Duchovny and Marilyn Manson voice-act original characters for Midway's upcoming Area 51, and Sean Connery will do some Bond-speak for EA's recently announced From Russia With Love. Actors are even voicing from beyond the grave--the late Marlon Brando will join James Caan and Robert Duvall in Electronic Arts' digital version of The Godfather."
Honestly , being a member of the SAG does not make you a good actor .. /Budget funds budgeted to hiring actors ,either that or they just hire anyone who offers.
The problem is that not nearly enough attention is paid
Notable exceptions to this rule are the GTA games (after 2) and Planescape:torment.
You can tell that real care care was done in the casting for most of the charichters(on the janitor note , i belive one of the DJS in GTA3 was the marketing manager for DMA,he was also one of the best actors in the game).
I have no real clue why such little care is paid in such an important area , but as i stated previously my main suspicions is the PHBs and the budget.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Last year I worked at a Talent Agency that speacialized in Voice Overs (VO). A few of our guys had done some games. I got into a conversation with one guy who had done a bunch of the russain and italian mobsters for Max Payne 2. He told me he put in a full day at the studio doing these voices, and only got scale.
VO actors thrive on being able to do multiple sessions in one day. They studio hop, and although each gig pays less than an on-camera gig would, they make it up in the numbers.
Since video games are a little more like films, they take more time, and therefore these guys should be getting paid more.
IIRC, there are two major brackets for scale right now: On-Camera and VO. I'm willing to bet that Video Games will get their own bracket, and they will be somewhere in between the OC (about $700 a day, and that means the full day) and the VO (about $450 a day, per session, which are typically just an hours or two)