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Developers Want Fatter Paychecks
CodeBuster writes "The programmers, artists, and other creative professions that work in the games industry have taken a rather dim view on paying royalties to Hollywood voice-over actors, according to the article 'Coders Want Fatter Paychecks Too' written by Wired News. From the article: 'The video-game industry's geek workforce has something to say to Hollywood actors: Get in line for your share of the industry's profits.'"
"Yeah -- $275 an hour would be a huge amount if actors did that kind of work several times a week," said [Wil] Wheaton, "but the average, working-class actor is lucky to get four of those jobs a year."
Dude, if you're unsatisfied with getting $2200 a year for doing eight hours of voice-over work in a year, maybe you need another job. Take some other acting gigs, drive a truck for UPS, learn a trade. Hell, flip burgers if you're that hard up for cash.
Or, better yet, learn to program, learn to work on sound effects, learn to do 3-D art, learn to do game level design. Then get a real 60-hour-a-week job in the games industry and see how the other half lives. Maybe then you'll realize you should be asking the programmers, artists, etc. to go on strike.
Wait, so the most replacable assets involved in building a game want more money? Skilled actors are rare. Skilled coders are not.
Programmers are easy to replace. People whose job requires creativity and who can do it successfully are a bit harder to come by.
So, go ahead, coders. Hasten your job being shipped to India by unrealistically demaning more money.
I hate to tell you this, but the vast majority of coders in the gaming industry are not replacable. The management would like to think they are though, and that's why we get so many poorly coded titles on the shelf.
How we know is more important than what we know.
And that would be true... if the actors were PERFORMING and carrying the story which, for the most part, they're not.
The REAL performers in games are the ones built by the Programmers and the game designers... not the actors.
I think Seumas has overestimated the number of "code-monkeys" out there that have the talent to make "videogames." Sure an Pakistani programmer could probably make a good spreadsheet/database program, but would he be able to make a good videogame, let alone a commercial videogame? Not it a million years.
Hollywood is has finally woken up and realized that the videogame industry is almost as big as them, and will surpass them very soon and they want to apply their flawed, old, outdated, business model to the game industry and it simply won't stick.
So the fuck what if we can't use Wil Wheaton's awesome voice over talent anymore? There are a million and one more talents actors out there that would kill for any opportunity to make a buck and get noticed.
Patrick Stewart is in the new morrowind game, and that's great, but there are a lot of talented actors out there from the stage and screen who could have filled the same shoes. I am not knocking voice over actors; they truly have talent, but they should not be compensated more than the poor bastards working 60 hour weeks to make the game in the first place.
In five years I can only assume that this arguement will be moot as games by then will have budgets on the line with movies anyway.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
Have you played any video games? "Talented," "skilled," and "creative" are not how I would describe video game voice actors. I would describe them as "unnecessary." In fact, I'd rather my games didn't have them, because they suck for the most part. Skilled coders, on the other hand, ARE necessary.
If they were such great voice actors, they could get a gig in any number of animated movies or shows. The fact that they aren't and have settled for such "meager" paychecks means that they are at the bottom of the voice actor barrel.
I'm willing to bet that real talent like Sean Connery makes a little more for his services.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for unions, and I guess they should ask for whatever they can get. However, when you are a less than necessary resource, don't be surprised when your jobs are taken. Now if the coders left in the middle of development on a $20 million project, the company may have no other choice than to cave-in.
For $275/hour I would offer my services to the game industry. I do a great impersonation of Cartman singing Nelly's "Hot in Here." Something to think about.
Sorry Wil Weaton, you peaked at "Stand by Me," and even then you were overshadowed by Corey Feldman, River Phoenix, and a heavy Jerry O'Connell. Jerry freaking O'Connell. Sometimes the truth hurts.
Exactly how are the freaking voice actors irreplaceable? They are worse than replaceable. They are unnecessary.
Video games do not need voice actors, and most are better without them.
But is he a really poor voice actor?
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0921942/
You evidently didn't listen to the interview. His point is that people like Jim Carrey, Vin Diesel, and Elijah Wood *are* really poor voice actors, only hired for their name recognition.
Not every brand-name screen actor does crappy work at voice acting, mind you - Billy Crystal and Eddie Murphy were cited by West in the interview as having real talent. But by and large, quality work isn't the concern when Hollywood hires voice actors, and that trend seems to be infecting the game community as well.
Ever play System Shock 2 or the Thief series? Fantastic voice acting (mostly) in those games, and none of those people did voice acting as a career. In fact, many of them were just people on the development team.
Ever watch recent anime titles (the ones on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim are the best example here)? Dubs have gone from superbly crappy (as they were in the late 80s and early 90s) to, quite simply, superb. None of these new, talented people are brand-name actors that would be recognized outside the cartoon voice-over community (and sometimes, they have to use stage names to take non-union jobs), but they also do great work in video/computer games.
Everybody making the high-up money decisions seems to think that having a star-studded GTA-esque voice cast is important. But people have been doing talented voice-over work for years. It's only now that the brand-name actors are moving in on their turf that AFTRA/SAG wants to get involved, and not to protect the talented voice actors who are heard-yet-unheard-of.
If it weren't for this 'we're better than workers who have to form a union' attitude amongst programmers and other technical workers, there'd already be a union for people in the game industry, and this sort of problem would have already been resolved.
Right now programmers and artists are being exploited in industry. They are working severe overtime without compensation. It is structual, in the sense that those responsible for managing and renumerating these employees know and plan for this unpaid overtime. Any copyright on created art or code is transfered without any particular compensation, for use of the company in perpetuity. People are literally being worked sick, and most receive a relative pittance in return, when compared with the profits of publishers.
Very occasionally there may be a royalty component offered to employees, but this is often not paid, or comes after the publisher skims off the top and is horribly meagre.
These people can be abused so easily because there is pride involved. People take pride in their work: they want to be associated with something with quality, that people will enjoy. There is also the belief that working for in the industry is an intrinsically cool thing to do. Employers and publishers then turn around and exploit that pride and belief.
What is the shame in forming a union? Do you think people started unions because it might be a fun lark on weekends? The current situation will remain until there is a force present to reverse it. And that force isn't about to come from the Tooth Fairy.
Yes, but that's what I was pointing out. Most people involved with Game Development are not John Carmack or Cliffy B. MOST are just John-Doe-Code-Monkey. They're just implementing and testing what they've been told based on someone else's guidelines, rules and dreams.
Are Will Right and Peter Moulineaux the ones doing most of the coding in their games? I seriously doubt it. They're leading it. They're designing it. They're watching it hawkishly every step of the way. But some code-monkey is putting code-to-paper to make shit happen. And guess what - they're not making Peter or Will's salary. Not at all.
Your logic soliifies the logic I already described. It's all about supply and demand. Joe-Coder isn't worth shit and is typically replaceable. But the cream of the crop is obviously not as replacable and demand better treatment and more money. Guess what? THEY GET IT. If Will or Peter are working in a cube,it's because they _want_ to. Most of whatever they do is because they _want_ to. They are not joe-coder.
I make games for a living, and sure - I'd like more money for what I do. I knew when I got into the industry, however, what the hours were like and what the pay was like. The only thing that I had an honest misconception about was the royalty issue. I had thought that tons of hard work would result in good royalty checks but after 4 1/2 years in the industry I think I've recieved a grand total of $500 in royalties. Not the end of the world, but I don't think that you're getting the issue here. I've seen alot of arguments from the voice actors who are seeking the extra money that "...the average, working-class actor is lucky to get four of those ($275/hr) jobs a year." Um... so because you decided to go into a field that pays either poorly or erratically, I'm supposed to give up a portion of whatever money I _might_ recieve from the project I worked on for two years so that you can be "compensated" for your day's worth of work? I'm sorry - if you don't like what you do for a living pays GET A NEW JOB. I agree - there aren't 10 Jim Careys or Vin Diesels, etc. But I know for a fact that top notch stars like that DON'T make the $275/hr minimum that the Voice Actors Guild is worked up about. I worked on Men of Valor for 2015, and one of the voice actors on the project was Sean Astin. He made around $50k for about eight hours of work. That's a HELL of a lot more than the minimum - and it's just me but I'd say that $6250/hr is fairly adequate compensation for that kind of work. What bothers me - and all of the coders, etc. that have been making noise about wanting more money - is that not only do the voice actors get paid anywhere from 5-10 times as much per hour as the developers do, but now they want royalties (residuals) from the game for the four or eight hours they put in on it when the developers who typically put years of 50-60+ hour weeks into the project won't see a dime in royalties. Of course the developers aren't (usually) stars. But your close comparison between game development and Hollywood isn't very accurate. Set developers, grips, etc. - the support staff in a film - create the atmosphere that the actors and director use to tell their story. They're an essential part of the process, but without the actors and director you have no movie. That's why actors are stars and fameous and all of that. Without the coders, designers, and artists that physically make the game - create it from the code that drives the game engine to the textures and models that make it look good to actually designing and implementing the gameplay that is the heart of the game: game developers _are_ what makes a game. I've certainly never purchased a game because so-and-so actor did a voice on it, but I _have_ purchased many games because specific developers created them. Like actors in Hollywood, game developers are what bring a game to life and give it character. And that's not a quality you can merely export. ADDENDUM: Hrm. Never posted before - didn't know you needed an account to get this to show up. There's a duplicate under anyonmyous coward, but I wanted my comments to show up.
Sure there are not 10 Jim Careys, but there are millions of people who have moved to Hollywood over the years looking for their break, only to discover talent is not enough. Most of them have moved back home broke a few years latter. Of course there are many millions more who only thought they had talent, who have moved away too.
Once in a while someone makes it. However there is enough compitition that until you are big enough that they write scripts with you in mind, odds are against you getting into any movie you are qualified for. The person who beats you out may not be any more talented, and may be less - it is who you know and who you sleep with, just like every other job (careful, just like any other job offering to sleep with the boss may get you in, may be a non factor, or it may ruin your chances, depending on the boss's ethics)
If you must have Jim Careys' voice, then you have to have him. Be prepared to pay for it. (though you can often get a sound alike that is close enough) Most games do not need any particular voice. There are millions trying to get into acting, so you can choose any of the talented ones, and pay them little for a lot of work. Just like there are millions of developers trying to get into game programing, so they pay them little for a lot of work. (That is why I don't work in game programming)
Supply and demand applies to actors just as much as anyone else. Until you have a unique name that people know, and thus you are a supply of one, there are millions more waiting at the door.
The union needs to be very careful, because if things get too expensive companies will decide that the professional isn't worth it. They will pick some of the more talented staff (many already do this just because it is easier to pull someone from his desk when you want to make a change, than to call the actor back) and record their own. Maybe not as good, but good enough.
"Wow. The truth really bothers you, huh? Too bad for you - but I'm sure you and the rest of your hippie-commie friends will keep fighting the good fight. Some day more than a few hundredths of a percent of the world will care, I just know it, so keep it up!"
How the world is and how the world should be are two very different things. People like you only take the current shit in hopes that one day you'll be the one doing the shitting. Caring about your fellow human beings is not a bad thing...
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
There are many MANY professions that are overworked and underpaid, but since we are on the subject of programmers, I will concentrate on us. I have worked for many companies, in the US and in Tokyo. Everything breaks down into Employer, Employee and Contractor. Employer gets the profits. Employees get a paycheck. Contractors generally get a bigger paycheck. The farce is that people believe that Employees have better job security than Contractors, but job security doesn't exist anymore. Game companies are Contractors. Almost all are bought out or hired by Employers like EA, who get the profits, and are let go when the job is done. Others that are independent have been going under waiting for the next big contract, or license. Unfortunately, game companies are NOT treated like contractors, and paid like Employees. This is the problem, especially since large groups of people work on the same project, and finish at the same time, versus a 'normal' working job, in which projects are scattered about, ending at different times. Because of all of this, I understand the complaints of game programmers. Even though I would love to work for a game company, I understand they work long hours, and get paid crap, so I choose not to work for one.
If I worked in the game industry, I'd be looking elsewhere really damn fast. There is no reason to believe that Indian or Chinese coders can't write quality game software just as rarely as American, British, or Aussie coders do, and they can produce the buggy, barely playable crap far cheaper.
Complaining that you want more money is only going to make the slide to outsourcing that much faster. You chose to work in this industry, you knew all the bullshit that game companies do to their employees. The kind of ridiculous hours for comparatively crap pay that you would be forced to do. You knew all of it and you signed on the dotted line because you were blinded by the fantasy of making games being the coolest thing ever. Why in the world should I feel sympathy for you?
Most people in any software project - including games - are just code monkeys. Most of them are not the guys making the creative decisions.
In many cases, this is exactly the reason why software sucks. Because management refuses to listen even IF the developers know what they are talking about. Which leaves the developers with exactly two options:
1) Find another job
2) Knuckle under and implement the stupid decisions from above
Of course, if this goes on for long enough, the company may find itself outmaneuvered by another, smarter company. Which will leave both managers and code monkeys out of work.
C - the footgun of programming languages