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Voice Actors Vote on VG Strike
The Screen Actor's Guild and the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists will vote today on whether or not to strike against publishers in the video game industry. The actors claim they are not getting a fair piece of the pie in the ever increasingly lucrative industry. From the article: "Voice actors say they are not sharing in the riches of the $10-billion-a-year industry. But game publishers say voice actors are just part of a increasingly costly and complex development process in which a typical game costs $5 million or more and several times that for blockbusters."
Because they're salaried employees, not contract talent. Their salary is their royalty.
You could say the same about every industry. Why don't GM employees get a cut of the profits for every car sold? Why don't textile workers get a cut of every shirt sold? Why don't McDonalds employees get a penny for every burger they sell?
The fact is they do. It's called a weekly paycheck - where do you think payroll money comes from? Voice actors, like other project-based talent, are instead paid based on a work-for-hire contract - as it stands now, they're paid only once, regardless of whether a game sells a million copies or a thousand. (This in contrast to a salaried employee, who - theoretically - would see a raise or other increase in benefits if the company is doing well.)
Royalties are intended to fairly compensate non-salaried employees for work they have done, in proportion to the amount of sales their work is bringing in.
You can argue whether or not voice actors deserve this (my opinion is they don't - nobody buys a game because Samuel L. Jackson does one of the voices, they buy the game because it's fun), but you should at least understand the differences between the concept of contract royalties vs. the concept of continuous employment.
I would honestly hope that if voice actors make good on their strike threat, that game developers will simply go back to making good games that aren't so reliant on "Hollywood production values". Pac-Man didn't have Tom Cruise doing the voice acting and that game has endured for more than 25 years. More recently, a game like Katamari Damacy had no big name actors at all (in fact, it had no understandable language in it whatsoever) and it was one of the biggest hits of last year. The game industry is the game industry - it is not the film industry, and it would actually be nice if everybody involved would learn the difference between the two mediums at some point.
More recently, a game like Katamari Damacy had no big name actors at all (in fact, it had no understandable language in it whatsoever) and it was one of the biggest hits of last year.
Actually Katamari Damacy does have voice actors for the end-of-stage and cut scenes.