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."

Comments

I hope they strike

[yotto]

I hope they strike and the video game houses hire "scabs" who've been trying to get voice acting jobs for decent wages.

What about....

[flink]

...the artists, coders, and designers whose work makes up the game? Why do they deserve royalties any less than a voice actor?

Re:What about....

[coaxial]

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.

Let me counter your argument, by pointing out that royalties don't just compensate for an intermitent paycheck but actual provide profit sharing. Profit sharing already occurs with salaried employess in several industries. Most often profit sharing occurs via stock options or stock grants (especially with dividend producting stocks), but in some cases through direct profit sharing.

Profit sharing ensures employees benefit from a successful company. Under a profit sharing plan, the employees directly benefit (as opposed to the current situation where they benefit indirectly) from successful products. This inturn encourages employees to meet deadlines, lower costs, and increase the overall quality of product. Stock option plans attempt to do this, but under option regimes the responsibility (i.e. "ownership") of the product's success is diluted through executive decisions. The are some problems with the current stock option regimes. Perhaps direct revenue sharing could counter these problems, and result in happier, more dedicated, and more productive employees.

Why do actors deserve special treatment?

[dtolman]

While voice acting can be an important element of games - they can't compare their roles in games to movie's, radio, or television. Video games are a completely new paradigm - expecting treatment different than other creative artists in the games is ridiculous.

Actors need to realize that their contribution in a game is one element out of many - the developers and designers do just as much creatively as they do!

For those who would say "Let 'em go!"

[Dark Paladin]

I know there will be those who simply say "Well, them let them go - they get overpaid for their $300 an hour work anyway", or "Voice acting in games sucks!" or "It's a free market!"

To which I would respond "Yes, it's a free market - and they are free not to work unless they get the pay they demand."

Electronic Arts makes multiple billions of dollars of profit (not revenue - profit) every year, while they treat programmer like dirt. Their response to the voice actors request is something like "But - we don't pay the programmers this much - what's your problem?"

To which the voice actors, which come from a history of which using a guild (or a union, really) has gotten them what they want: pay for their work, and residuals for using their talents to promote someone else's product. As I wrote in a column not too long ago, it's a system that's served Hollywood well.

And yes, with all of the unions about, Hollywood still makes a lot of money. A *ton* of money.

Maybe this is the wakeup call that the game industry needs. Maybe EA and other publishers (sorry to pick on EA, but they're the most egregious example I know), if the voice actors get their way, will be faced with developers saying "Holy fucking shit - where's my piece of the pie then?.

Maybe the big publishing houses will have to break up, or deal with lower profits - or maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt.

Who knows. Personally, I'm rooting for the voice actors. Overpaid hams? Sure - but they're overpaid hams who know the value of their dollar, and are willing to sacrifice profits now to do better in the future. Maybe they'll lose. But it won't be because they just bend over a desk when the guy with the paycheck wants to ram it up their ass.

Just my opinion. I could be wrong.

voice actors == movie actors...

[flabbergast]

while programmers == set builders. I'm assuming that's how SAG sees it.

But, there's a crucial difference between a voice actor and a movie star. While a movie star can carry a movie, I don't know of any video game that a single voice actor carried. Yeah, Michael Ironside is great as Sam Fisher, but I didn't know he was the voice until I read it. No one buys Splinter Cell because of Michael Ironside: he only adds to the realism.

Its for this reason that I think voice actors shouldn't get points for games. They don't carry games like they can carry movies. Until you can sell a million copies of a video game because Tom Cruise does a voiceover, voice actors shouldn't get points.

As for Ironside stating "There needs to be a standard for the people who can't protect themselves, the rank-and-file performer" what a bunch of crap. Somehow I don't think anyone but A-list actors get points from movies.

Re:For Those That Complain

[N3Roaster]

The answer is yes. Also bad is when the acting comes out sounding Shatnerian not because the acting is bad but because the code playing the sound files is inserting pauses in unnatural places (presumably for the slow readers out there).

I find that voices in games usually detract from the overall experience (I'm sure there are counter examples, but I haven't played them) or result in the game being inconsistent (why does this scene have voices but these other ones don't?). I really wouldn't mind if the vast majority of games stopped talking. When games started talking, the result was, "Cool! The characters in the game are talking!" That's worn off. If voice acting isn't going to be used effectively and beyond the dated cool factor, it should just be left out.

Dear Big Game House,

[dbretton]

I am not an experienced voice actor. However, I am fluent in English and have been speaking it my entire life.

I have been recently made aware that you are having difficulty with the voice actors you have hired, and you may be in the market for prospective new talent.

I am willing to work for one third the going hourly rate performing voice acting work, which I understand is $300/hr. Please reply.

Kindest Regards,
NonUnion Voice Actor

Oh No!

[blunte]

What ever would we do without "professional" voice actors. I'm certain that the only good voice actors are from Hollywood. It could be that there's plenty of talent all around the world, perhaps right in your town's theater.

Unions are outdated. People who join unions are spineless whiners who cannot take a stand for themselves (at least in the US).

Programmers who work for EA are spineless slaves.

I'll be trolled down, but I don't care.

If you don't like your freaking pay or your work conditions, STOP WORKING THERE!

At least until the lawyers completely fuck up the game industry with game concept patents, there's a ton of room for small, independent game companies to create the next sleeper. Lord knows none of the big companies are creating anything worth buying. Every one of them has 80% eye candy that plays like shit.

Go and do. Stop whining.

Re:Oh No!

[Dark Paladin]

Unions are outdated. People who join unions are spineless whiners who cannot take a stand for themselves (at least in the US).

Programmers who work for EA are spineless slaves.

I'll be trolled down, but I don't care.

If you don't like your freaking pay or your work conditions, STOP WORKING THERE!

I'm not sure if you realize how odd those two statements are together.

Think about the idea of a union: it's sole purpose is to say "We, the people who provide a service, will not do any work as a group until our demands our met." It's about saying "We don't like our work conditions, so we refuse to work here."

Only instead of just Bob one cubicle down quitting, which just means that Jane is hired instead at the same wage while Bob kicks the pavement and starves, it's Bob and Bill and Mary and Sally and Jane who doesn't even work there saying all at once "We don't like our work conditions, so we refuse to work here, and we're going to sit here outside and tell our fellow professionals not to work for you either until you meet our requests for a work condition."

I'm trying to see how that's "not taking a stand for yourself". I don't state that all unions are good (often, like any other organization, they become grossly inefficient and corrupt), but as opposed to working 80 hours a week without overtime, hardly any vacation and the threat of "Don't like it? Then quit!", then a union can be a very effective means of telling your employer "I don't like the working conditions, so I quit."

Re:F*ck The Voice Actors!

[HarvardFrankenstein]

These jokers remind me of those annoying liberal arts majors in college who constantly complained to their engineering friends about how hard their majors were. "Oh my God! You have no idea how difficult English Lit really is! Look at this book! It's got like a hundred pages, and I have to read them all! Ooh, and in Introductory Algebra, oh my God, the teacher started writing all these letters on the board instead of numbers, and I was all like 'Oh my God!'"

Meanwhile, I was busy with three lab reports and studying for an exam, all on the same night, which, oh yeah, happened to be the same night that I was turning 21.

Engineers > Actors -- Get in line, theater major.