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

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....

[badasscat]

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

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.

Pong

[RasendeRutje]

I was a voice actor on the first Pong game. You think I've ever received a penny? Nah...

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.

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

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.