Slashdot Mirror
Video Game Actors Say They Don't Get Their Due
Dekortage writes "The New York Times reports today about Michael Hollick, the actor who provided the voice of Niko Bellic in Grand Theft Auto IV. Although the game has made more than $600 million in sales for Rockstar Games, Hollick earns nothing beyond the original $100K he was paid. If this was television, film, or radio, Hollick and the other GTA actors could have made millions by now. Hollick says, 'I don't blame Rockstar. I blame our union for not having the agreements in place to protect the creative people who drive the sales of these games. Yes, the technology is important, but it's the human performances within them that people really connect to, and I hope actors will get more respect for the work they do within those technologies.' Is it time for video game actors to be treated as well as those in other mediums?"
Yes, the technology is important, but it's the human performances within them that people really connect to, and I hope actors will get more respect for the work they do within those technologies.'
I respect the work that these people do, but come on. I think this guy might be stretching it a bit. People don't buy video games for an actor in the same way they go see a movie for an actor in it. It is a completely different medium. Besides, voice actors in video games right now are pioneers. They will have to fight for a while before they get the recognition and money that they expect. Just like Hollywood actors did.
""but it's the human performances within them that people really connect to"" .... no, its not.
Why should voice actors get a percentage for a few days of work? What about all the programmers, artists and the like that spent 50 or 60 hours per week working on the game? 100k doesn't seem like a meager pay.
Did he not agree to the (generous) salary? His union doesn't have the royalty deals Hollywood has had in place for ages, but look how those have turned out: voodoo bookkeeping to try to work around those royalties. And do the game's programmers and artists not deserve a percent of the sales as well? Bleh... I can see a decent argument to be made for profit sharing of a game's sales with the team that made it, but this guy just comes off like an ass.
you provide time and a service in return for a pre-negotiated payment.
if he feels he didn't get paid enough, he shouldn't have taken the job. he can't blame the union now. obviously he's so famous he could have gotten work somewhere else and earned more, right?
if he think he wouldn't have gotten the job if he held out for more money, well, that's how it works. if you provide a service that anybody else can provide (reading from a script), then your pay will not approach 7 digits. i can't go to my boss now and ask for 300k/yr, when i can be easily replaced.
if you dont like the working conditions or renumeration then dont do the job.
taking the dollars from the man and they complaing that your union is at fault is just whineing to me
find another job where you can make 100K in a few months and i am pretty sure it wont come with residuals
You were hired to do a job and you got 100k for it. Shut up and be glad you have a job in this economy. It always pissed me off how actors say that they 'deserve' millions on millions of dollars for their 4 hours of work a day. I'd be happy to see this trend not extend into the video game industry.
On the list of "creative people" involved with a video game, a voice "actor" comes a long way down the list, and contributes nothing to the success or failure of a game.
If Hollick's union wanted to play silly buggers, someone would have to explain to me why I would want to employ a union actor.
... voice actors don't add that much to a game, the fact that he got 100,000 (more then most people make in a year) for the teeniest amount of work compared to the average worker, is just fucking appalling.
I'd rather give those bonus's to the dev's that actually deserve it who spend 60-70 hours a week, then to some greedy VA, who does jack shit, when compared to the massive engineering that coders and artists and others on the team have to do.
VA's do not add anywhere near the value that the actual team does, they're spoilt and the game industry should not cater to these fucks. I'd rather hire amateur VA's off the street then some hollywood fucktard.
$100k? How can you expect anyone to live on that? Where's the union when you need it the most?
U+F8FF
I would make a bet that he got paid more than the creative developers working 16 hours a day on the game implementation, and developers don't even have a union either.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
If he knew he would get paid 100k beforehand why in the world would he have bothered signing up to do it.
Funnily enough, resources are scarce so not everyone can have what they want. What kind of parents do these people have? Ad hominem arguments are fair game here as it is such a preposterous question. This guy is just an opportunist.
Look no further. Hey, a pile o'money, how come it's not mine.
\u262D = \u5350
How long does it take to do the work? 6 months? A Year? Two to three years?
I'd say that for a year or less of work, 100-grand is good money. If it's more than a year, then depending on the actual work/hours involved, perhaps he should be getting more. However, a million bucks? Maybe big-name actors make this much, but that doesn't automatically entitle video-game actors to the same. Moreover, I'm not really sure how much movie voice-actors make, but that would be a closer comparison.
Sorry bud, but that's the way the industry works. If I write a piece of software for my company which they resell to clients, all I get is my original paycheque (perhaps a bonus if they're feeling generous). Just because some other overpaid smoe is making a million buckazoids or more doesn't automatically entitle you to that type of cash any more than it does me or the various others that work their butts off for a living.
Fat short italian plumber dresses in red and stages protest in front of Nintendo office in Rome to claim unpaid billions.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I mean, it'd seem to me that $100K sounds like a good deal; it's not that he had worked for more than a year with rockstar.. Even for a full years work over $5K per month should be enough to support your life and family.
I'm guessing the programmers/modelers/artists are in the same position with the sound actors/motion actors etc. But they don't seem to complain as they'll probably make ends meet with what they got and probably even be happy have worked with a ultra-mega-successful project like GTA(4).
To summarize: Enough is enough, if you want shitloads of money you should try investing in companies like Rockstar and Take Two.. Most people don't.
If he wanted more, he should have written it into his contract to get a percentage of the gross/net.
Maybe he can use his leverage to get other voice acting jobs?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Is this guy for real? He wants royalties on a video game that he voice acted for?
Let me get this straight...this no-name actor comes in about halfway into the development of the game, gets a script, gets into a recording studio and records some voice for a period of a few weeks, two months tops, and gets paid $100,000 for it, and now he's complaining that he's not getting royalties for the game?
What about the programmers, artists, and designers who worked at the company for years from beginning to end of the development of this game, and near the end of the development cycle worked every saturday and some sundays, and worked 10-14 hours per day to get the game done in time?
Games are different from movies and TV shows. In film, actors are central to the product, in games, they're secondary, they're flavor that the developers of the game can choose to put in, but don't need in order to sell the game. The people central to video game development are the people who work on making the game itself. If anyone deserves royalties on the game, its these people, because they put in way more effort than a few weeks of reading lines off a sheet of paper.
His version of a russian accent is pretty awful. Really listen to it. I really have to wonder why they didn't find someone who actually spoke english as a second language. I think he did well to get 100k.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
bring in hundred of thousands in unit game sales with your name then you can whine. Right now, you could sub that voice out with any other and it would not make one difference in sales. For the closest approximation think Mark Hamill who did video cut scenes for the Wing Commander games back in the mid-90s. People bought that game because he was a part of it, he can ask for royalties. If they made another GTA IV with the same Niko character but with a different voice actor would it matter? Heck no because I don't play the game for the voices, I play for the gameplay.
Would this actor have been willing to return the $100K (or more) if the game had lost money?
If someone wants to share in the rewards of a blockbuster products, they need to be willing to share in the losses from flops.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I have to agree. Sports stars do what.. play with their balls for a few hours and then treat their public like crap? Movie stars do cocaine. Musicians drive around in gold plated limos. The only real branch of entertainment that doesn't get its due is video games. Seriously though, why should a voice actor for an animated movie get royalties, and then a voice actor for a video game not get anything? They both deserve their due. However, I also think the programmers and everyone else involved deserves some kind of royalty, considering they ALL busted their humps to release a masterpiece such as GTA4.
Contrast that to movies or television where people go to see movies and watch television shows because of the actors and actresses involved. People will go to see a movie with Angelina Jolie in it because she's so damn hot and the studios know this so they hire her, and she knows this so she charges $20M.
Now to this guy's credit as near as I can tell he's not saying "I was robbed and deceived", he's just saying "gee, I was the main actor in a game which has made $500M, it would be nice if I had been paid more." With all due respect, you didn't get paid more because you're a nobody. I'm not trying to be mean - but you're not George Clooney, you're someone who did soap operas to this point. You did an excellent job, and you were helped by the "Pixar Effect" of using a high quality but unknown actor to avoid distractions. But you were paid the amount you were because you're an unknown. Heck, you got paid a lot more than the average person does in a year, and I doubt this was the only gig you had. If they ever make a sequel to this game and reuse your character (unlikely, since like the Final Fantasy franchise they change characters and settings entirely from game to game) then renegotiate for more money. But in the meantime, just enjoy the fame and likelihood of getting future work.
Schnapple
He signed the contract. He knew the terms going into it. He is actually very lucky since voice actors are pretty easy to find and have low standards for compensation. His role in this game will get him all kinds of work he would not have gotten otherwise.
And his voice is not an integral part of the game. Any halfway competent voice actor would have sufficed. The real stars are the programmers and designers.
But if I remember correctly this guy got paid something like $1000 for a single day of recording.
Yes, good voice acting does help make a character better, yes it can be a hard job depending on what they need you to do, and yes I'm pretty sure there was a ton of dialog to record for the game.
But he makes just as much money as some folks for 1/3 or even 1/4 of the amount of time actually spent in the "office". He can probably do work on multiple projects too.
You mad
Salary + Royalties is a damn JOKE. This should not be happening in ANY industry. I do, however, agree that "royalty" should be an option for payment for services rendered, but it should never come with a salary as well. If anything, that option should come with an *investment* requirement.
ie; if an actor wants to collect royalties for a venture, then they should have to pay to be in it. They should not be getting paid cake and then getting to eat it forever too.
Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
I'm posting this assuming you or your agent hasn't thought of all this and your recent media comments aren't just a ploy to get your face recognized for any future casting of said movie.
Game Actors' Industry Assosication of America, otherwise known as GAIAA. After they lobby for exorbitant royalties to be paid to game cinematic actors or voice actors, games start marketing campaigns based on how good-looking (or sounding) their actors are, and they start sueing 15-year olds for copying games. Later, Joe Kucan develops a celebrity syndrome where he joins Scientology and drives a Prius. But on a more serious note, I wonder how much Joe Kucan made from Westwood/EA. He's the most memorable cinematic actor imho.
- xuanyou
Wait, whatever trade group I could join as a software engineer does not have the same clout as UAW or USW. And if it did it would have run to ground the software industry as surely as UAW did the auto industry.
Why does this dumb actor, who just recited the lines given to him is more important than the people who scripted those lines, people who provided the content and context that provided entertainment to the user ,feel entitled to a share of the profits? In movies, sports and other such places where the name recognition of the celebrity sells the product, there is a legitimate claim to a share of the profits. If the sales of GTA did not improve just because it was this joker who spoke the lines, he is just another hacker and he deserves a salary not royalty. People who buy my company's product don't buy it because 140Mandak262Jamuna wrote the code. If I have that kind of name recognition, I can demand royalty. Till then I should be satisfied with whatever salary/stock options I can negotiate for me by myself on the strength of my work. And my work is definitely lot more creative and has lot more intellectual property than his voice. But our users buy the product on its merits, not on the name of the author.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
... then why did he sign the contract? Had he not heard of all the previous GTAs enough to know that GTA IV would be a huge success?
He signed a contract to do the work, his lawyer (assuming he had one...) should have told him "look, you're getting this amount, nothing more". You can negotiate a contract and get ryalties and residuals and 'points', just like an actor in traditional media.
To: G4from128k "Would this actor have been willing to return the $100K (or more) if the game had lost money?"
Should actors and bands return their pay if the movie or album bomb? So why would he even entertain that idea?
End of the day, Michael Hollick is an idiot for not working with the lawyers for a better deal.
That an actor gets $100,000 for voicing a single production, in itself, is silly. That he complains for not getting a LOT MORE for it, is just a pathetic statement on the industry as a whole.
People should be getting paid based on the value of their work. I realize it's a free market and supply and demand and all, and ultimately it's the consumers that are causing this to happen, but I still think it's just lacking in all common sense,.
If the public was not gullible enough to pay so much for something that has so little invested in it, this problem would not exist. Not because the actor was only clearing 100 grand, but that because the software retailer wasn't clearing seven figures, making the actor complain not because he was not paid fairly, but because he didn't receive as big of a cut as he thought he was due.
In summary, if something sells 20,000 units, and you are getting paid $20k for your part in it, if that same something instead sells 100,000 units (with the same investment in production, which I understand is not 1:1 but is CLOSE for software) then the correct response is not for you to get $100k for the exact same work, but instead for the cost of the item to go down relatively.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Take your hundred grand and be happy that you're still not tending bar, buddy.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You know, the ones who actually took some risk?
I mean come on, you signed a contract for a pretty sweet salary, which you would receive regardless of how the game sold. The investors, on the other hand, PAID money out of their own pocket and took a gamble on the game.
If you want to get a large percentage, put your money where your mouth is - invest that $100,000 in the next game that you work for. That way you'll recieve a larger chunk of the payout in the end.
I don't blame Rockstar. I blame our union for not having the agreements in place to protect the creative people who drive the sales of these games.
Have you considered negotiating for yourself? That's what I do when I get a job.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
Then, as a teacher, I can claim residuals on the income of every student who has ever sat in my classroom. I mean hey, they wouldn't be where they are now if not for me! I deserve a percentage of their success! Where did I leave that number for my union rep?
That first Tauren actor that Blizzard hired only received 3 coppers and a stack of Peacebloom for a snack.
Dear sirs, this may come as an unexpected surprise to you but I recently inherited a large sum of money - $100 billion - from my uncle who works as a Voice Actor for Rockwell. I can share 10% of it with you if you can give me your name, email and ahem, bank account details.
~Son of OLPC owner and underpaid Voice Actor~
SOLID Proof of Global Warming
India's New Cheap Fuel-less Bike
...the guy who did Pac Man's voice only got paid for saying "Wocka" once, and they doubled it up.
</simpsons>
Although the game has made more than $600 million in sales for Rockstar Games, Hollick earns nothing beyond the original $100K he was paid.
A hundred thousand fucking dollars for reading out loud? How long did he have to read to earn that hundred thousand dollars? Poor little baby. I work all goddamned year long for half that much. That's twice what my house is worth!
I've never seen a hundred thousand dollars!
How much did the programmers get? I'll bet they didn't get a hundred grand each!
The asshole signed a contract and he was paid what he was offered. If he thinks a hundred grand isn't enough, then he shouldn't do any more video games.
I'm sick of the God damned money worshiping greed today. Hollick can kiss my ass.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Most actors hardly make anything. Only stars big enough to draw their own audience get a big cut of the profit, and such stars simply don't exist in video game acting yet (and it's questionable whether they ever will, since a lot of the "acting" is done by programmers/animators etc.).
of the credits DON'T COUNT.
Amazed people haven't figured it out. These "actors" are the center of the universe, the rarely having completed high school know it alls", the ones who will solve all the worlds problems by jetting there and handing out candy bars"
The people with the grunt work, the programmers, cameramen, gaffers, q&A, and such, well they are just doing a job any chimp could do.
Honestly why should we expect any less of a comment from the likes of this guy? It is quite possible he is good person and generally fun to be around, but the number of these dicksperts that get on the tube and tell us how wonderful they are and how special they are and such and such is beyond number. Hell I take many of their recommendations in the completely opposite fashion...
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
If you negotiate residuals or higher fees, then good for you. If you can't, try going on strike. If the work stoppage sticks it to The Man and you get residuals or higher fees, then good for you. If neither tactic works, then you are being paid your market rate and really don't have any recourse other than to find a new job or industry.
Judging by the fact I can count his roles prior to GTAIV (according to IMDB) on one hand, I think this guy has a massive ego who hasn't a clue as to what drives sales in the video game industry. Ricky Gervais and Katt Williams are more recognizable than this guy. I don't see either of those two gents complaining about their compensation for their work on the game. Newsflash to these nobody actors, gamers really don't care who does the voice work in games so long as their ears don't bleed from it.
if you read the article, you'll see that as a voice actor, he made 1050 per DAY
for an average 8 hour day, he made 130 per hour
and i doubt he was working 8 hours on any day
for anyone else with his (tiny) skillset, that's like having to work one day in two weeks
Artie Lange from the Howard Stern show just relieved he recieved 30 grand for an hour and a half of voice acting for the new Leisure Suit Larry. Is that not enough? This guy received 100k for maybe a weeks worth of work.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
According to the summary, $600 million was just in sales. I'm curious how much more money the company made from in-game advertising.
Millions of eyes locked on one spot for hours a day is a marketer's dream. I haven't played games in a while but the last game I played had blatant advertising all over the place. Surely there's millions more to go around.
Perhaps a sign up bonus for GTA V programmers?
You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
You do a job and you get paid. In this case, you voiced-acted some parts in a video game and got paid $100,000, which is double what I make in an entire year of working 40hrs/week. Just because you're an entertainer doesn't mean you somehow get special treatment. Work -> Get Paid -> Work some more -> Get paid some more. It's called living in the "real world", asshole.
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
I see one big problem here. Games, unlike say, Victrola music, are more difficult and time consuming to "transfer" to newer technologies. For every Tomb Raider on GameTap there is a System Shock and System Shock 2 (bad examples I know). With so little "roll-over content" what is the purpose of the sending out residual checks on something that probably won't be selling 20 years from now.
I guess my point is that the game business isn't built like the movie or music business and it should be very wary of going the way of the beloved MPAA or RIAA.
I think some of the comments are a interpreting Hollick's statement as a little more desperate than it is.
Some people are saying "Mr. Bellic probably should have read his contract and thought ahead." I'm guessing that he probably did, and was happy to get what he got.
If he didn't like it, then R* probably would have got the omnipresent Cam Clarke to do the voice, and Niko would have sounded like Liquid Snake.
for example, by always reclaiming your cash from prostitutes by running them down afterwards.
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
they can have more money when they start to take voice-acting seriously. Even GTA4 has a lot of moments where the voice-acting makes you want to put your head through the tv.
It's likely his union could have negotiated a percentage deal if he really wanted it. The problem with percentage deals is... what exactly is the percentage going to be of? Sales? Profit? Look into Hollywood accounting if you want an idea of how well percentage deals work out for those that work on them. And while I'm sure the chances of GTA4 selling well were good, what would happen if our good friend Mr. Thompson somehow managed to luck out and find a crackpot judge who played the injunction game with Rockstar for a few years? It's certainly a possibility that needs to be considered, and if you're working off royalties, you would have to wait until that all got taken care of before you'd see one cent. What would happen if you did all that work, and two years later Rockstar decided that the game was going to be a bust and just scrapped the project.... I'm sure the fine print of your contract wouldn't allow you to sue for damages in that case.
Believe me, do your work, take the $100k, and hope that the success of the game means you'll be on the top list of candidates for working on future sequels.
Play with my webcams and lights here
Wow, I can't believe people who make 100k+ are whining about compensation.
Gee, all I did was spit out some lines, and get paid 100k only ONCE!
I'm an engineer, I create chips, should I get paid each time someone uses my companies chips?
Should I get paid each time they get used?
NO!
Stop Whining
A new union forming.
I thought the voice acting was pretty average and most of the cutscenes did nothing to advance the story. I don't really understand why a guy who does a couple weeks of voiceovers for a game even deserves 100K.
let me see... you got a job making $100K, reading/ acting out lines that someone else wrote, on what could be the the most successful peice of media sold, your basically a no-name actor and your work (good or bad) will be herd by millions, who will more or less not bash you if you are so/so, this oprotunity will give you a name if you do good/ possibly a sequal or other acting gigs, everyone will know you, if not for only your voice, your product is a huge success and you want what now? more money? boy, we couldve gotten the coffee guy to read your lines and be just as good. How bout Niko dies in the plane to San Adreas?
This guy made 100k for probably something that took him less than a year to produce.
Now I'm not sure about voice overs for feature films, but a voice over for a game is not a Hollywood blockbuster by no stretch.
He should be happy that he made out like a bandit, and run with what he got.
If he is upset about it or feels he was ripped off, he should either not do game voice overs or simply startup a movement to get that deficit changed.
By the way larger names than his appeared in the San Andreas installment and I didn't hear them complain.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
It doesn't work that way for programmers, Q/A, artists, etc. FAR too many projects start off with modest goals and reasonable timelines, only to hit "crunch time" a couple months into the 18-month schedule when the real scope becomes clear.
I've seen people in the game industry work themselves into the hospital, hallucinate from fatigue, neglect their families, and sacrifice their personal life in order to meet absurd schedules that were mandated long after the initial work agreement. After a cycle or two, they burn out and leave the industry and another starry-eyed crop of newbies takes their place.
No sympathy from this corner.
okay, not exactly a dime - but let's face it.. if he said no, the next guy in line would likely say yes. So if, realistically, your choices are $100,000 or $0 - what would you go for?
And unlike actors in movies (or even games*) - audiences are hardly going to be disappointed if the voice actor sounds a little different from before.
(* say, if Valve replaced the well-known Barney model+textures with something completely different and still called him Barney.)
Unless there's a guild that you -have- to be a member of before you can apply for video game voice acting AND that guild says you cannot apply for a given job for under $x or x%, this will always be the case.
$100,000 for some voice acting is, imho, not bad money. Sure, the game brought in a lot more - but perhaps that money will allow them to make GTA5 and the company will come back to you for that... that's another $100k, but perhaps you can then try to negotiate it up a little; while keeping in mind that the next guy in line will probably STILL do it for the $100k. Or even $75k.
I'm curious how voice actors are treated, for example in Pixar or Dreamworks animation films. I think at least with Michael Hollick's situation, he should be able to get the same deal as the people doing major voice roles in Hollywood films (granted, many people doing these roles in films have name recognition that Mr. Hollick does not currently have).
they could all run around silent and still the games would sell...most of the time players are talking over headsets to their friends and could give a shit less what the game actor voice says
Voice acting is basically a commodity, particularly in video games. The skills it takes to be a voice actor are probably only slightly rarer than those required to be a janitor. And it doesn't matter if the product makes fifty dollars or a billion dollars; there's no way the janitor is going to make more than $100k per year.
Let's just see where this leads.
For everything we do, let's expect to get paid over and over and over again. He got paid $100k for what he did in helping to provide content for a video game. I cannot imagine it being a lot of work. Who did the REAL work? Ah yeah... the programmers and designers. Without those people, it wouldn't be a game at all. Do THOSE people collect residuals and royalties? I'm going to doubt it though I can't claim to know one way or the other. These aren't people that typically collect royalties.
Frankly, I find the very concept of getting paid every time someone else does something is repugnant.
Things are being over-valued while other things are being wildly undervalued. I think it would be nice to see things changed to reflect some sanity. But it doesn't help that people are continually willing to over-value things themselves... diamonds -- what a complete waste of money; almost no resale value and a ridiculous retail market price and no functional value at all. This is a world created by marketers... a world being ruined by marketers... the same world being polluted by junk mail, junk faxes, door hangers, things on your windshield, knocks on your door, phone calls from strangers... oh yeah, and SPAM. Why are there so few people who can actually see where the problem originates and what keeps it going?
The horrific voice acting in Lost Odysey(Jansen excluded) very nearly had me returning the damn game within a matter of hours. Either start paying voice actors decent or let me turn on some fricken subtitles once in a while.
He got paid a hundred grand?!? I could barely understand every other word he said.
And don't get me started on the Jamaican guy. It was just wabble-wabble-wabble to me.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
$100 k for an acting gig that lasts a few weeks. i.t. people are rotting away 6 months of their life in datacenter masoleums to earn that amount.
bollocks i say.
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To those who suggest the actor is a whiner, reread the post. He appropriately blames the union for not including these kinds of positions appropriately in their collective bargaining efforts.
Basically, many companies in the video game industry, a young(ish) business currently more or less an oligopoly, are making well above what would be considered normal profits. Barriers to entry are high, so I would anticipate they will continue to make above-normal profits for some time.
The music industry, movie industry, and sports industry, among others, have gone through the same dynamic and the video game industry will doubtless see many of the same growing pains they have and be subject to the same kinds of bargaining dynamics. And in situations like this, with well-above-normal profits being generated, those who add significant economic value and don't use collective bargaining to claim a share of the pie are simply giving money away.
Sure, with the exception of some rock stars, the coders in the trenches aren't being paid millions, but that's not a reason the actors shouldn't be paid more. If anything, it simply indicates the coders in such industries should strive to self-organize as well as actors and athletes.
-- My choice of computing platform is a symbol of my individuality and belief in personal freedom.
And that applies for all traditionally unionized entertainment crafts as far as gaming goes. The reality is that most gaming audiences just don't notice the quality difference. In all cases, it is much easier for developers and publishers to find someone else rather than committing to a deal that involves the back-end. This will only change if programmers effectively unionize and demand a closed shop. This, however, runs strongly counter to the equity-based culture which most tech firms and start-ups have, so it probably isn't going to happen. Similarly, you're probably not going to get an 80 hour week out of a plumber, nurse, grade-school teacher or maintenance guy for a dream of stock option glory.
Yes, if he held out for more money, then he would have been replaced. But this just reinforces the game maker's position. The value of GTA is in the game franchise, not voice actor.
And this raises a further issue. If this actor gets more/better gigs because GTA IV is on his resume, then shouldn't GTA get a share of the actor's future earnings? The argument for sharing profits is symmetric. To the extent that this voice actor contributes to the success of the game, he wants a share in the gamemaker's profits. But then, to the extent that the game contributes to the success of the voice actor, the game maker might expect a share in the voice actor's profits, too.
I think people should be paid for the value they add and risks they take rather than getting paid just by the luck of being associated with something successful. If that voice actor can argue that his particular voice and talent means the difference between $500 million and $600 million in sales, then he should get a cut in the profits once the game hits $500 million and the game maker should be more than willing to pay him a good cut once the game hits $500 million.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Disclaimer: I am a member of one of the acting unions (a sister union to SAG, which is who this guy is blaming).
Before all of you hate this guy for wanting more than $100k, consider one very important aspect of actors' salaries that is usually why they get both a high daily rate and a percentage on a big project:
They don't get a salary. Once the project is over, so is their income. Their health insurance and retirement only gets contributions while they're working, and in the case of health insurance, if you don't work enough weeks out of the year (and it's a lot right now, since the health insurance funds are all in the toilet) then your boss is still paying for your heath insurance (money he could be paying you with) but you aren't getting it.
The saying goes that Actors work about 1/4 as much as regular people, but in that 1/4 of the time, they work 8 times harder. There is absolutely zero 'veg out at your desk' as an actor. You probably think it'd be a blast to have a job like voicing Nico Bellic, and in a lot of ways, it probably was - but you will tear up your voice doing the same dialog over and over again, particularly the pages and pages of 'you are caught on fire' and 'you fall off a building.'
This guy earned $100k for 16 months of work. That's pretty good, but not great. This isn't a young noob, either. He's mid-career. $75k a year for Nico Bellic?
Several people have rightly pointed out that people don't buy video games 'because of an actor' like they go see movies because of an actor. This is partially true. You don't buy a video game because a particular actor is involved (usually, though I expect Splinter Cell would be wildly unpopular if they axed the gravelly voice dude, Ironsides?). You do buy a video game because the acting & storytelling is extraordinary. Most games suffer from bad writing AND bad acting; a game that has both will review & sell well.
Obviously it's not such a large factor that these guys should get the same slice a movie star is going to get, and I'm not even sure if residuals is the way to go for video games - there's a very good case to be made that the 3d artist/lead programmer or whatever is just as important or more important. In some studios, I imagine the lead guys have shares of stock in the company and so do get residuals in their way - but even if they don't, they get a salary. They get to work on every game. The actor doesn't.
Having said all this, the unions will probably ask for too much. The actor who did Nico sounds like he's got his head on straight - he doesn't want to piss off Rockstar and he's not personally whining about it; he's allowing his case to be used to bring attention to the subject, which is pretty harmless. The question of 'when GTAIV makes a bazillion dollars, who should get what?' is a tough one and it -should- take a lot of haggling to figure that out. Even if you give Nico residuals, what about Roman? McLeary? Where do you stop?
However you solve it, keep in mind that actors typically make a crapload of money on a daily basis because they work so little of time. Last I checked, at any given time, under 5% of my union is employed.
with sophisticated, synthetic voices and animations.
"Recursive bipartite matching"- try it!
I don't pay the carpenter every time I sit on a chair no matter how well crafted it is. The people who take the risk should get the reward. The artist can always say waive the up front fee and give me a point on net profits, but they never seem keen on that idea, I wonder why ! Talk about eating your cake and having it.
I can do lines for some of the bitches there. $200 should be fine for me.
No, I'm not talking about the voice actors. I'm talking about you guys.
Basically the guy just said he got a pretty good gig (for which he expressed gratitude), but it would have been awesome if he had the same deal he would have gotten for a movie or TV deal. Then you guys go off like he said you all have to pull $100K out of your pocket and mail it to him.
I say if he can get the deal then props to him for it. If he can get his union to step up and do their job then kudos to him. If not then he can still choose to take the job or not. I get paid what I agreed to (well, actually a lot more since I've had a few raises over the years). Sure, I'd like to get more, just like everybody else, and if I really wanted it bad enough I'm sure I could find some way to make more. This guy isn't any different.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
As an amateur/semi-pro actor, who would love to get into voice acting, let me say that I have absolutely no sympathy for him. He got paid VERY generously, far more than most voice actors, as well as getting to have his name attached to one of the most popular games of all time. While he did an excellent job, I'm sure there are plenty of other actors who were willing and able to step up and take his place. In an industry where 90% of its workers are unemployed at any given time, he should be glad he got such a good gig. The fact that movie stars get paid millions is more an indictment of the movie industry, than an example of a fair wage.
Mario (Mario Bros. series) for many years, Samus (Metroid) for quite awhile, "Doom guy" (DOOM) Cloud Strife (FF VII), Link (Zelda), Chrono (Chrono Trigger), Ness (Earthbound) and countless more
What do they have in common? None of them said a word many didn't even have text dialog but they all grabbed on to the player and didn't let go. Many set the benchmark for their genera. How long were FPSs called "DOOM Clones"? How many RPGs are not compared to the Final Fantasy series? How many people still think Mario when they hear about a platformer?
Voices in games are good. Voices in games are nice. However Mario, Link, and Samus did not become the Nintendo trinity and characters recognized by gamer and non gamer alike over 20 years after their debut because of a VA but because of solid game play and compelling stories.
juenger1701
i think bill roper would have said something about it by now. then again, he did have a pretty big role in the creation of Warcraft, beyond just the voices, iirc. in my experience, the only voices that really added any distinguishing character to a title were the voices in Warcraft, most other games sound/ed generic
The game industry should pour millions into speech synthesis.
This issue is only going to get worse and hopefully we can get rid of these shits by cutting out their job and letting the artists and programmers get more money.
I believe they already do something like this for some animations in Japan, they just get the computer to string a ton of pre-recorded words together, but that's not really good enough because the VA for the pre-recorded lines will try and get royalties.
Go cry to somebody who cares, will you? Many people will be happy to earn $100k for a few month's work.
There's a local rag here in Silicon Valley that did a similar article on musicians who created the tracks for Guitar Her
The voice acting in GTA4 is atrocious. I laugh every time some random monotone person talks when they could have put some feeling in to it.
Greed is a powerful thing. Someone else is making more money than I do, therefore I must complain.
I've played way too many video games over the years, and for most of them, the spoken dialogue did zilch for me. In fact, after listening to some of it, I usually ended up turning it off and going text only.
But there have been a few games where the spoken dialogue was so stirring, it made a good game great, or a great game replayable over and over.
Neverwinter Nights (the orignal) is the one that stands out most in my mind. The female voice for Lady Aribeth de Tylmarande was so well done, that I felt captivated by her. It is one of the few times I've felt drawn to a game character, and that voice is most responsible for my driven need to complete the game, which I accomplished in about 3 days the first time through. It is also the reason I probably play the whole series through every year or so, just for to hear that voice acting. The woman that did that voice could have gotten me to walk through fire, sight unseen. And yes, I'm happily married, 2 kids, etc. I'm not pathetic, but that voice just stirred me to action.
There are other games that affected other people similarily. I know a lot of people loved Baldur's Gate due to some of the funny lines and voices.
But most games? Nope, they just don't enhance it as much as the voice actors think. Heck, I'm ready to turn the voice volume of for Age of Conan already.
Speaking as a writer in the video games industry, I'm all behind negotiating different terms for video game voice acting. There are some serious differences between film/tv acting and video game acting.
Ironically (as it were) one of the big problems that games (that are not Rockstar/GTA) face is the high price of voice acting! Specifically, union rates skyrocket when you ask an actor to perform more than I think 3 characters. But there are video games that are composed of a hundred bit parts. I've heard of games companies pulling tricks like claiming that five characters that belong to the same race/faction are the same, or that several different voices are "different forms" of the same character.
I could see an argument for Mr. Hollick maybe getting royalties for a lead role in a game. I can also see an argument for reducing that initial $100K salary he got.
But I'd warn voice actors -- not every game is GTA IV. More often than not, you'll do better to take the lump sum than bet the house on royalties for the next big flop.
At any rate, games are coming up. They need better voice acting. It's painfully clear to those of us who have to deal with it that hollywood regulations don't translate well into the games industry.
Hey, if it's respect he's after, I'm sure we'd all be happy to oblige. But where's he coming from with all this talk about money?
He's got a point, though. Just wait until a simstim-like technology is developed to see how much people may want to connect to human performances, and in how many ways!
Dawkins Revisited: A person is shit's way of making more shit -- Steve Barnett, anthropologist.
This is a classic example of how anonymous this talent is. This woman's performance was probably your entertainment experience of the month, yet you wouldn't recognize her on the street, and probably never bothered to learn her name: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0283253/ We enjoy it when it is good, but never notice it when it is slightly less remarkable. Publishers and producers know this.
Don't let any entertainment union memeber perform anything.
I am usually pro Union, but the entertainment unions are just bad.
AS soon as it becomes a union gig, you could be paying millions PER voice.
If you want to just create a quick fun game? any voice on it will need to be in the union and paid as such.
Voice acting has a minimal impact, and in no way determines what a good game is. In fact, many people turn them off.
Do I car who the announcers voice is in a racing game? No. Do I care who does any of the voice in WoW? no. If EQ suddenly got the best voice actors there are to do a bunch of voice would I play it again? no.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I think it's a real shame when people fail to respect the hard work done by video game actors
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZqoh2aUW7g
Then
OH, HEY! Respect! Well, of course!! Have all the respect you want! Help yourself.
Boy, you had me a little worried there with all that earlier talk about money.
Let me ask you a simple question: would you still buy GTA IV if there were no voice acting, period?
This guy is in the same boat that film actors were in at the dawn of the film industry. Yes, movies need actors. But if movies can use any old actor then they can constantly hire and fire, driving wages down because it's explicitly understood that people are simply interchangeable.
What gets me is that the same hypocrites slamming this guy are probably the same people who whine and moan when their dev jobs get offshored to India and China, or whine and moan about how IT wages are depressed because of offshoring to India and China.
He was offered $100k to v/o a sure-to-be popular game, as a work-for-hire...no royalties. Could he have negotiated a cut of sales? Sure, and Rockstar would have said "no thanks" and hired the next guy who could act with an accent. And he could've said "no thanks without royalties" and moved on. He's complaining about a six-figure payout for a few weeks' work? C'mon.
I get it, I get it, it's entertainment (bigger than a blockbuster movie) so he should get a cut. But he's got no name recognition. Big stars ask $20 mil per picture because THEY will get people to see the movie. GTA would sell with him or any other actor doing voice over.
Simple supply and demand.
Who put this thing together? Me, that's who.
Yes, it's true he would have made millions... but if the acting job paid millions, would he have gotten the job in the first place?
I'm guessing that when game actors get paid the same as "big name" actors... you will games will only be voiced by big name actors (look at the celebrity voices in GTA's other games).
He should be happy with his $100k, and try doing something to further himself because of the boost in notoriety. I think the guy who did the voice for CJ in GTA:SA used the game success to further his music career.
GTA is not popular because of technology or the performances. It's popular because it's a well-designed game. Do the designers get royalties?
The thing that you outsiders to the "Talent" business don't understand about how actors and voice actors work is that when you work on a larger project and you have a fairly distinct voice, there maybe "no compete" clauses in the contract. An actor may go to 15-20 auditions before they get one job. When they get that job, they're not allowed to work for any other competing companies for a specified period of time (either while they're completing the current project or for a period of time following the release of a project.) This creates hardships on an actor which justifies their inflated pay. So, whenever an actor gets a particular job, that category of work becomes "off-limits" for a period of time. They can go and do other kinds of work but remember 15-20 auditions just to get considered for a job. It can be difficult. I understand Hollick's interest in getting a bigger piece of the pie as his film brothers and sisters do. But I disagree with his idea that he is driving sales of this game. I don't play a game because Keith Jackson's voice is on it. I play a game because the experience, the weapons, the graphics are better than the last game I played. I couldn't care less who speaks the words. I really don't care much about how the characters look (just in case the likeness of the actor is used.) The companies who produce the games are really making a lot of money. In a perfect world, they'd share a little of their profits with the "work for hire" folks who made it all possible, but they don't. That's their right. I'll still keep buying the games. SAG will not have a leg to stand on in this fight because the market is just too small and voice actors have no "audience." You can't picket a video game successfully so this is purely useless whining that will never be resolved.
So ATI and NVidia did all the convex hull collision code? Wrong. Graphics are part of the puzzle. You're not a game programmer, clearly.
I'm not sure why people think this is specific to video games. The same thing happens to voice actors in animation. The voice actors on The Simpsons have had to fight tooth and nail to get a bigger slice of the pie, yet their voices are a major reason the show has been such a cash cow. At one point, Fox threatened to replace them with new actors. Can you imagine someone actually believing such a threat? The entire reason Maude Flanders died was because Fox wouldn't even pay to fly Maggie Roswell from her home in Colorado to LA.
Listening to the commentary for Futurama has made me realize that there are four kinds of voice actors. There are people who are good at doing basically their own voice. Then there are good voice actors who can do a voice or three. Third, there are people who can do a lot of voices, even if some of them sound pretty similar. Finally, there are extremely talented people who can do many unique and entertaining voices, plus use their voice as a foley artist. Billy West is definitely in the last category.
Nobody's ever heard of Michael Hollick. He's had a dozen or less tiny roles in a few TV episodes (Law and Order + spinoffs). He's a junior, and junior actors make peanuts. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he made more money on GTA than he has on all his prior acting jobs combined.
I think his attitude underlines the major problem with actors and the film industry in general: they have a warped sense of entitlement.
GTA IV would have shipped without him, or any other voice actors. It used to be (back in the glory days) that the developers themselves would do the voice acting, with mixed results of course, but it didn't really damage the gaming experience much at all. Worst case, you let out a chuckle at the horrible timing or nasal voice in a thriller adventure or FPS.
I've never understood the multi-million dollar paydays in the film industry, but then again I don't understand how a single game can rack up hundreds of millions in budget expenses. How much are you paying these overworked developers anyway ? How many man-hours actually go into the product ? Something's wrong with both these industries, and until they clean up their act (pardon the pun), I care not about their whining.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Unless you're a voice actor on The Simpsons, you don't count!
It kinda helps to know the battle conditions before you pick a fight. Because obviously, you have no idea how far the odds are stacked against you on this one...
Unlike the other mediums listed, the game industry doesn't harbor foolish attachments to voice actors. To them, you're just another sound effect... an asset that can, if needed, be replaced without a care. After all, it's not like anyone's going to refuse to play a game as well known as the Grand Theft Auto series, simply because they don't like the voices. As long as the gameplay is good, you, the voice actor, are irrelevent to the experience outside of being "a nice gesture" for the price.
And even in the case of GTA4, despite all those hours of dialogue record for the game, the reality is that the average gamer is going to hear it over a fraction of the game's total lifespan in their collection.
Now, if GTA4 had been made into a rigid, missions-only game, you might have some relevence to the player, should the character re-emerge in a future version of the game. However, since the game is a giant sandbox and is online multi-player... no one really cares!
8==8 Bones 8==8
to make about $ 100,000. Software developers probably made more than that in 15 months,
You think that game programmers make that kind of money? Have you ever tried to work in the industry? The number of software developers that want to make games is quite high, and as such the salaries for them is quite low, compared to software development in other industries.
Don't the GTA games also have "celebrity" voice actors? I wonder how much they get paid...
The last thing we need is overpaid assholes like professional athletes or the faux royalty of hollywood ruining the game business. Note to rockstar: I would have done that voice-over work for half what he got. You can always call me ;)
This is a pointless article because even in the other areas of voice acting there is something called a buy out. What this means is you do the work and get a flat fee with no residuals. So, they just need to realize they are automatically getting a "buy out" deal.
And yeah, the guys a bit of a dick for thinking games are all about the actors.
Being a former film guy/actor who worked in the video game area on a game that became a "franchise" (I think they are up to the 4th or 5th game) I can understand the plight of the actor...but at the same time I see it from the game developers point. Unless the game is using some sort of new tech application. (I.e. a new 3d inhance graphic generator or something) the developers have no idea how much or how well the game is going to do. Now on the side of the actor... if the actors voice talent is good enough to rate a return for a second game...or other media of voice over work...then it is the actors AGENT that needs to fight for the compensation for the actor...NOT the union. (granted the union is very weak in its current online media postion pertaining to residual compensation for talent). Ok this can be come very long and blah blah blah on my end. Just my two cents.
Joe Investor
Voice acting isn't just "reading out loud", the same way movie acting isn't just walking around a stage. Voice actors have to be expressive, able to inject all sorts of emotions into their readings, able to laugh or scream or cry as necessary--and have to be able to do it on short notice, without reading through an entire scene every time, often without being able to hear the other characters they're interacting with--and have to stay in sync with whatever animation they're voicing. It may or may not be worth $100k a game to be able to do that, but it's not something you can just grab J. Random Sixpack off the street for.
I use the same argument at work. You want to get paid more? You think you have a better way of doing things? Fine.
DO IT
Start your own company, pay yourself as much as you like, do it your way. Until then, be happy you got paid that amount of money, shut up, and get back to work.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
This is not a movie. There are no voice actors that drive sales of video games. No one says, oh, Bob is voice acting in Final Fantasy XXX, I am going to get this one for sure! The creativity comes elsewhere. Sure, great voice acting improves a game, but it doesn't drive sales. The money should go to the programmers, artists, and creative talents. Getting paid 100k to do voice acting seems fine to me. There are plenty of good voice actors out there and if one wants more money, they can simply find another who is reasonable.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
To get royalties and such he would have needed to ask for more money. As soon as he asked for money, the staffing manager for the game would have just said no and hired someone else to do it. He can complain after the fact, but he knows that he never would have gotten the job if he tried to negotiate terms like those.
Take the number of man hours devoted to the project by the "talent"; programmers, graphic designers, and this talking head. Figure his time spent on the project. Now, give a fixed percentage of the revenue back to the artists, based on time spent. With even a generous deal, I wonder if this guy would even come close to 100K?
Plain and simple, this guy's career is toast. His greed is incomprehensible to me.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
I'm a senior graphics coder for a games company in the UK but.. hang on a minute, I can read and do a variety of convincing impressions! That'd be a lot easier than all that 'chimp work' with all the maths and the C++, code design, gruelling deadlines and no royalties.
Seriously, if I could earn that much money for that amount of work then maybe my mortgage wouldn't look quite so intimidating.
Everybody deserves to be paid well for the work they put in as a function of the amount of money that their product makes. Just because your stupid voice or face is all over a product, doesn't mean that you're the most deserving of reward.
$100k is a great salary for the amount of work that guy did. I would be absolutely thrilled to get paid at that rate, and what I do is a hell of a lot more important than voice acting in a video game.
When are actors in other media going to start to be treated like video game actors?
I can understand actors wanting residuals when considering how much the company owners are raking in. $600 million in profits, I'm the voice of the character and I only get $100k? What the hell? Yet at the same time, why shouldn't the secretary get a cut of the overall profits? That coffee doesn't make itself! And then we get into lunacy land.
Overall, I think long-term royalties are a bad idea, especially because of the corporate greedheads. I think a limited copyright should exist for 15 to 20 years, then it should be dropped. That's enough time for an inventor to make money off his invention, a writer to rake it in off of his book, and then it's done. Why the hell is Jimi Hendrix making executives millions of dollars decades after he kissed the sky? Why in the fucking hell does MLK's family have rights over his name and likeness, up to and including selling it to marketing companies so they can use civil rights to turn a fucking buck selling crap?
It's the inequitable distribution of income that really rankles me. I do believe that there's a measure of reward that should be had commensurate with risk. However, when the money men are well-secured in their positions of power and are taking very little risk to finance a project, why should they earn a higher return than the people pouring their blood, sweat, and tears into the effort?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
just because your contract wasn't negotiated properly, doesn't mean you should whine and get more.
You got paid more for one gig than I've made my entire life. quit your fucking whining. You big fat douche.
They're using their grammar skills there.
They were compensated in full for the time spent already, and they bear no risk. I could see asking for a cut of the profits in return for a lower wage (or no wage) but I don't see why someone who bears no risk should expect a portion of the profits. Furthermore, I don't see why you would want to stake a part of your compensation on the game's success, since you have so little control over the quality of the final product (unlike a singer or a writer).
Google the definition. You are paid what you are worth, it's that simple.
Oh no, somebody call a whaaambulance! I only made a $100,000 for voice over work. What's next? Is Vanna White going to complain she didn't make enough for flipping the letters over on Wheel of Fortune? Boohoo it's such hard work.
He has a talent, he has an agent. He accepts a contract, he performs his work, he gets paid according to the terms of the contract. Free market, it's a good thing.
And aside from that, let's be honest. Voice acting is not exactly like acting in front of a screen. You're judged purely on your voice. Not your age, appearance, or physical presence. If Michael Hollick wasn't available, his absence would not be difficult to fill. I don't see people flocking to buy ANY video game EVER based on who the voice talent is.
It is fun to sometimes recognize a screen actor's voice in a video game, but their names don't exactly make it to the front of the box. I mean, even Patrick Stewart did a voice in Oblivion, and he barely got a mention on the back of the box. And he's got crazy geek cred. But I don't think he moved any units for Bethesda on his own.
A lot of what I'm reading on this thread amounts to, "so what? Such-and-such person doesn't get paid this much, or he didn't work as many hours as this person." These arguments are not helpful and they fail to get at the heart of the matter.
We're talking about a "blockbuster" game with $600 million in sales. None of the workers involved in the production are getting their fair share, whether voice actors, animators, engineers, QA, project managers, or even the support staff who maintain the business working environment (such as janitors, office assistants and others). Hundreds of people collaborated on this game and they're all getting paid a fraction of what their labor is worth. The "owners" of the game, who never performed one minute of actual productive labor, are going to reap the lion's share of the profits.
Actors (and writers) in other industries (voice or no) receive royalties because their likeness is being reproduced and re-used for commercial purposes (read: for profit). As such, they deserve a cut of the profits. So do the other workers who contributed to the game.
The entertainment industry as a whole (film, tv, news, games) is immensely profitable, but the owners are loathe to cut anyone in on the action. They need to pay those who create their profits a bigger share, and the only way that is going to happen is if workers organize and withdraw their labor power. Our only leverage as workers is the fact that the bosses need us to create their profits. Without workers the bosses have nothing.
Well, there's two sides to the arguement. One is that the voice actors in video games are doing just as much work as voice actors in other mediums: Film, TV, Radio. But the reality is, they're really not as important in video games as those mediums. There was little to no voice acting in games until around 2000, and still, a great number of games (probably still the majority) contains either no voice acting or only partial voice acting. Even most games that have voice acting (GTAIV included) have subtitles at the bottom of the screen, so TECHNICALLY voiceacting isn't neccessary.
I flat-out disagree with his claim that it's the actors who bring the characters to life. Many games have been made that have wonderful character portrayal with no voiceacting. Many Japanese RPGs, for instance, relly on various methods of getting across character emotion that build up incredibly subtle character personality over time. I first played FF6 back in 2002, and found it to be one of the most moving games I'd played to date, for instance... mostly due to the writing, but also due to the timing and character plot arcs. Sure, it was simplistic, but I really felt for those people. Sometimes, voice-acting brings the characters a bit too close to reality, and all the nuances get sort of lost within the jumble between voice and body language.
The single most important thing for the portrayal of humanality in video games is character animation/body language, and facial expression. The PS1 was almost completely dead in that department (even more so than the 16-bit era), the PS2 tried, but often came across either over-the-top or not quite correct. I'm starting to see quite a few titles that are able to portray character personality and emotion with the 360, Wii, PS3, and late PS2 titles... but I think this has to do less with hardware advancement than it does a realization that those things are incredibly important. That will probably be this generation's biggist legacy. GTAIV isn't perfect in this department, but it's getting better.
So in closing, it's a tough decision. It's like any other market, you have to balance the amount of work one has done with the neccessity and effect of their having done it. Some games couldn't possibly work without voice acting... you can't have an MGS without David Hayter, for instance, and in that case, he's probably almost as much a neccessity as a TV voice/film actor. But for GTA, of which voice acting is not as much a neccessity, and characters change from game to game, it's understandable that they make less.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
He wants the voice actors to get Hollywood money, yeah right...
What about the Graphic Artists, the Coders, the Modelers, the Designers, the Testers, etc. They are all a big part of the production.
If they start paying even more money to get 'known voices' they'll just get unknowns to do the parts. Besides, have you ever heard of this guy before? (Not the shows he's been in, but him.)
Imagine if they paid Hollywood prices to 'actors'. You'd be paying $120 for the game, and there'd be even less 'new' stuff.
Since when should a freaking script reading monkey be worth more than the rest of the Dev team combined?!
Arrogant Greedy Cretinous Second-Rate Actor Wannabe...
What sort of deal do they get, after they've gone through motion capture, etc? Admittedly it's an apples-n-oranges comparison (the athletes are in the video game as themselves, for example) but it'd be a helpful benchmark.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
http://www.naturalmotion.com/euphoria.htm
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
We already have the precedent of big name hollywood movie stars voicing major roles in video games. Just to name a few of the most relevant, there's Ray Liotta who did the main character's voice in GTA:Vice City, Samuel L Jackson who played the main villain Officer Tenpenny in GTA:San Andreas, and James Woods who did the voice of the CIA guy in GTA:SA. I said movie stars because despite what you may think of any of them, these three guys have all starred in their own major hollywood movies. So what kind of deal did they get? Paid for the day like this Niko voice guy with no residuals? WHy would they accept that? If they had done the same exact type of work for a Pixar movie they'd get the full residual deal. From what the article said, Michael Hollick worked even harder than a typical voice actor because he did all physical acting of his character through motion capture. The businesses are so similar, and the voice acting jobs so nearly identical, I don't see why one should get residuals and the other day-labor pay. Even if it is a ton of money, the deal should be the same in all fairness. I think the Screen Actors Guild should make this point very clearly to the video game producers, that if they want to play with Hollywood actors or any professional actors, they will have to pay the fair share. All this talk about compensating the programmers and artists is besides the point. A different point to argue that would also include all the set designers and makeup artists etc, but not what this article is about.
That's probably the reason he got the job in the first place. Game developers know that actors aren't important to selling games. The #1 most important thing is game design, followed at a very close 2nd by good programming. Actors are important only in so far as that people prefer good voice acting to bad voice acting. However you can get good voice acting out of people who are not well known. Big name actors don't sell games, in fact, they aren't even listed. I mean Samuel Jackson was a voice actor in GTA: SA. Did you see his name featured prominently on the box? No. Because it just isn't a big seller for video games.
Hence, for a roll like this, they'll find someone who is a good voice actor, but not someone famous. They aren't going to pay fame money to get a big name because they know it won't matter. GTA 4 will well just as many copies with "Nico the no name voice actor" as it would with "Nico voiced by a huge star."
So that's the whole reason he could get the job. If it was a case of big names making big sales, well then they'd pay big money to a big name and this guy would have been out of luck except to maybe get some minor roll doing 2 lines for a passerby. Since big names aren't necessary he was able to land this role. He should be happy for that.
this guy wants what and why is he not concerned with what others were paid in the production of the product?
Where was his risk in all this and if he's not happy then why did he sign up and take the $100k when it was offered?
I doubt he was offering up even a cup of coffee when GTA was initially under development and now he wants a piece of the pie. Cry baby cry. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
The reason that big name actors get paid millions of dollars is because their names and faces are recognized by consumers. People like Adam Sandler or Tom Cruise are able to demand millions for their work because they are one-of-a-kind; Michael Hollick, on the other hand, is not a household name. His voice acting, while it may be good, could be done by any number of no-name actors. That fact alone is why Michael doesn't get the sort of paycheck he'd like to -- if he suddenly demanded royalties for his services, video game companies would simply hire a different voice actor who would agree to the original contract terms.
Does anyone know how long he had to work for $100,000? If it was a single year then he is making more money than most police officers or grade school teachers, and he should be quite content.
Is far higher up on the "What sells games," scale. While design and programming are the most important, I'd say graphics come in right after them. Face it: Shiny graphics sell games. There have been games that failed pretty badly at design and programming but still had good enough art to do ok.
As such, your job is worth more, or should be at least, than that of voice actors if you are good at it. Your work is going to do more to sell the game than their work is.
Actors are paid a ton in movies because they do a lot to sell them. A big name actor is reason enough for many people to see a film. This is not the case with games. Good graphics do waaaaay more to move a game than big name voices. That's why on a box there's shots of the graphics, but not a list of the voices.
Three words: GET OVER YOURSELF!!! I've developed visual effects software that's been used in dozens of movies. Where the hell are MY residual checks?!? Oh, and never mind the fact that I didn't get paid $100,000 for the software either. Oh, and never mind the fact that the damn "artists" whine and complain that there are no presets or that it doesn't get fancy Academy-award Winning features every two weeks for free.
See title.
The game industry will just tell them to get fucked. Voices don't sell games. That's just how it goes. Number one thing in game sales is good design. All the games that do truly huge numbers are well designed. Right after that, almost tied probably, is programming. Games that are well coded (this encompasses a whole lot from having cool new tech features to having gameplay that works like it should) sell well. Notice that the things that the GTA games are praised to high heaven for are the design and gameplay. After that, it's probably graphics. Shiny polygons sell games, simple as that. Well voices come in somewhere down around with some effects and things like that. They help the overall experience and are not useless, but are far subordinated to other issues.
So if the actors guild says "You have to pay our people a whole ton of money," game companies will say "Thanks but no thanks," and find other people to do the work. Turns out the SAG doesn't have a monopoly on talent. You can find voice actors that aren't guild members, you can look to other places like stage actors. Heck for that matter, maybe you find people internally that do a good job. Joe Kucan is quite popular in his role as Kane in the Command and Conquer series. Well he's not a Hollywood actor. He was Westwood's director for their cutscenes, and also got cast (or perhaps cast himself) as Kane, and did quite a good job.
So the union has no bargaining power because they don't have control over anything the VG industry cares about. Hollywood cares, because the big name actors who are SAG members sell movies. You put big names in a movie, it makes more money. Thus SAG has power to bargain with them. At this point it doesn't work that way with videogames, thus the game industry doesn't give a shit. If SAG member refuse to work for them, they'll just get other people.
The problem isn't that the video game actor isn't getting millions of dollars, it's that every other actor IS getting millions of dollars.
Lets say I work full time for a year and earn $100,000. A mid-end actor can work for 3 months and get up to $3,000,000.
How can anyone justify ANYBODY making 30 times as much as the average person, when they worked for a quarter of the time? I don't care if they are the best and most popular actor on the planet. Nobody needs or deserves this amount of money.
This is one of the many problems with the music and movie industries, and I'm happy it hasn't spread to video game industry yet.
$100k is a lot more than most of the programmers made, and their job had longer, more stressful hours. VAs are reaching the end of their usefulness; within 5 years we'll see mainstream use of realistic CG voice.
In industries that are heavily unionized, it is often impossible to negotiate your own contract for work, because employers will refuse to hire people outside the union. Why would an employer do that? Because if they do hire outside the union, their union workers will work slow, strike, or organize "corporate campaigns" (look them up) against them. You probably don't know about this stuff because only about 7% of the workforce is in a union these days. The entertainment industry is one of the few that is still heavily unionized.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Maybe it's time actors in movies and TV got treated as "poorly" as these guys.
Mediums?
Personally I don't think this guy should get more than what he initially agreed to, and I also think he's sounding a bit more arrogant for wanting more. The fact is that his employer could hire someone else and get virtually the same result, because (as many people have already said) people don't buy games for the actors.
But I certainly don't have a problem with actors getting paid a lot if it's just a case of market forces. A really good example of this is the Simpsons' voice cast, who are now earning on the order of millions of dollars per season. That's a huge amount of money for the amount of time it takes and compared with other people on the staff (such as writers and producers and animators, presumably), especially considering it doesn't even prevent them from doing other work. The difference is that they're nowhere near as replacable. Fox can (and did) replace most of the original writers of the show to the extent that the plots and quality have changed hugely (imho), but it still makes money because the show's primary pulling point these days is the voice acting.
The reason they get this much isn't because they're arrogant, it's because that's what the studio thinks they're worth. The actors have been doing voices on this show for something on the order of 20 years! Nearly anyone would rather be spending their time doing something else by that time, and it's not as if the actors owe it to the show's fans to keep working at low rates for the rest of their lives. They've named a price that'll convince them to stay, and Fox thinks they're worth it. At some point it won't be worth it for Fox to keep paying the amount that the actors want, the show will end or they'll find someone else, and the actors will still be happy because they'll finally have time to spend on other projects they've wanted to to for ages. Meanwhile it's market-decided compensation for whatever else they're giving up which they'd much rather be doing.
If this GTA4 guy (whom I never heard of) reckons he's worth more than $100k then more power to him, but he needs to convince someone to pay him what he thinks he's worth. If a studio pays him more they'll probably be subsidising it by dropping alternative actors or talent somewhere else, which he'd be expected to replace. If he can't convince them to do that, he's worth less.
This is much more about unions vs. corps than lowly worker vs. lowly worker. True some actors make obnoxious amounts of money and there's no way to justify it. That said most actors do not make a living wage. Second acting is a very difficult job, and I would be willing to bet that most people talking it down have never really done it. I'm not saying actors are saving the world but what they do is going to be more and more important to gaming. Think of how many games just died or became total mockery because of the terrible acting. Video games are becoming the next medium of entertainment like television, film, and theater before it. At some point all of the workers including the programmers need protection and a bigger slice of the pie. I suspect over the next 10 years we'll see these changes happen.
All glory to the Hypnotoad!
Yes, the technology is important, but it's the human performances within them that people really connect to,
Sorry suffering artist actor guy, but you're wrong. Having played about 50 hours of GTA:IV now, I have to say that my strongest connection in the game is to the physics engine. The driving is simply sublime.
Second is the sandbox model, which Take Two has been developing since the first GTA.
After that, it's the graphics engine, the story, the object models, and the textures - not necessarily in that order.
Then, maybe, the voice and movement actors. And I darned well expect my $60 to go to what makes the game great, not your nose-bent-out-of-joint sense-of-entitlement ass. Get back behind the counter and make me my coffee.
Of the 50 hours of GTA:IV I have played, maybe two of them have been listening to your sorry ass. The other 48 have been engrossed in the brilliant game engine. You want someone to get royalties? Give it to the physics developers.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Um... couldn't he have just put in "I want .00X percentage of all sales" plus 75k up front?" into a contract when creating this?
If you're in the business, you should think about those things first. If they don't want to do it, and you feel you're getting ripped off by not getting future revenue, walk away. They'll hire some other shmuck who will do it of course, but sheesh, if the actors don't want to stand up and make negotiations when getting the job, they don't deserve the extra pay. Blaming it on the unions is silly... Unless of course the unions want to control the contract. Then you'd better get after your union.
What about the other voice over actors in games that make far less and the game sells well? They're using him because he's the voice of a well known character in a very well selling game. It's nothing more than a point about how this medium doesn't have the same terms as other voice over work.
There's nothing to stop developers from negotiating points on sales if they so choose. Or from forming unions that will do the same thing. So don't start the "Wah. What about everyone else?" This actor is part of a union and is looking for the same benefits as other voice over actors in the same union working on different projects.
Good voice actors really fill out the game. Consistent voice actors across versions keep continuity. People may not buy the game because a particular actor did the voice but they're going notice if every time they get a new version the characters sound different and it will affect the gaming experience.
In summary. He's stating the union should get better terms for voice actors in video games, equivalent to other types of performances. Doesn't sound that unreasonable.
Hollick says, 'I don't blame Rockstar. I blame our union for not having the agreements in place to protect the creative people who drive the sales of these games.
Once I imagined him saying that in his serbian accent, I actually laughed out loud!
poor guy, only got a $100k. That's like 3 euros, right? Seriously though: 'people that drive the success of these games' are NOT the voice over guys. Be glad you got the 100k, there are lot's of people earning way less for work that is a lot harder.
___
No power in the 'verse can stop me
It's too bad I don't have mod points left, and I can't use them in a thread I posted on. Very informative.
And the funny part is, she's done voices in many other games I've played, including EQ, EQ2, and Might & Magic IX. Though you would have been hard pressed for me to identify any of those as her voice.
Obviously, she is a talented voice artist by that page. I still will think of her as the voice of Aribeth.
And yes, publishers know this, but the voice actors often only work a few days to complete everything. I'd love to see how many actual hours this voice actor put in for that $100K over 15 months. I'm guessing it added up to about 2-3 weeks worth of work. Nice pay if you can get it.
Debian FTW
Seriously. I know engineers, accountants etc that make less money and these people want 6 figures for doing voice overs and such. Please.
I really don't think I could have killed that hooker ,with this baseball bat, while picking up some coke, and running over a homeless guy... without the superb voice-overs in GTA IV.
Something witty.
Number 1)
A percentage would probably net him less money than the 100k up-front due to hollywood accounting. (if percentages were possible I am sure all the big game pubs would get their hollywood accounting game-on)
Number 2)
He already answered his own question.
I blame our union for not having the agreements in place to protect the creative people who drive the sales of these games.
He didn't drive the sale of this game, the programmers/designers/writers/actually creative people are driving the sale of this game. He is but a foot-note on the design process. I don't buy games for their voice actors. I buy games for the gameplay quality / graphics quality / art consistency. Sure, voice acting is a part of art consistency, but voice actors are a dime a dozen; and for a big game like GTA4, the voice actors would have been lining up for less than a 100k.
X-com and all moos owe their popularity to Actors!
Of course, it was the old days, it was turn based, and we had to read what was going on.
the filming was pretty bad, just low pixel representations, not much scenery - but we did have MIDI and WAV powering the stellar sound experience!
YEAH, Games Can't be good without high priced actors grunting into a microphone! We should all pay 10 bucks more a game so the grunter can be richer than Gates!
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Voice acting in a video game is not comparable to TV or movies. It is comparable to voice acting in an animation.
IANAAVA, but I've heard that when big name actors play voice parts in Disney films, they aren't very well paid - it's more of an honour to get to do it.
Mind you - great voice acting makes a tremendous difference, and it takes real talent and experience - it should be well paid. The real issue is that the audience doesn't identify the voice with the actor, so it is not acting as a trademark. Therefore, the voice actor doesn't have anything to "own", and he can trivially be replaced with another (equally talented) voice actor. He's a commodity. Just like excellent programmers (who also are paid a high salary, but not royalties).
To avoid this, voice actors would have to make their voice distinctive to audiences, so audiences identify it as that voice actor. They haven't done this in many decades of opportunity (maybe too easy to mimic?), so I can't see it happening now.
A friend of mine was the voice of Atlas. Due to union regulations, rules etc. he was not allowed to be credited on the video game box (either the XBox or PC version). He worked closely with Kevin for a long period of time, recording, re-recording, discussing character direction etc.
His wages barely covered the union dues to enter SAG (Screen Actors Guild). So, with Bioshock's success and the impending movie, what can he do? He would of course love to be the voice in the movie, but with the success of the game, at the very lease he could be paid something larger than what he got for a paycheck for his work. It was orders of magnitude smaller than the guy from GTA IV's complaining about.
I added the actor's name to the Wikipedia article on Bioshock...
He wants to know:
How important is it to the gaming community to use the original voices / characters in the movie?
I'd love to see him get more work since he's a very good actor and deserves it for his dedication. At the very least he should get to apply that Master's Degree of his!
TTFN
$100k is pretty damned good for reading some lines that someone else wrote for a product that someone else designed and built...
I'll bet that alot of the programmer's and artist that worked on the game made much less than that while contributing significantly more.
did the guy ever consider that if they ever make a movie, he might've been considered to play an actor's role? maybe not now, that he is crying about his "palty" 100k salary. he's not an actor. he's a freaking voice-over. it took minimal effort, and he got paid nicely for it. his negotiation skills were poor. he blames everyone else but himself. are you all surprised? I'm preaching to the choir, but the people writing the damn game are the ones who should be making the $$$$$$.
I've posted response to to this on my blog, about how much "royalty" I've received from the games I've worked on. I don't pretend to respond to the entire games industry, but I don't know anyone who worked on hit games that get any where close to even $100k in royalties for that game, so a voice actor saying he should make million on the backend is a bit ridiculous.
-Lida
Yes, the main actor should have received more money. It's not like no one knew how big GTA4 was going to be. The problem though are the unions and agents representing these guys. They still don't get how big the video game industry is at this point. They don't think about the fact that a game is going to pull in $500 million. They're still thinking old-school and looking at that sweet $20k they are going to make off the booking. Take-Two and Rockstar, nor the industry as a whole are ripping this guy off, it's his own representation. Had his people been more cognizant of the mass appeal of games they would have got him a lot more. Yes, the game industry will cut corners where they can but that doesn't mean this guy was without recourse. He just had crappy people working for him.