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?"
Tentacle 1: I don't think you should drink that, it looks bad for you!
Tentacle 2: Nonsense! It makes me feel great! Smarter... it makes me feel like I could... like I could... TAKE ON THE WORLD! (cue ominous organ music)
Then again, I wouldn't have a clue who were the voice actors.
Indeed. I am a senior 3d-artist working in the game industry, and my salary for a game is nowhere near 100k
What about all of the creative programmers that create the interaction that drives the sales of these video games? What about their millions of dollars?
Yeah, everybody is entitled to life + 100 years of profit from every piece of work that they do. Thats what I get, don't you?
The thing is that the guy can't say this after the fact. If he wants a cut, then that needs to be in writing before he accepts the job. I mean, $100k is not bad for what I would imagine is a part time job for a while. I don't know the game, so I don't know the scale of his dialog skills in it, but I doubt it was 2,000 hours of work over a year of time (1 FTE in manager speak).
Voice actors are unionised. So he can't haggle for his own contract, but he has to agree to one that the industry and unions have worked out previously. If he wants percentages, he'd have to leave the union (and then be fairly unemployable) or get the union to renegotiate its contracts (which I guess is what the whole point of the article is).
QuantumPete
Not russian, serbian. I am serbian. His accent is ok. They need to tone it down otherwise no one understand him!
This guy has the nerve to complain that he was ONLY paid $100k to essentially do voice over work. Apparently, he has absolutely no frame of reference for the entertainment industry (or at least, no frame of reference that's grounded in reality). Furthermore, the comparison in the article which says:
That is such crap. By that rationale, eveyone who had ever done voice-over work for documentaries, or was a guest on a radio show would be a millionaire. The problem here is that this person a) maybe didn't negotiate well at the onset of the project and b) is confusing the success of the game with his success. These games didn't succeed and become wildly popular BECAUSE of this person's voice (or simulated gait for crying out loud). Rather, this person gained popularity due to the game's success (due to the design, art work, marketing, R&D, etc etc). This just sounds like a whiney guy who can't find other work....maybe because he isn't that great as a "voice actor".
By the way, before you flame me or mod me troll, I am a composer for TV and movies, and am fully aware of each deal I enter into. If I make a choice to negotiate a set price for a project, and that project subsequently takes off and becomes wildly successful, I have no one by myself to blame for not negotiaitng a piece of the back end and making sure I get residuals/royalties. This guy need to learm the business if he's going to progress any further.