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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.
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.
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.
... 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.
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.
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.
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.
Successful unions usually do all they can to ensure everybody in their fields joins them, and those who don't get no work. I deal with unions all the time and often they are worse than the mafia. In many places, you can't hold a job for long or get promoted if you don't join the union and obey.
In short: if a video game actor's union is created, you quickly won't be able to employ a non-union actor at all.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
Acting (and writing) could very easily ruin the high-quality hard work of everyone else, or elevate good to great (as the writing and acting in Portal did). How much that is worth in $$$ should be negotiable, that's all Hollick is saying.
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
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.
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.
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.