Voice acting can be different than talking. Screams - character voices - even certain accents and other stress oriented sounds can really cause problems. Not necessarily perm damage, but if your throat is your bread and butter, you want to protect it. Doing that type of work can make you ‘tired’, and the your vocal chords grow things like nodes and such - completely changes your sound from a technical perspective. If I have to produce a believable scream because I am supposed to be put on fire, I might not be able to so the Chocolate Crisps commercial for a while after that - or perform Hamlet.
Right now, for a 4-hour day, with up to three voices, they will be paid $825.50. Overtime for hours 5 and 6 would be at time-and-a-half, and double pay after 6 hours.
If the producer chooses a 6-hour day, with 6-10 voices, they will be paid $1651.05.
So, yes, I can see the voice actors wanting residuals. But I don’t think you can make the credible claim that they are being taken advantage of.
This is totally true, but at the same time the voice acting doesn’t really define the game. It’s something which amplifies a good game.
Like the witcher games. They had great voice acting. It contributed to then being awesome. Would a hand like witcher 3 still be great with crappy voice acting? Probably. It’s be less, but it’s still be good.
Look at a game like destiny. It was a very fun game, even though I eventually burned out on it. I definitely got my money’s worth, and they sold a bazillion copies. But dinklebots voice acting was terrible. He wouldn’t deserve a bonus for destiny selling so well.
I hope I’m not giving the impression that I’m against actors being paid well for their services. In my mind a work of television or film or anything else like that is a creative, collaborative effort. I can’t imagine not paying someone like H. Jon Benjamin good money for his services, he is phenomenally talented. Same with any other actor, whether it be animated or live action. The draw is the actor and the way they deliver, simply put. I’ve hired plenty of non SAG actors and paid them over SAG rates. I also understand that actors do not have much leverage themselves and if they didn’t unionize the insane crush of people that want to be actors would drive prices down considerably. Every young waitress in Hollywood wants to be a famous actress, after all. That would depress the market and making starving artists even more starving.
But making videogames is different, is it not? When Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon created Rick and Morty I’m sure they had a wish list of people they wanted to collaborate with. Actors portray characters and their voices are integral to the thing working. If Chris Parnell’s unique voice and talents were replaced it would hurt the show greatly. Who would replace Jessica Walter on Archer? No one. But think about videogame characters in a series. You don’t start with “God I want Jerry to be played by someone who does sniveling characters really well”. You start with the premise of the game, the mechanics, the gameplay, the risk reward system, the engine, the graphics, all that stuff. The creative will of a videogame comes from the lead designer, the lead programmer, the lead animator. The art style comes from the lead artist. At the very end you have a voice actor read the dialogue or lines or do 15 variations of death screams or whatever. It’s not central to the process. They should be paid a fair wage but why would they get residuals? It’s unfair for them to get them because they are unionized when all the people I just mentioned just get paid for their time and have to turn over all their efforts to their employer. I’m not a developer but if I was (and I’d love to hear some) the fact that some actor got a buncvh of residuals when I got a pizza party on launch day would piss me off a bit. Maybe I’m totally off base here. I’d love to hear from an actual videogame designer or developer here and not speculation from people that like movies.
The other night I petted D-Dog in Metal Gear. It was clearly Sutherland saying “good dog”. Did he also record all the grunts and winces and sounds of Snake getting winded? Good for him. Should he get some residuals based on the sale of the game? I think that’s up to him and the company negotiating. Putting that into their contact automatically just because some union won’t allow you to hire them if you don’t seems overreaching to me.
I can say that for anime game/anime VAs- even the super-talented ones don’t get to do the job full-time, and/or rely on conventions to supplement their income.
If voice acting didn’t really matter, game developers would be putting themselves, their friends, and whoever else who was willing to work for beers and pizza, into the game. The fact that people are paid to do this work proves it’s vital. Therefore I see why voice actors would want their pay and working conditions to reflect that.
Other people who work on games, programmers/modelers/texture artists and such, well, it’s up to them to organize and ask for what they want.
Voice acting certainly matters to me. I also enjoy solid soundtracks and would prefer the score of any game not be someone’s garage rock band. As for movies, anyone who thinks it’s all about the actors should sit down through the credits a few times or… you know, watch a USA Network original movie or I guess it’s Syfy originals now.
Don’t you disparage Mansquito!
(P.S. I never saw Mansquito)
I understand it’s in vogue these days to dismiss with emotional judgement something you do not like, in an effort to quash lines of discussion that you do not like, but who does it help?
It’s not silly because the point is relevant. No-one is saying only voice actors deserve residuals. Therefore it’s reasonable to extrapolate that if voice actors get them, then all developers who contribute should equally be entitled to them. And the question is raised about the financial viability of model. Especially it’s effect on indie games.
The only reason voice actors should be considered in isolation, is to make it seem more viable than it is, and it’s disingenous. It obviously diminishes the arguments of the voice actors to anyone looking at it honestly.
I love voice-actors - They bring the game to life for me, and I don’t hear the actor, I hear the persona they are impersonating when they do a good job. I hope they get paid well for their job because they certainly deserve it in my mind.
On the other hand - production costs for games seems to be skyrocketing. We have companies like Konami leaving the games development business because they don’t make enough money on it, and that can’t be good. Indies makes great games yes, but the AAA games also absolutely have their place in their market, and I would hate for them to disappear. We have companies like UBISOFT that CLEARLY makes games based on the same checklist in their open-world games, and thats of course to save money.
So, I want the voice-actors to be paid what their job is worth, but I absolutely also want a healthy games industry.
The devs should also make a strike, then.
Indie games use residuals much more frequently than triple A games. A huge majority of them are created without full financing, with people taking a loss but having equity (this is because a huge majority of them are start-up, not because of the indie thing in itself). But even many with financing still work with residuals for most developers (since otherwise people would move to better paying projects).
But yes, I am of the mind everybody who contributes to a creative project deserves residuals in accordance to the value put into the project (including, mind you, initial financing). I actually find it hard to justify the opposite. Why shouldn’t people who contribute value get a share of the profits again?
As for the idea that voice acting is secondary in a game: it depends of the game and the player. In a way, we’ve been so used to horrible voice acting that it’s easy to dismiss, but really good voice acting adds value in narrative games for me (and I like narrative games better than non-narrative ones). If the game is one of the kind that does not benefit from voice acting, and voice acting is expensive, don’t use it. There’s no reason for it.
Exactly.
But wait, US developers famously failed to create an union… Because of reasons… (in 2009 only 35% of developers supported the idea of an union, it’s now 55%, so maybe it will come to be soon)
This will most likely accelerate the perfection of voice synthesis. When technology has already replaced two thirds of your profession with cheap automatons, going all-in on the last part is usually not a winning move under capitalistic conditions.
It is reasonable. These devs that pull all nighters should be asking for more money and protecting their rights, like this voice guys are doing.
Is very easy to be a serf in a medieval setting where the Lord get everything and the serv gets nothing. You only needs to do nothing. To be part of the SXX and get decent rewards for your work you need to fight for your rights. Thats what Unions where originally invented for.
But maybe you think only executives deserve a fat reward.
Yes, just like movies, television and music. Oh wait, those people get paid in the millions and it still hasn’t happened. But I’m sure a couple extra thousand for some voice actors in video games is going to be what makes it happen. I mean everyone thinks of Siri when they think compelling performances.
Naturally. Only capital deserves the profits. Labor should be satisfied with whatever crumbs fall off the table. It’s the American way.
Anyway, there’s a reason why the same bunch of voice actors have several hundred credits each. These guys are pros. The AAA video-game industry isn’t about to throw them over for a bunch of newbies and wannabes. My guess is this gets resolved fairly soon with some sort of residual plan.
Or you know, without counter offers of penalizing them for thousands of dollars for looking at their phone or whatever. Or tens of thousands for not going to an audition or whatever. Cause that’s reasonable.
Imagine if your boss wanted to take away your entire day’s wages because you did… well anything.
Yeah, these people don’t exactly work 40 hours a week. It’s the kind of job where compensation needs to reflect that they will be needed a lot for short stints on a very fluid schedule. You have to pay them enough to get through the down time so all the best talent doesn’t quit in favor of a more stable income. When you try to pay professionals like part timers you’re just going to get stuck with nothing but hobbyist amateurs.
As for the stunt pay, when you make a voice actor scream all day they need a few days to recover before they can work on something else. It isn’t unreasonable for the compensation to reflect that loss of potential income.
It does sound silly but didn’t Mark Hamill stop doing the joker because it was ruining his voice?
I agree it doesn’t sound like a difficult job however I’m sure steady work is hard to come by for a lot of them so you have to eek out every bit you can out of the ones you do get.