Video games voice actors striking.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050525/ap_on_bi_ge/video_games_labor

If you read the whole thing it says they currently make $278 an hour for voice acting in a video game. They are now on strike and the union wants their pay raised to $375. :eek:

You'd think the union would have better things to do (like helping to raise the pay for people who actually need it), but I guess not.

thats...a lot of money for me

/me wanna be a voice actor :biggrin:

oh yeah, in 10 years when hl 5 comes out im gonna be voicing gordon,
getting payed $375 an hour for not saying anything, my dream job :>

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Boo f**king Hoo

The way that works is they contract you for so many hours of work. And hand you a daily sheet with what needs to be done.. some houses have video up so you can see what your reacting too.. most just have rough drawings as the voice is done before the game is done most of the time. SO Lets say they contract you for 10 hours at 5 sessions of 2 hours. Thats $3750.00 that your paid for your voice time. Not bad. But if you fail to record the given contract, you can be forfitted some if not all of your pay, heck some companies have it set up you have to record this certian number of lines a day or be fined. Its a tricky biz.

These people can f**k off. Half the time voice acting in games is terrible anyway, there's no standard in quality between union and non-union (I think blizzard may still use non-union?), and here's the big one:

Ladies and gentlemen, this isn't f**king TV or film. You don't spend the long hours on the set doing take after take and scene after scene. It's still bulls**t that actors take all the recognition (save for some directors, writers, and producers) from these mediums, but at least the time and effort invested in it is still huge.

But tell me, what about the people working 60-80 hour work weeks for years who, in most cases, get no residuals whatsoever from the games? And now you mean to tell me that, for lending your voice in a one-day session two or three times during the project (one main session + a couple pickups), you deserve per-copy residuals or are being treated unfairly?

God I f**king hate unions. I hope the industry never takes that route. Always starts out with the best intentions, but degrades into pointless whining and abuse in the end.

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www.button-masher.net

<div><div><div><div>[quote]God I f**king hate unions. I hope the industry never takes that route..[/quote]

Erm....foregoing the whole forefathers speech, the simple fact is that
YES, ys they bloody SHOULD get money. If you have issue with voice
actors, then burn every cartoon, 3d movie (not hard) and modern
computer game you ever had. YOU do the fricking voices. It seems only
the brits are proper union people. The rest listen to government voiced
media about how evil these liberal commies are.

I was never a union member of my old workplace, since I was a temp and
my union worked top down (EG, me, get job lost) It was pathetic. In a
permenant job I'll be the first guy in a union, and I'm sorry if people
are pissing on your imaginary bonfire. I find it terrifying that anyone
under the level of a Judge should spit on a union.

KungFuSquirell, personally I've no problem with you, but SHAME on you
for pissing on a union. When the rodent martial artist union come out
because of sub 1st world conditions, I'll support them though.

</div>
</div></div></div>

Read my explanation, not the last sentence. Voice acting for games is done in one to three sessions late in development. I have no problems with actors in other mediums receiving residuals, but in this particular case it's the most blatant example of money-grabbing attitude I've ever seen. A typical voice session, depending on characters, might last six hours with a 3 hour pickup callback months later. I've put in 4 times that consecutively in one weekend. There's exceptions of course, and those should be dealt with proportionally and fairly. But overall it's a pretty low time commitment.

I'm fortunate enough to work at a studio that does get a royalty bonus for titles. It's safe to say well over 90% of developers do not. When the people who slave for years on the programming, art, design, sound, etc. etc. for a game for years (yes, I emphasize again, years) rarely see a penny beyond their usual salary, no one else has any right to go shooting for a stake of the pot. Some developers that are lucky enough to get royalties are lucky to get $.50 per copy sold to spread to the entire company. Where the hell is that going to go if you start tossing out residuals to all the actors as well for every 100k units sold?

On top of that, the talk of raising the hourly pay from 200-300 doesn't include high-end union talent, some of whom can receive almost my entire yearly salary (pre-performance review) in one sitting.

If developers received higher monetary shares related to the profit on a title, preferably anything near what they deserved, then this wouldn't be a problem. But there's far more important people to the development of the project that come first.

Tell me to burn whatever you want, and give me the "you do it yourself" schpiel if you want - that's how it used to be done before unionized agreements came in a few years ago, and if people are willing to be petty enough to strike over a stake that's not rightfully theirs yet, their loss. There's plenty of top-notch non-union talent out there and in some cases temp developer VO is better than the union stuff that comes in. Bottom line - voice actors are the last people with any reason to complain about the state of the industry right now.

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www.button-masher.net

His point is, I think, that American unions have become greedy and unbalanced and they only protect one, small, group of people who, in all respects, should not get that amount of power for their position.

Also, the only markets you can really bitch about, involving voice actors, being unfair are animation and video games. Pretty much all other fields have well balanced payment. Most animation is done overseas, so there's not much we can do about that, but video game development, in the states, is ridiculous. Not to mention, there is no union for engineers. However, they have ethical codes, in which their companies do not respect. I agree with what he's saying. They are being pompous demanding that kind of money ONLY from the game industry. (which is what that article is about and a good reason to target those ?actors?)

It's very sad when you think about it.

[EDIT]
There's no way in hell that took me five minutes to write ....

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Also, I should clarify my comment on unions in general.

When they do what they are supposed to do, they're a great thing. They do look out for the underdog, and I know many today function as they should.

However, when you get into things like professional sports and acting and so on and so forth, it stops retaining the original function. Contract disputes in basketball? Strikes in baseball? An entire hockey season locked out? Is hundreds of thousands in base salary not enough to live on these days or something? I don't mean that as a dig at any of those professions, either, as it's definitely not something I can do, but there's a point where it stops being about protection and starts just being about what's going to keep people in the high style they think they deserve. And that is where the line must be drawn and where I get mildly upset. :smile:

And to be fair, lower-tiered voice actors probably should have some pay raises. But SAG is not just the little guy; it's from the little guy all the way up to the highest, and unfortunately things that may help some people would be utterly abused by others when there are bigger issues to resolve monetarily within the industry.

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www.button-masher.net

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting KungFuSquirrel</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>Ladies and gentlemen, this isn't f**king TV or film. You don't spend the long hours on the set doing take after take and scene after scene. It's still bulls**t that actors take all the recognition (save for some directors, writers, and producers) from these mediums, but at least the time and effort invested in it is still huge. </DIV></DIV>

I'm sorry, when did you work as a voice actor?

I don't mean to be nasty, but it's a personal rule of mine: don't say how hard or easy somebody else has it unless you've been in their shoes.

Sorry, never meant to imply it's an easy job. Hell, the amount of poor voice acting out there should demonstrate it isn't. :wink: But it simply is not the vested effort that a TV show or film would require. A couple days, you're done. If you're famous, you just made 30-50k if you're lucky. I wouldn't be surprised if some high-profile deals are well beyond that. Meanwhile, annual salaries for the development team probably hover (in most cases) in the 30-45k range with a few years of toiling and slaving.

It makes for a s**tty situation, as I touched on previously. Lesser known voice actors probably do deserve better pay - or, at least, good ones do. :wink: (The publisher offer already includes increased pay over the next couple years). Again, it's the residuals that push this issue into fray.

So what happens if publishers meet their demands? Then what's a big budget and successful game with big budget voice talent? You hit the magic 400,000 copies mark and start shelling out money to the actors. Then at 500k. 600k. 700k. 800k. The developers still get no residuals whatsoever. If they did before, it wasn't much - they might not now at all now. Just a few days of production work, in some cases, with repeated kickbacks vs. years for nothing. Why do you think actors love doing side voice roles as it is already? :smile:

In a perfect world, everyone could get a fair share. But most don't now as it is. Get all developers the recognition and support they deserve, then we'll start working in everyone else.

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www.button-masher.net

Any chance you can hook me up as a scab KFS? I'll work for the lower wage.

Yeah, I am opposed to them taking money from the industry. But hey, when EA finally absorbs the last few independent developers in existence, we won't have that problem!