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Games Entertainment

Voice Actors Vote on VG Strike 115

Posted by Zonk from the they-want-money dept.
The Screen Actor's Guild and the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists will vote today on whether or not to strike against publishers in the video game industry. The actors claim they are not getting a fair piece of the pie in the ever increasingly lucrative industry. From the article: "Voice actors say they are not sharing in the riches of the $10-billion-a-year industry. But game publishers say voice actors are just part of a increasingly costly and complex development process in which a typical game costs $5 million or more and several times that for blockbusters."
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Voice Actors Vote on VG Strike More

Voice Actors Vote on VG Strike

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  • Good! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    with all the regulars on strike, maybe they can hire some people capable of showing emotion. That is to say that there those that don't suck, like those in the Legacy of Kain series. If the striking VG voice actors put half as much emotion into their work at they put into their complaining, i wouldn't be so ticked off at them.
    • I'd have to agree. These voice jockeys are a joke 90% of the time. Video game voiceovers are traditionally very bad (Resident Evil comes to mind).

      Some of the worst voice acting I've ever heard in a game came from the guy who plays the hero IN THE FILM. (Spiderman 2 [PS2]).

      Watch video game companies go back to having their lead programmers or artists voice characters (i.e. Blizzard guys on the early WarCraft series). More often than not, these guys have passion about their work which translates well int

  • I hope they strike (Score:2, Insightful)

    by yotto ( 590067 )
    I hope they strike and the video game houses hire "scabs" who've been trying to get voice acting jobs for decent wages.
  • ...how many video games have you played that have had real voice actors but someone set us up the bomb. Main screen turn on. How are you gentlemen, All your base are belong to us?

  • What about.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by flink ( 18449 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @10:49AM (#12746711)
    ...the artists, coders, and designers whose work makes up the game? Why do they deserve royalties any less than a voice actor?

    • Re:What about.... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) * <jhummel.johnhummel@net> on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @11:02AM (#12746845) Homepage
      Because they're not willing to quit en masse and tell the publisher "pay us more or else no game"?

      "Then the publishers will hire scabs!"

      Yes - and how long will it take for the "scabs" to get up to snuff and be able to handle all of the tasks of the former programers/artists/testers? What if every employee at EA and Ubisoft all left the same day and said "We'll come back when we're offered a 40 hour work week with overtime of 1.5x an hour over 40 hours and 2x every hour past 60 hours, with paid vacation time between games and a independent mediator for disputes", and the publishers were left looking at their bankroll and deciding if just going scabs are worth it?

      The voice actors deserve it not because they're better, but because they're willing to fight and sacrifice what they want *now* for a better deal *later*. It's the way the entertainment industry rose up with the screen actor's guild and the like - and I think the game industry is about to get hit with it big time, and they won't like it.

    • Re:What about.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by badasscat ( 563442 ) <basscadet75@@@yahoo...com> on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @11:26AM (#12747121)
      ...the artists, coders, and designers whose work makes up the game? Why do they deserve royalties any less than a voice actor?

      Because they're salaried employees, not contract talent. Their salary is their royalty.

      You could say the same about every industry. Why don't GM employees get a cut of the profits for every car sold? Why don't textile workers get a cut of every shirt sold? Why don't McDonalds employees get a penny for every burger they sell?

      The fact is they do. It's called a weekly paycheck - where do you think payroll money comes from? Voice actors, like other project-based talent, are instead paid based on a work-for-hire contract - as it stands now, they're paid only once, regardless of whether a game sells a million copies or a thousand. (This in contrast to a salaried employee, who - theoretically - would see a raise or other increase in benefits if the company is doing well.)

      Royalties are intended to fairly compensate non-salaried employees for work they have done, in proportion to the amount of sales their work is bringing in.

      You can argue whether or not voice actors deserve this (my opinion is they don't - nobody buys a game because Samuel L. Jackson does one of the voices, they buy the game because it's fun), but you should at least understand the differences between the concept of contract royalties vs. the concept of continuous employment.

      I would honestly hope that if voice actors make good on their strike threat, that game developers will simply go back to making good games that aren't so reliant on "Hollywood production values". Pac-Man didn't have Tom Cruise doing the voice acting and that game has endured for more than 25 years. More recently, a game like Katamari Damacy had no big name actors at all (in fact, it had no understandable language in it whatsoever) and it was one of the biggest hits of last year. The game industry is the game industry - it is not the film industry, and it would actually be nice if everybody involved would learn the difference between the two mediums at some point.

      • Re:What about.... (Score:2, Informative)

        by coaxial ( 28297 )
        More recently, a game like Katamari Damacy had no big name actors at all (in fact, it had no understandable language in it whatsoever) and it was one of the biggest hits of last year.

        Actually Katamari Damacy does have voice actors for the end-of-stage and cut scenes.

      • Royalties are intended to fairly compensate non-salaried employees for work they have done, in proportion to the amount of sales their work is bringing in.

        There's one key factor that you're leaving out here. Voice actors are paid at a prohibitively high rate (IIRC sometimes more than $400 an hour) for their work. To me that seems more than fair compensation for the small amount of work they actually have to do. Until you can provide me an example where anyone actually bought a game because of the v

      • So a gaming company could just hire a few voice actors, put them on salary, and not have to worry about this royalty crap? That might make sense for a large gaming company. Of course, I'm sure the union would have a problem with that, too.

        And on the flip side, what about temp employees who are only brought on board to work on a certain project. They know that when the game goes gold, they'll be released. Since they're not salaried, shouldn't they be entitled to royalties?

      • You owe me a new keyboard ! ;)

        I just splashed most of my coffee over it reading :
        Pac-Man didn't have Tom Cruise doing the voice acting and that game has endured for more than 25 years.

      • Re:What about.... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by coaxial ( 28297 )
        Because they're salaried employees, not contract talent. Their salary is their royalty.

        You could say the same about every industry. Why don't GM employees get a cut of the profits for every car sold? Why don't textile workers get a cut of every shirt sold? Why don't McDonalds employees get a penny for every burger they sell?

        The fact is they do. It's called a weekly paycheck - where do you think payroll money comes from? Voice actors, like other project-based talent, are instead paid based on a work-for-hi
      • "Pac-Man didn't have Tom Cruise doing the voice acting..."

        Yes they did. That's what he sounded like before puberty.

    • "...the artists, coders, and designers whose work makes up the game? Why do they deserve royalties any less than a voice actor?"

      Because the artists, coders, and designers aren't striking over it?

      We're not even unionized, sadly. Which is why EA got away with its overtime bullshit.

  • NO (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nomadic ( 141991 ) <nomadicworld@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @10:49AM (#12746723) Homepage
    From the article:

    If a strike occurs, game players probably won't notice much of a difference, GamePro editor Sid Shuman says. "I think if you asked gamers what is more important, recognizable voices or prices not climbing higher, they are going to opt for lower prices."

    He's completely and utterly wrong. I personally don't care about recognizing the voices, but I do NOT want to go back to the early days of PC games that used voices. They tended to sound as if the programmers or the programmers' friends did the voices themselves, and they were horrible. This Shuman guy doesn't know what he's talking about; even losing the rank and file guys is going to hurt games.

    On a side note:
    Union actors lent voices to nine of 10 of last year's top video games, Oster says. That includes Halo 2, with Michelle Rodriguez, David Cross and Ron Perlman

    Halo 2 had an insane amount of relatively well-known actors, even in minor roles. In addition to the eminently hot Michelle Rodriquez and the others listed above they had Miguel Ferrer, Robert Davi, and Orlando Jones. Never figured out WHY, did they like have a huge voice actor budget that they just had to use no matter what?

    • Re:NO (Score:4, Interesting)

      by eht ( 8912 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @11:20AM (#12747044)
      And yet Blizzard who seems to constantly produce high quality games (or at least massively selling ones) uses no professional voice talent, Bill Roper, one of their Senior Producers did a lot of voice acting for them.

      They commonly use their "programmers or the programmers' friends" and do so quite well.
      • And yet Blizzard who seems to constantly produce high quality games (or at least massively selling ones) uses no professional voice talent

        That's just wrong. Blizzard uses professional voice actors. Look up their games on imdb, while some of the voices are done by Blizzard employees plenty are done by professional actors or voice actors. In fact, the more lines they have the more likely it is that a character is voiced by a professional.
    • wow.. way to claim he doesn't know anything and then cite Ron Perlman and Michelle Rodriguez as talent.

      And, BTW, no, she isn't hot.
      • Where did I say "talent"? I simply referred to them as relatively well-known actors, and considering both have headlined major movies I think that's accurate. And they're also both relatively well-regarded in terms of acting ability anyway.

        And yes she is hot.
    • He's completely and utterly wrong.

      No, you disagree with his statement. It is probably true that most gamers care about cheaper games than paying more for over-priced names doing the voices. Even if they are big name voices, doesn't mean they are great voice actors. There are plenty of great voice actors out there that aren't big names that they can bring in. Or, they can do it without voice actors. I could care less about these guys. I'll buy games based on type and how it is reviewed, the last thi
      • No, you disagree with his statement.

        Oh god, not this idiocy. Of course I damn well disagree with his statement, that's why I said it was wrong. If you're complaining because I don't preface every goddamn statement I make with "It is my OPINION that" then you're going to have to live with it.

        I could care less about these guys. I'll buy games based on type and how it is reviewed, the last thing that would make a decision for me is if so and so voice actor was in it. It isn't like a movie.

        I don't ca

  • Pong (Score:4, Funny)

    by RasendeRutje ( 829555 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @10:51AM (#12746734)
    I was a voice actor on the first Pong game. You think I've ever received a penny? Nah...

  • Why do actors deserve special treatment? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dtolman ( 688781 ) <dtolman@yahoo.com> on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @10:51AM (#12746743) Homepage
    While voice acting can be an important element of games - they can't compare their roles in games to movie's, radio, or television. Video games are a completely new paradigm - expecting treatment different than other creative artists in the games is ridiculous.

    Actors need to realize that their contribution in a game is one element out of many - the developers and designers do just as much creatively as they do!

    • Then the developers and designers should be paid more, and if their talents are indeed special (such as art design, etc) perhaps they should be paid residuals.

      Instead of knocking everybody down to one level, how about we raise the special up?
      • Because there is a swarm of programmers willing to do the same thing for not-so-much money.
        • So therefore there is a reason why voice actors get paid more: they have a special talent that is difficult to find.

          Or, it's because they're willing to band together en masse and refuse to work without what they consider to be their fair pay. Makes you wonder what would happen if game developers - all of them - decided not to work unless they got fair working conditions too?

          Seems like something like this happened once before. Hm....
          • I think collectively what is happening in the programming and IT community as a whole is that corporations are realizing just how far they can push their IT staff. Since they're willing to take the abuse, the workplace is getting abusive. I expect this to continue until people stop working.

            Bork!

    • Re:Why do actors deserve special treatment? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by neonfrog ( 442362 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @12:07PM (#12747695)
      Because they have a union (darn, can't link to Wikipedia as it is undergoing maintenance). Devs and designers might want to consider forming their own.

      I'm not necessarily pro-union, but SAG et al were started to protect those types of workers from slimeballs. As such, they get to wield muscle in these types of things. Every worker deserves protections or "special treatment", but in this unfair world they often don't get it unless they band together and demand it. Actors do not deserve it more than game devs, but the actors are organized enough to actually try to get some respect.

      In the professional TV/Film/Theatre industry many of the folk involved have their own union or are a part of IATSE [iatse-intl.org]. Game devs might someday get fed up enough and form their own.
  • In the words of the mighty Deep Thought... WHO WILL THAT INCONVENIENCE??
  • Which do you think is really worse, the voice acting, or the script writing?
    • The answer is yes. Also bad is when the acting comes out sounding Shatnerian not because the acting is bad but because the code playing the sound files is inserting pauses in unnatural places (presumably for the slow readers out there).

      I find that voices in games usually detract from the overall experience (I'm sure there are counter examples, but I haven't played them) or result in the game being inconsistent (why does this scene have voices but these other ones don't?). I really wouldn't mind if the vast
    • Which do you think is really worse, the voice acting, or the script writing?

      A
      • (crap, ignore parent, somehow I accidentally hit submit before I was finished...)

        Which do you think is really worse, the voice acting, or the script writing?

        Are we talking about Episode 3?

        I learned from that movie that no matter how good an actor is, bad lines will make him look like a bad actor. I'm talking about Samuel L Jackson here.

        So, back to the topic, with game voice acting in the past, I'd say both can be equal contributors.

  • For those who would say "Let 'em go!" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) * <jhummel.johnhummel@net> on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @10:53AM (#12746772) Homepage
    I know there will be those who simply say "Well, them let them go - they get overpaid for their $300 an hour work anyway", or "Voice acting in games sucks!" or "It's a free market!"

    To which I would respond "Yes, it's a free market - and they are free not to work unless they get the pay they demand."

    Electronic Arts makes multiple billions of dollars of profit (not revenue - profit) every year, while they treat programmer like dirt. Their response to the voice actors request is something like "But - we don't pay the programmers this much - what's your problem?"

    To which the voice actors, which come from a history of which using a guild (or a union, really) has gotten them what they want: pay for their work, and residuals for using their talents to promote someone else's product. As I wrote in a column not too long ago [advancedmn.com], it's a system that's served Hollywood well.

    And yes, with all of the unions about, Hollywood still makes a lot of money. A *ton* of money.

    Maybe this is the wakeup call that the game industry needs. Maybe EA and other publishers (sorry to pick on EA, but they're the most egregious example I know), if the voice actors get their way, will be faced with developers saying "Holy fucking shit - where's my piece of the pie then?.

    Maybe the big publishing houses will have to break up, or deal with lower profits - or maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt.

    Who knows. Personally, I'm rooting for the voice actors. Overpaid hams? Sure - but they're overpaid hams who know the value of their dollar, and are willing to sacrifice profits now to do better in the future. Maybe they'll lose. But it won't be because they just bend over a desk when the guy with the paycheck wants to ram it up their ass.

    Just my opinion. I could be wrong.
    • If the existing talent wants to walk, I'd say let them. I've heard a lot of great voice acting in a few games, but in others it's been horrible. I don't think that a lot of the voice actors are well known Hollywood actors (GTA has used some big names, and David Hayter from MGS has become somewhat famous from the role of Snake) but there are a few.

      EA is making a lot of money by not paying the people who work there the money they deserve. I don't think that just the voice actors should revolt, but the pro

    • Hollywood is bullshit. Noone deserves to make 20,000,000 USD for 6 weeks of work. Fuck that shit. Really. I'd rather keep that sort of gross overvaluing of certain individuals out of other industries.

      • As long as they can talk millions of suckers into forking over $8 - $12 apiece to watch a movie then they deserve every single penny of that money. That's why entertainment makes money. The industry gets a relatively small amount of money from millions of people. If you can talk 1,000,000 people into giving you a dollar, you're a millionaire.
        • I wasn't talking about how much movies make, but rather about how 90% of that money goes into the hands of only a few people, rather than (a little) more evenly distributed to the people who put in long hours to make the movie. A director and a couple actors don't make a movie by themselves.

    • Oh No! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by blunte ( 183182 )
      What ever would we do without "professional" voice actors. I'm certain that the only good voice actors are from Hollywood. It could be that there's plenty of talent all around the world, perhaps right in your town's theater.

      Unions are outdated. People who join unions are spineless whiners who cannot take a stand for themselves (at least in the US).

      Programmers who work for EA are spineless slaves.

      I'll be trolled down, but I don't care.

      If you don't like your freaking pay or your work conditions, STOP W

      • Re:Oh No! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) * <jhummel.johnhummel@net> on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @11:45AM (#12747415) Homepage
        Unions are outdated. People who join unions are spineless whiners who cannot take a stand for themselves (at least in the US).

        Programmers who work for EA are spineless slaves.

        I'll be trolled down, but I don't care.

        If you don't like your freaking pay or your work conditions, STOP WORKING THERE!


        I'm not sure if you realize how odd those two statements are together.

        Think about the idea of a union: it's sole purpose is to say "We, the people who provide a service, will not do any work as a group until our demands our met." It's about saying "We don't like our work conditions, so we refuse to work here."

        Only instead of just Bob one cubicle down quitting, which just means that Jane is hired instead at the same wage while Bob kicks the pavement and starves, it's Bob and Bill and Mary and Sally and Jane who doesn't even work there saying all at once "We don't like our work conditions, so we refuse to work here, and we're going to sit here outside and tell our fellow professionals not to work for you either until you meet our requests for a work condition."

        I'm trying to see how that's "not taking a stand for yourself". I don't state that all unions are good (often, like any other organization, they become grossly inefficient and corrupt), but as opposed to working 80 hours a week without overtime, hardly any vacation and the threat of "Don't like it? Then quit!", then a union can be a very effective means of telling your employer "I don't like the working conditions, so I quit."

    • Re:For those who would say "Let 'em go!" (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Cthefuture ( 665326 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @11:34AM (#12747212)
      Not just the programmers, the game artists are in the same position. They sometimes get paid less than even the programmers. Without the game content there wouldn't be much of a game.

      However artists, much like voice actors, are a dime a dozen. The problem is that typically the end user doesn't give a crap how technically good the art and voice acting is, just as long as it's good enough. Pretty much anyone can tell if art or voice acting is good enough.

      On the other hand a programmer is a lot like an artist except it's not so easy to spot good talent (for one thing talent is less obvious when evaluating a programmer) and there are many crappy programmers out there because it's complex work and people rarely devote the time to practicing like other artists do. It's also rare to find someone that has the passion about their programming that traditional artists have about their art.
      • Parhaps that's the reason the next gen stuff looks so bad, most companies hired bad artists and now that highpoly/normalmapping requires much better artistic skills than game art before it that lack becomes obvious.
      • Talent I don't know about, but as for the passion in game programmers; you'd have to be pretty passionate in your art (or just completely stupid) if you're willing to work in such bad working conditions whilst you could be making more money in good working conditions in the rest of the IT world.
    • >"Yes, it's a free market - and they are free not to work unless they get the pay they demand."

      I sure hope so! Let them go, all of them, even the two-bit hacks who can't make a decent voice to save their lives. I really don't care if they're overpaid or not, and I don't have a grudge with any of them.

      Because, you know what I root for? Getting rid of voice acting entirely. It's unnecessary bloat and a waste of bytes, and if you're really hell-bent on it, a handful of one-liners over the course of a
    • Maybe EA and other publishers (sorry to pick on EA, but they're the most egregious example I know), if the voice actors get their way, will be faced with developers saying "Holy fucking shit - where's my piece of the pie then?.

      No, they'll fire all the highly paid "western" programmers and hire them all in India and China to make back the money they're forced to give up to the voice actors.
    • I don't understand...if they are overpayed, then why is a "guy with the paycheck want[ing] to ram it up their ass"? This just seems like greed to me. They have every right to do it, I don't mind that. And I don't mind the game companies flipping them off and getting scabs or altering their game to just have text. This isn't a movie. People don't say, hey, David Duchoveny did the voice in this game, I am going to buy it! You can have favorite actors and they can take a role that they like, play it well
  • Yes, with the addition of voice talent in video games + next gen games projected to cost $60 + $5 for random celeb to lend voice talent I'm sure pumped for next gen systems! I'm so sure they need MORE money. I mean if they lend their voice to a game I see it as free advertising, people will hear your voice and make an association between the character and the actor. If they want more money it make pull funds from other aspects of game creation, and who wants to be associated with a shitty game?
  • while programmers == set builders. I'm assuming that's how SAG sees it.

    But, there's a crucial difference between a voice actor and a movie star. While a movie star can carry a movie, I don't know of any video game that a single voice actor carried. Yeah, Michael Ironside is great as Sam Fisher, but I didn't know he was the voice until I read it. No one buys Splinter Cell because of Michael Ironside: he only adds to the realism.

    Its for this reason that I think voice actors shouldn't get points for g
    • Somehow I don't think anyone but A-list actors get points from movies.

      And that's the point, I think, they're getting stuck at. Without a Tom Cruise leading the movie, Michael Ironside gets shuffled up to "top billing" for the production, and therefore expects he deserves the same relative perks that Cruise would have gotten in a big-budget movie. And they do see the programmers as set builders or make-up artists, simply helping to execute the performance. But then the guild is only supposed to be conc
  • Of all the voice acting in games these days, there is usually only a handful each year (if that) that have decent enough voice acting to not make one cringe anyway.

    Sure the next GTA game might be lacking without some of the celeb voices, but you'd be doing us a favor by keeping all your shitty, low rent voice actors away from all the other games that come out.

    *slight fanboy rant*
    If everyone took a queue from Nintendo and realized that to make good games you don't NEED a full voice cast this would be

  • Dear Big Game House, (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dbretton ( 242493 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @11:12AM (#12746966) Homepage

    I am not an experienced voice actor. However, I am fluent in English and have been speaking it my entire life.

    I have been recently made aware that you are having difficulty with the voice actors you have hired, and you may be in the market for prospective new talent.

    I am willing to work for one third the going hourly rate performing voice acting work, which I understand is $300/hr. Please reply.

    Kindest Regards,
    NonUnion Voice Actor
    • Dear NonUnion Voice Actor,

      We regret to inform you that we have already filled the position you requested with 100 other people that have sent us this exact same e-mail.

      Kindest Regards,
      Big Game House
    • Hi ther, my name is Billy Bob Thernton you should have me do thet voice acter stuff because I em pertier than that Billy Bob Thornton and our names are one letter different so I'm only an O less famus than him.

  • What do you think EA would be like if their workers organized like this?

    Put aside how retarded the SGA, etc. are for thinking their 'talents' are as of value in this realm as they are on the screen. Video games are not Shrek 2. Push comes to shove, devs can use the voice jobs as sex bait for chicks in bars.

    Programmers is far more valuable to the process - if they organized like this, they might not complain so much about EA (at least until they were outsourced).

  • Where's my piece of the Pie? Customer Strike! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Alzheimers ( 467217 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @11:22AM (#12747070)
    Look, I do my duty as a good customer. I pay for your games. I honor brand loyalty over bad reviews. I'm willing to forgive the odd dropped feature now and then. In short, I do everything you've asked of me.

    And yet, I'm not getting the same value for my dollar any more. Oh, sure, the visuals are prettier, and the sound is amazing. But the games you're putting out these days, frankly, don't have any soul. It's as if you used the same voice actor for every character, and asked them to just grunt a little more for the guys voices and suck helium for the girls voices.

    Until I as a consumer get my fair share, I'm striking. No more broken and buggy games. No more repetitive and bland gameplay. And I want royalties, too -- free or inexpensive content for years after the release of your product.

    I do my part. It's time for the industry to meet me half way.
  • I have no doubt this will come back to bite current video game voice actors in the ass. They'll probably get their wish, but when the publishers have pay higher rates, they might start hiring other voice actors. You know, good ones.

    It's a shame, because I've loved some of these guys since their FMV days. Or something.
  • Solidarity!
  • I don't want to repeat my blog posting [blogspot.com], but as I say: at over 300 dollars per hour earnings, my sympathies for these people are limited.

    P.

    • Why? Do you REALLY think they even get 10 hours of work most weeks? HA!
      • Well, if they get 10 hours a week, that's still over $3000. A week! A yearly salary of around $150,000. And that leaves them 25 hours a week to either:
        • do other work, or
        • take things easy and have a high quality of life

        Look, if they want a pay rise, fine by me; I have no arguments with people looking for a higher salary. But trying to argue that they and only they deserve an ongoing cut of any profits above and beyond anyone else involved in creating the game is ludicrous. And the mawkish attempt to tug o

  • My 2cents (Score:2, Interesting)

    by RogueLeaderX ( 845092 )
    I happen to be related to a guild actor who does work for Ubisoft. He's informed me that most of the voice talent the industry uses is non-union. In fact, many of the voices are programmers who get no bonuses or royalties for adding their voice. (This may explain many of the terrible voice overs.) My relative charges what he needs to make a living doing this, and, according to him, typically costs less than non-union talent. Why? Because he gets done in 1 hour what takes them 2 or 3. I'd work for dir
  • They should get royalties, just like everybody else who worked on the game, but the royalties should be proportional to the value they added to the game. The best way to do this would be to use a weighted sum of the hours spent working on it.

    As a few hours work by a voice artist produces a greater effect than a few hours work by a programmer, let's say that the voice artist gets ten times the hour-royalties of a programmer. That seems fair enough.

    Of course, this still won't result in much for the voice ar
  • When will we have a full text-to-speech game, then?
  • On a side point, how the HELL does it cost $5 million dollars to get a game together?

    Not to mention the multiple figure if its a "blockbuster"?

    How many artists, sound guys, coders, PR people, advertising etc does a game need? Maybe the industry needs to look at more cost-effective ways of getting the job done. Then, maybe they could pay some decent voice actors.

    This reminds me of the Alec Baldwin marionette in Team America...

    "Screw you, Hans Brix!"
    • A building, a few dozen(up to 100-200 people, at various points during development on the biggest games), computers, electricity. Oh and licence, that can cost them a depressingly large amount. It adds up fast, as currently they're working for a year or two.(more in some cases, HL2 for example) Why do movies cost a 100 million? All they do is make a picture that moves!
  • that the majority of voice acting in games absolutely stinks! I mean, with some notable exceptions, (GTA Vice City, Half-life, etc) people mock voice acting, and nintendo thinks that it's so bad they don't even put it in ANY of their games!
  • From a TV show with real voice acting talent:

    Sal: Welcomes aboard, scab.
    Bender: Great to be here!
    Sal: Come on. I'll introduces you to your scab co-workers you'll be scabbing with.

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