A clash over pay levels for those providing atmospheric voices in videogames is the real sticking point behind still unresolved contract talks between the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and videogame developers.
An LA Times story on the subject notes that under the proposed SAG deal, which an “influential group of Hollywood voice actors has strongly opposed,” voice actors would be paid about $800 for a four-hour session that could involve up to 20 atmospheric (or non-main character) voices with up to 300 words per voice. Those opposed claim that the preceding provisions would require them to do more work for less money and would “put undue stress on their vocal chords.”
Actors who do main character voice recording can make the same $800, but for voicing three characters, and can command double the fee for doing six to ten voices over a six-hour session.
Dee Baker, a voice actor who’s work has appeared in Spore and Halo 2, added, “Before, you were doing three characters dying a horrible death. Now you're doing 20 characters dying a horrible death. Not only will this mean less money for more experiences, it's also going to be a lot more vocally difficult.”
While the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) has already approved its deal with videogame publishers, the Times article calls SAG’s bargaining influence “limited,” as “about 80% of video game titles are performed by actors who don't work under a guild contract.” Both SAG and AFTRA are looking for ways to provide incentives for hiring union voicers.
Voice actor Dave Wittenberg says in the article he makes about $30k a year doing voice work for videogames, a figure he has to supplement with additional work in animated television shows.
Mass Effect 2 has an estimated 90 actors playing 546 characters who speak 31,000 lines of dialogue.
Comments
Re: Reasoning Behind SAG’s Game Voice Actor Contract ...
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Re: Reasoning Behind SAG’s Game Voice Actor Contract ...
They talk all the time in their personal life & don't complain about that, unless they are pessimistic & complain & whine about everything in their day to day life. I would hate to be an actor or actress' assistant on this. & to some people money like that isn't a big thing to them. But to the rest of us, Im sure we could use the money.
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Re: Reasoning Behind SAG’s Game Voice Actor Contract ...
Lord is it me or do they need to invest in sound tech...one person a dozen unquie and diffrent voices!
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Re: Reasoning Behind SAG’s Game Voice Actor Contract ...
I think a lot of people like to overestimate the amount of work that goes into voice acting, including the voice actors. Having sat in on a good number of sessions, I'm convinced that literally anyone can do this job. I'll admit that it pays to have a talented actor on main characters who have a lot of dialog (and since they have to heavily define that character over the course of many recording sessions, there is a fair bit of acting work there), but when we're talking about ambient dialog with an extremely minimal amount of character development and such, you could seriously just pull random people in off the street who would be more than happy to take $800 for 4 hours of studio work. In fact, get enough gamers together and they'd be willing to do it for free. You don't need a professional actor in order to record death throes or background conversation.
But I guess if they just started pulling people off the sidewalk the union would have a rather large issue with that as well :)
Re: Reasoning Behind SAG’s Game Voice Actor Contract ...
"the Times article calls SAG’s bargaining influence “limited,” as “about 80% of video game titles are performed by actors who don't work under a guild contract.”"
no comments on this line yet?
"Both SAG and AFTRA are looking for ways to provide incentives for hiring union voicers."
then again, it seems to me that SAG just simply wants a piece of the action... though i could be wrong.
Re: Reasoning Behind SAG’s Game Voice Actor Contract ...
I find myself siding with the actors in this debate actually. Lots of main and supporting character work involves a wide range of the voice and if you are doing henchmen #11-15 with all the ways to kill them, well, that's a lot of screaming.
Its quite a bit of work to make everyone you do sound different enough.
Re: Reasoning Behind SAG’s Game Voice Actor Contract ...
With Niko's Voice Actor being Blacklisted in the Gaming Industry for whining it seems this movement is growing and I know if games turn into 69.99 or 79.99 I am going to be holding off.
If these people an their Unions want to kill or hurt this Industry, well hey it's a Union thats what they are best at
Re: Reasoning Behind SAG’s Game Voice Actor Contract ...
Yes, that makes so much sense. They spend millions on a single game's development, but paying voice actors maybe a few thousand more in total will really screw over the budget.
Saying that Jack Thompson is impotent is an insult to impotent men everywhere. They've got a whole assortment of drugs that can cure their condition; Jack, however...
Re: Reasoning Behind SAG’s Game Voice Actor Contract ...
What about small budget games and indie games? It's easy for EA to just bite the bullet and cave in... but not every company can spare "a few thousand more"
Re: Reasoning Behind SAG’s Game Voice Actor Contract ...
Ah, people complaining that other people in jobs they know nothing about are making 'too much money'.
Voice acting is hard, erratic work. These are not rich people, voice acting, averaged out, pays very poorly. Keep in mind that '200$ for 4 hours' does not include benifits. It is the equivelent of making about $25/hour with only a handful of hours of work per week and sometimes significant recovery time between sessions.
Re: Reasoning Behind SAG’s Game Voice Actor Contract ...
This is exactly what I was thinking. These people make their living with their voices, just like any singer would. If you ruin your voice by overworking it or damaging it during a performance, you're not just out of a job, you're out of a career.
There's a reason pro athletes getting injured is often serious, they make their living with their bodies and need everything in top shape. Same goes for an actor's voice.
Voice actors do not get paid a lot. 30 grand a year is more than I'm making at the moment, but voice acting jobs almost always only hire locals, and that means living in a large city where living expenses are very high.
On top of that, as soon as your finish your work, you ARE out of a job. Once you get all those lines recorded, the company doesn't just keep paying you till the game is complete. You have to hope you've got another job lined up, or have some form of supplemental income.
I'm all for protecting the actors and setting fair work rules for their benefit, just as long as it doesn't go the route of the recording industry and its ridiculous royalty hikes. As long as the game companies aren't hurt, it's all good.
Re: Reasoning Behind SAG’s Game Voice Actor Contract ...
yeah but with so few hours a long time between jobs and working from home they could easilly do it part time right?
Re: Reasoning Behind SAG’s Game Voice Actor Contract ...
Yeah, but now we've gone from a sarcastic "Oh, $200/hr - poor dears!" to "Yeah, well they could do it part time and get a real job (like busing tables at a diner) to make up for the shortfall". Remember, these are folks who don't have a job in finance to fall back on. They have trained for years at their chosen profession (and many of them are darned good at it, judging by the voice acting in the games I'm playing these days), and it's looking more and more like they're getting the shaft in what amounts to a bunch of low-paid temp jobs with no benefits. Yet here they're being accused of being namby-pamby crybabies for wanting to scrape a living.
Why is it that some folks' default stance is to take the side of the corporations against the folks on the shop floor in matters like these? 60 years ago workers - you know, the folks who actually put the work into making a product - were lauded while the pen-pushers and the bigwigs were mistrusted. Why is it now so fashionable to laud the corporate middle-men and the robber barons and deride the working folks?
People join unions because they get tired of getting shafted by management and government that is often supportive of management. A union is just a club of people (often the folks on the low end of the financial food chain) looking after their interests and usually unions are a heck of a lot more democratic than the company whose workers the unions serve. When did democracy become a dirty word in the US? Since when was the dictatorship that most companies use as their model a thing that should be celebrated and supported in the cradle of democracy?
Honestly, some folks make me sick. The Founding Fathers would be turning in their graves if they could see how their revolution has been subverted and sacrificed at the altar of unbridled and undemocratic capitalism.
Re: Reasoning Behind SAG’s Game Voice Actor Contract ...
If you honestly believe that Unions are the club of the people, you're a fucking idiot. Unions are less a club of the people and more a leech, feeding off the 'dues' of the worker without contributing. Oh, and many people who join them? They're FORCED to join them. How democratic.
Re: Reasoning Behind SAG’s Game Voice Actor Contract ...
Agreed. Alot of Unions these days don't do anything for their members but being in the union is a condition of employment. So your having to PAY to work.
If the union actually does something fine, but in my experience, some unions aren't worth the hassle.
Hunting the shadows of the troubled dreams.
Re: Reasoning Behind SAG’s Game Voice Actor Contract ...
The best union system is the brazillian one...
Workers are by law forced to pay the union (yes, you read it right). And the union has monopoly on that city (that mean, if you find a city without a union and make a union there, you get free money).
Since having a single union in each city would be bizarre, unions are allowed to have a "territory" (ie: a union from one city can be considered the union of the sorrounding cities too). But a "territory" city (ie: workers there pay to one union, but there are no actual union on the city itself) get a new union, the old "owner" cannot complain.
Result: Here the most common union activity is not defend employees, it is defend territory with guns, bullets, blood, sticks, chairs, mercenaries and worker armies.
Unions do have a usefullness in solving a problem, but after the problem is solved unions should dissolve, right now unions are like solutions in search of a problem, and they become problems themselves.
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Re: Reasoning Behind SAG’s Game Voice Actor Contract ...
yeah but this pay increase would go to the not so great actors also pay em based on their worth not just a blanket increase
Re: Reasoning Behind SAG’s Game Voice Actor Contract ...
boo hoo you get paid $200 an hour for a 4 hour session sometimes even from the comfort of their homes do they realise some people (admittedly not me) have to do hard labour all day for minimum wage?
Re: Reasoning Behind SAG’s Game Voice Actor Contract ...
Western Gaming become more popular then Japanese Games only means Whining Americans in Unions will only jack up the price of games and then even though Japanese Games might now be as good, people will start buying them in a majority again, great.
Western games will now be outsourced now it seems, I don’t blame them.
Re: Reasoning Behind SAG’s Game Voice Actor Contract ...
The price of games was being jacked up independently of voice acting. Modern Warfare 2 for example.
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Re: Reasoning Behind SAG’s Game Voice Actor Contract ...
Buy a ricola, and quit whining.
The writer's guild strike ended, and it feels like writing's gotten worse since they're more incumbent now, hope the same doesn't happen to voice acting. Unions are a great thing, but crybabying over royalties (most of which will probably be paid to the union in dues), are not what they are meant for. A cushy job sitting around talking into a microphone for 200$/hour, not even having to put effort into your appearance or physical acting... some voice actors even work from home, doing the work over the phone.
There are a thousand more exploted jobs, but like sports, Hollywood brings in the big bucks, and can afford to blow it on press time complaining about how hard they have it. There are plenty of people who'd give their left leg to sit around talking for four hours at 30k/year, and the best part is they wouldn't NEED their left leg.
Re: Reasoning behind SAG’s Game Voice Actor Rejection
They're only being paid $200 an hour to "put undue stress on their vocal chords"?
The poor dears.
Lock them in a room with a few coal miners. That'll settle things.
Re: Reasoning behind SAG’s Game Voice Actor Rejection
Stress on their vocal chords? Cry me a river. Geez, if they are shouting or yelling that's a different story, but just talking?!?! What about them talking all the time throughout their life? Or on the phone or through a microphone? Is that stress too?!?! Lol omg......
"It's better to be hated for who you are, then be loved for who you are not." - Montgomery Gentry
Re: Reasoning behind SAG’s Game Voice Actor Rejection
I'll take $200 dollars an hour for straining my vocal cords. For that much I'll scream like a gelded stallion in a dozen differant languages.
Hunting the shadows of the troubled dreams.