Video Game Voice Actors are on a strike

I doubt Mass Effect: Andromeda will be delayed. Most likely all the major characters are already voiced with at most only minor ones remaining, like the characters who will be voiced by the winners of the Explorers Wanted contest.

Might be an idea to add a question mark to the thread title, since it kinda looks like a statement as-is.

Anyways, as Hanako said, almost all the major VO for Andromeda is probably already done, so I doubt it'll effect the game overmuch. Still, here's hoping they can come to an equitable settlement at that final negotiation session before the strike is scheduled.

Honestly have no idea. But we are 5 months from release-ish. Which means 4 months from being 'gold'. That seems like a rather low amount of time to be getting in a lot of VO work. Especially with how they do things now and days. Also I think BioWare only works in 4 hour chunks for there VO. Can still be difficult on the voice, obviously but they don't run all day or even half the day because of the strain it can impose.

So yeah not to sure but I don't think it'll have that big of an impact. Chances are vast majority of it is already there but it could cause issues on last minute changes they'd want to make. Not sure if that would result in a delay or them just throwing there hands up and being all 'well shit, guess that change isn't happening'.

Who knows with the mystical ways games are made.

Personally I hope, EA at least, comes to most of the terms. I remember reading some of those terms last year and a few of them sounded crazyballs but most made a lot of sense. Especially considering they don't get payed as much as you'd expect for what they do. Then again devs should also kinda get a better deal then they do.

Well, if they do go on strike and if ALL the voice parts using union members is not completely polished, I'm going to say that I hope it delays the game.  That is, I hope that they don't decide to do some iffy "patch job" to fill in for unfinished voice work just to get the game out the door on time.

Yeah, that part seemed a bit odd but wasn't as bad as I originally was thinking. I think the plan was something like 3 stages or something? Basically the amount they'd be getting payed would be less then now unless it sold a million. Then they'd get a bonus which would make it a bit more, then another bonus at something like 4 million and that's it. It didn't seem as crazy as the idea initially sounded.

The issue with VO is as they say, they don't have a job at the end of the day. They aren't collecting a pay check every month. The devs put in insane hours, for sure, but they're also getting payed monthly (or half-monthly or whatever). They don't work for a year or 2 then get 1 check in the mail you know? So the idea of getting a little bonus because the game did well kinda would help that day to day living in away game devs don't have to directly deal with.

It just makes sense for how they actually obtain jobs and all that.

The one that seemed batshit to me was the whole no dev could be in there own game unless they where a part of SAG or whatever it's called. Like hey I know you own this product and it's yours but you have to pay us to be in your product? The fuck? I get it's a union and that's a standard 'protect the jobs' bullshit but that's going over a line at that point. It's almost like that union is trying to claim ownership over it which. Most that stuff is easter egg stuff or like, grunts saying crazy lines in Halo. That's not taking away anyones VO job.

I believe the bonus they were asking was $3,300/2 million copies sold/VA to a max of 8 million copies or $13,200/VA on top of their regular pay.

EDIT: Remembering to scale that up for those not making min. VA wage.

I empathize with the fact that they don't have a job at the end of the day, but that's the life of a freelancer. Many of my friends are freelancers (film, tv, marketing, artists, etc.) and they have to chase down work like everyone else. And they certainly aren't getting residuals for the successful TV/Film/Award-Winning Ad Campaign work they do. At the end of the day, I think VAs do get paid fairly for the work they do. If they have to find other work to supplement their income, that's the life of a freelancer.

Devs don't have to work in the shitty conditions and grueling routine of a VA. Everything I've read about life as a VA makes my sympathetic to this collective action.

But, this doesn't have to pit devs (not to mention writers, artists, musicians, composers, etc., etc.) against VAs. I'd want all of them to get a piece of the action, they all deserve it. I don't think the fact that no one else gets a piece should be an argument for why VA's shouldn't.

Whether it is fair or not, the voices of these characters have a tremendous impact on the value of the game. I mean, think about it. Morrigan, Flemeth, Varric, fem!Shep, Garrus are all iconic because of their voices. I'd say more than half of Morrigan's character comes through Claudia Black's performance. Would Morrigan be Morrigan if it weren't for Claudia Black? Not the Morrigan we know now, that's for sure.

The piece their asking for looks modest to me. If the studios didn't treat VAs like crap, maybe this wouldn't have happened. Put the blame where it belongs.

...   but if the game flops... who shoulders the burden of the money it loses?  The developer... not the VAs or any other hourly paid person.  "Profits" should go to those who risked the losses if things don't go well.

$3,300 may not sound like much... but it doesn't sound like it's being scaled at all.  So, if a game hires a SAG-AFTRA member to voice a single line in a game and that game sells $2 million, do they have to write that VA the same $3,300 check as a main character?  If so, then union members are going to have a tough time getting any "small" VA jobs because companies will want to get ask much work out of one VA as possible. 

How many different VAs might a game use... So how my $3,300 checks would they have to write just as the game, according to SAG-AFTRA has just finished breaking even and gone into a state where it's just starting to make a little profit.   Again, developers will probably respond by demanding that the VAs they do hire do more of the voices in the game.  The jobs will only go to those who can change their voice to do multiple roles in the same game.

What happens if sales stop at 2,000,001 copies?  What if the game was a little more expensive to make and isn't going to make a profit until 2.5 million copies of it are sold and the developer doesn't want to raise the price of the game to ensure that it makes a profit within the 2,000,000-copy-limit before the VA bonuses kick in?

Yeah, I believe this was something that Wil Wheaton alluded to the last time this all threatened to blow up; it's pretty a basic negotiation strategy. I guess we'll just have to wait and see if the gambit pays off or what.

If you we're talking about an equity share, sure. But compensation for performing artists "never" follows equity share economics -- barring certain exceptions, such as when actors are also producers of movies. I mean, what performance artist would ever sign a contract with a studio, if that were the case? The whole value prop of a studio or a producer is that they take on all the capital risk. They are supposed to shield the artist from the downside. But that doesn't mean the artist shouldn't benefit on the upside.

Actually, let me argue this from another angle. What about opportunity cost? The time a VA spends on a gig is time they aren't spending someplace else. That's risk, and the bigger the name, the bigger the risk. How are they compensated against that risk? Well, maybe they can demand a higher rate before accepting the gig. Something tells me that game might be rigged -- I wouldn't put price-fixing and collusion beyond the game shops listed in article -- but even if it isn't, that's the only upside a VA can get to compensate for opportunity cost. That road leads to every VA overcharging or only crappy nobodies getting VA gigs. By tying upside compensation to balance opportunity cost risk only when the game reaches certain profit levels is a win-win for everyone.

I agree that would be horrible, but it has to be scaled. SAG is all about scale, after all. It's inconceivable that they'd waive scale in this instance.

Yeah, BioWare game basically demands good VO work. It would be kinda crazy if they didn't put a rather large chunk purely towards VO. They tend to get A LOT of VA's on it. Like 40-60 people on a project. It's pretty insane compared to other games that don't rely as heavily on that amount of voice work.