A little ditty about the voice actors strike...

Agreed, except most of those jobs don't involve them ruining there ability to do that job for weeks at a time. And to be fair most of these VA's also do the jobs your talking about. They do advertisement, cartoons and hell Garrus has shown up on plenty of TV shows. Never as a full time or anything but he sure shows up a lot.

Either way if a job you do consistently causes you to be incapable of doing that job for periods of time one would feel like there should be some kind of compensation. Personally, I feel like they shouldn't cram the shitty stuff into one day. Last 30 minutes or something but then that could just cause more down time more consistently as far as I know.

Destiny's half a billion was a BS number btw. That was activision saying they where backing it that much over the long term. Not that the original cost 500m to develop (cause it didn't, not by a long shot).

All I'm saying is, residuals make more sense for that type of work. I don't really agree with how they've presented the idea, I think that's pretty bullshit to have it static based off 2 million sales, theres a few games where that's barely breaking even and they don't sell much past that. Which kinda sucks but yeah. Not saying they SHOULD get them, or that I heavily support the idea, because I don't think anythings that black n white.

Anyway most of there demands I think are reasonable, mostly because they're already how the REST of VA works. The gaming world needs to play catchup with that. Especially in relation to mo-cap work and harsh voice sessions. Far as I'm concerned those are the 2 big ones the publishers need to fuck off and fix. I know BioWare is a lot better about that, in general, but that's kinda an exception.

As I said, I'm all for improving working conditions and to break up vocally stressful sessions to preserve their voices. But money-wise, I feel they are paid fairly for the work they do. And remember, VA budgets (especially in RPGs) are already big.

And I want to point out that I love great VA in games, but I'm under no illusions on their impact on a game's financial success. The best VAing in the world won't save a crappy game, but you have a great game with mediocre VAing and sell tremendously. Bethesda proves that point time and time again. In the end, it's the game itself (along with marketing, good timing and so on) that will determine its success. The VA residuals make it sound like the success of successful games was due to their contribution and that... is a tad presumptuous. And what if the VAing in a wildly successful game is critically panned (eg. Destiny), do you still "deserve" those residuals?

And I feel it's also important to remember that a character's "on screen" portrayal is crafted by concept artists, character modellers, animators, cinematics team... with mocap muddying the waters somewhat. It's not like going to a movie to see a favorite actor/actress, most gamers have no idea of who voices their games unless they're well-known in film/tv. And people don't buy games because a particular voice actor will be in it, no matter how famous.

Again, I love great VA work. For me, it does add to quality of a game. But it's like... sprinkles on a sundae. It's nice to have, but a great sundae is a great sundae even without it.

They aren't negotiating, though, they are on strike. Strikes happen when negotiations break down and one side or both is unwilling to further compromise. In this case, it's the VAs who are unwilling to make further concessions. They are standing firm on their demands.

Certainly. Someone has to come to the table, eventually, or else those on strike must find new careers. I hope this issue ends equitably for all. It seems this day was long overdue.

*In case anyone ever wondered why I'm always "snipping" quotes out of my posts, it's because the forum's "quote and post" feature doesn't work well on mobile devices. It causes all sorts of page jumping mayhem while I type, if too much text is "in the box". I probably snip more of my own than anyone else's. I figured I'd explain, in case it looked strange to anyone.

Yeah, I just mean Bethesda's issue isn't a VA issue. It's a how they, as a company, handle their writing and their often inability to keep their own stuff in line. Fo4 I think is the worst offender for that honestly. I think they are used to having multiple races, and each race only having 2 VA per gender (not counting special NPC's) so they have an easier time ensuring the same VA doesn't hold a conversation with them selves.

Apparently make them all human and they have a big problem keeping track of it. I'd imagine they always have issue keeping track and the lack of fantasy races just means they don't have a fail safe crutch they're used to having. And we get Garrus talking to Garrus on a consistent basis now.

Even more baffling when less complex games have that issue, like they only used 1 guy to do all the voices for bad guys. That shits just lazy on the developers side man, so damn lazy.

There is a rate sheet for 2009 rates on the SAG-AFTRA website (I'm not sure if this information is the most current), but it sets out voice over rates:



Source:  www.sagaftra.org/files/sag/rate_sheet_interactive_8_11_0.pdf  (Note:  I did have to do some of my own formatting since the original tabular format wasn't transferring properly with the cut and paste into the quote box here.)

So, unless things have changed a lot, the cited hourly rates are complicated by minimum time amounts... and if a developer does just want to hire a VA for doing 1 voice for just an hour, they'd wind up paying $390.90 (or more) rather than $100.

However, it's not being lazy that drives that... it's trying to manage their budget.  According to the rate sheet, in order to give each enemy a different voiced "death grunt," they'd be paying nearly 4 times as much per "grunt" by having to call in different VAs for 1-hour sessions.  Unless you want to pay 4 times the price for each game, you have to allow the developers to try to economize a little bit without accusing them of just being "lazy."

Also keep in mind that one a development company signs the union's agreement, then union scale is the minimum they can pay any of their voice actors whether or not those actors themselves have joined the union.  So, they couldn't even just grab people off the street and pay them less for that 1 hour's worth of work.  If the union succeeds in getting VAs "residuals," then I think, as part of that corporate union agreement the devleopers sign with SAG-AFTRA, they would be then obligated to pay the same residuals to ALL VAs (union or non-union).  It is really something that could "sink" a lot of games financially by increasing the costs so much that 2M copies won't even approach the "break-even" point.

Not really sure where your getting your 4 times cost for 2 VA's vs 1 VA. But yeah it would be a cost increase to add additional voices instead of it being 1 guy for all bad guys.

Keep in mind I'm not saying not paying for more is 'lazy'. I'm saying when you have a bunch of bad guys and the same voice talks to it's self. I've seen that in games where they 'have' 3-4 voice actors FOR their generic bad buys but for some reason one guys voice has a conversation with him self a few times via 2 separate NPC's. That's literally an oversite on the developers side not ensuring to split that up properly. What's funnier is most of those games it's scripted moments like with Spliter Cell, your sneaking around and everytime you get up to this point they have the same conversation.

In Bethesda games I can understand it more considering the complexity of the game and how things just have to work. But yeah.

As far as the union min-wage spilling over into non-union wages, I guess? I've never heard of that happening but I don't really look into or have much knowledge about that so I'll take your word on it. That could definitely impact indies pretty heavily if it's the case. Though I find it hard to believe it is. but hey, a lot of shit I find hard to believe is true and exists and that's the way shit goes sometimes. -.-

@upupaway: Yeah, outside of the guy who does Bender (I forget how to spell his name) grunts and death sounds all kinda sound the same from genders. Nothing really sticks out to much.

Either case I've been talking about NPC's talking to each other not them dying. There is a good bit of dialog from enemies talking to each other in some games. And if they already have multiple VO's for it, they should be able to ensure they don't use the same guy on both sides of a conversation is all I was getting at.

Last I heard apparently the union straight up refused a counter offer simply for not I clouding the royalties at all. As time goes on, it seems more like this is about greed which makes me sad

... and all I'm saying is that budget management plays a role... not being "lazy."  It is the death grunts, etc. that the VAs are saying is so vocally stressful and why they want to cut the 4-hour sessions in half to 2-hours (and still be paid for 4-hours).  However, the complexity of the rate sheet from the union's own website shows that the media are not really presenting us with all the facts when setting out the negotiating positions of each side.  The rate sheet shows that some VAs would essentially be already paid the same rate per hour for 2 hours of work (in two 1-hour sessions) as the full 4-hour day rate for 1 voice and that there is already extra compensation given for VAs performing more than 1 voice within a 4-hour session.  The definition of "vocally stressful" work and how that differs from the considerations already built into their contracts is, therefore too ambiguous.

The royalties proposal seems to suggest that each VA would receive the same payment regardless of how much work they do on the game.  So, one guy doing just one voice would get the same amount as 1 guy doing multiple voices.  If that is the case, then I suspect you'll see more of the same guy talking to himself since using 2 guys for that would double the amount of royalties the company would have to pay out if the game sells 2M+ copies.  Of course, there is a strong possibility that we're just not really being given the facts... because the parties as really posturing at this stage of the game just to get "public opinion" on their side of this equation... i.e. we're being played.

The old rate sheet and old contract templates are all available on SAF-AFTRA's website.  I'm not a member and have been able to access it, so, if you're interested and you want to verify what I said about the developer's general contract with the union itself, you can also download it from that site as well.

The issue I have with the royalties is that, according to SAG-AFTRA itself, the payments are set to kick in "when the average game starts to make a profit."  That means, that the first payment would kick in at a point when the game may just be breaking even... i.e. before there is ANY actual profit... and that's only if the gaming developer kept the costs to "average."  Also, the cost of the producing the game would automatically increase... moving that "average" break-even point such that, on average, more than 2 million copies would need to be sold to break even.  SAG-AFTRA has to come forth with a different scheme that ensures that the more marginal games can be assured of making at least some reasonable profit before they are hit with royalties.  That is, the royalties need to scale differently and start farther down the line than 2M copies or the companies cannot, in good faith to their investors, sign such an agreement.

In trying to defend their request for royalties... all I keep hearing from them is this jealously over how much profit games make.  Well, I worked for a company where the investors made huge profits... they were also the ones who put in their own money to start the venture and took on all the financial risk if things went south and they did not make their money back.  That initial risk is what entitles them to make a profit.  My work is what entitled me to be paid... always and without risk... if I worked, I was paid whether or not the company was making money.  Just because a game makes a little or a lot does not, in principle, mean that people should be guaranteed payment for times when they are "not working."

The article also says the VAs have only been citing safetly concerns and that it's the game developers talking about the royalties, but EVERY interview I've seen with VAs  leads to them talking about the royalties as a means of compensating them for the vocally stressful work.  It always bottomlines to being about the royalties.  They are not, for example, asking the companies to schedule two VA sessions where one can rest their voice while the other is in the booth (which according to a recent interview I saw seems to work for them when recording animated movies).