Video Game Voice Actors Vote In Favor of Strike
- Thread starter Steven Bogos
- Start date
Key word here being some. I'm pretty sure the majority weren't. And according to somewhere else in this thread, publishers like to fine the actors where they can and take that money away from them. Not to mention ten thousand dollars in one day sounds good, but if you can't get a steady stream of work after that, you're going to be in trouble.MatParker116 said:
it's nothing like rain on my wedding day. or having 10,000 spoons when all I need is a knife.dirtysteve said:
The minimum pay is $200 an hour if you can't show up on time for that I will. It's hard to feel sympathy for someone being paid several times the guy coding his face.erttheking said:
Why do you have to pick one or the other? Why can't you recognize that they have crappy working conditions and still recognize the problems that coders have to go through? This isn't a zero sum game.MatParker116 said:
And can I please get a source on that number?
Many on this forum seem to hold the notion that VAs are somehow doing a disservice to hard working devs by going on strike. An idea that is patently absurd.
If you automatically and always dislike unions then just say so. Don't hide behind a veneer of inegalitarian disempowerment. No corporation treats it's least payed employees with any humanity unless they're forced to do so. Instead of railing against unions while you stay broke and overworked, maybe devs should join them.
If you automatically and always dislike unions then just say so. Don't hide behind a veneer of inegalitarian disempowerment. No corporation treats it's least payed employees with any humanity unless they're forced to do so. Instead of railing against unions while you stay broke and overworked, maybe devs should join them.
Go for it, I'm all in favor of the old day when you had to read to understand the story. Maybe they'll quit calling video games interactive movies eh?
Here's the thing about this strike: the companies brought it on themselves. Fact of the matter is that it was the developers who unknowingly opened this can of worms. THEY were the ones who kept insisting that ALL this VO was necessary, that ALL these games needed to be cinematic, that they ALL needed this expensive, still-in-progress motion capture, and that they needed ALL these actors to do all this. Seriously, Bioware made a point of bragging about how much VO was in Star Wars: The Old Republic. THEY made this environment, they pushed its creation, and now they're being made to realize that they're going to have to start treating the people that are doing the VO a lot better.
If the industry is to keep pushing this "cinematic-story-driven-etc" angle they need to learn to work with actors. The game makers are the ones who made this environment, so they don't get to complain about it when they realize that actors aren't tools, but people.
If the industry is to keep pushing this "cinematic-story-driven-etc" angle they need to learn to work with actors. The game makers are the ones who made this environment, so they don't get to complain about it when they realize that actors aren't tools, but people.
No, we are not.Qizx said:
Most of the layoffs affect hundreds or thousands of people, and yet you never see a game being delayed or canceled because a sizable part of the work force walk out. The average time a person lasts in game development is about 4 years, after which 1 of 2 things tends to happen: they walk away in search of an IT job that pays reasonably while not crushing them with 16 hours work days, or they get replaced by younger and eagerer developers that dream to be in the game industry, would work for a peanut butter sandwich and don't mind about the crunches, attitude that will last them a few years until they get tired themselves, rinse and repeat. There are some personalities in the industry that are almost safe, but for each of them there are thousands other people that are barely a name in the credits, if that... Game developers are among the most replaceable people in the industry.
But please, don't take this as an endorsement of the people that say VA should be ashamed of asking for better conditions when a lot of people are being exploited. The truth is, they have a right and they have valid reasons to sticking to their own, and they are not the enemy or the counterpart of game developers.
In a fair world, their struggle should help improve the conditions to everyone. This is not a fair world, but that doesn't make their struggle is invalid. The lessons game developers should learn from them is not "we get less paid because others got more paid" (which I guess many publishers and managers would love to pass as "the official story" to justify pay cuts), but that we should behave like a unit if we want things to change.
Well, the big and important difference is, you can't make a game at all without the programmer. You can make a 10/10 game without voice actors.kael013 said:
If there was programmer union like the VA one and most programmer were part of it, they could easily force the publisher into better working conditions. The problem is, they don't have a union.
VA is for most games is nothing but a luxury. It's nice to have it, but you can go without it. Programmer on the other hand are a necessity.
And VA succeeding in this wouldn't mean anything for the devs since they have no one behind them nor are they working as a unified group trying to get better working conditions are a whole.
Not going to debate the whole striking portion (which I do think is a bit absurd) but programmers empirically ARE more important to a game than the VAs. You can have a game without VA's, you can not have a game without programmers.hermes200 said:
EDIT: Which makes the VA's, by definition, less important than the programmers. Not saying they're treated as such but they literally are the core of the project. The VA's are a nice trim to an already built house, they can make it look more beautiful and help salvage a less than ideal house. But no matter how much trimming you have it won't make the house.
Eh, I can't see this working out that well for the VAs. I think I can name maybe 1 other voice actor not named Nolan North or Claudia Black.
With the exception of maybe the "Legacy of Kain" games, I've never heard anyone say their selling point for a game was the voice acting (and in that case it was more the writing than the actual voice acting, though it was excellent as well). I just don't think voice acting is a big enough selling point that the industry isn't willing to just hire 2nd rate VAs to stand-in. Time will tell.
With the exception of maybe the "Legacy of Kain" games, I've never heard anyone say their selling point for a game was the voice acting (and in that case it was more the writing than the actual voice acting, though it was excellent as well). I just don't think voice acting is a big enough selling point that the industry isn't willing to just hire 2nd rate VAs to stand-in. Time will tell.
When you can scream for six hours straight, put out that many auditions and set up your own personal recording studio, deal with that much rejection on a daily basis, pay for all the acting and voicing classes you will have to go through to build up your talent, and develop those honestly rare abilities in the first place, sure, go right ahead and step up to that fucking plate. But you can't. You absolutely fucking can't. So stop acting like you know better, recognize the whole situation here, and realize that the effort, talent, and work that goes into that one hour is something that is ultimately greater than one hour of work.MatParker116 said:
Is it shitty that programmers in gaming get paid so little? Fuck yes it is. There's absolutely no reason they should be paid so much less than what they could be in some other industry. But that doesn't mean that other people aren't getting the shaft too. Ultimately, the marketing execs and industry bigwigs who do their best to drive all meaningful game development into the ground while getting paid more than any of these people are the problem, but you'd rather make a villain of a bunch of upper middle class people for the sake of a bunch of other upper middle class people.
I am not saying who has the most important role, I am saying who is the most expendable and, therefore less "valuable". Replace a developer and no one will notice, replace an actor and it takes several GB worth of patches to make it (look at Dinklage/North, which has a interesting timing with all the things discussed here). It is a matter of numbers and public perception. A game with a lot of voice over has about 50 actors, each of them were heard at some point or another by the player. A game with a lot of developers has 30 minutes worth of credits with people from all over the world, and each worked on such a small part that most people would not noticed unless it broke during the player experience.Qizx said:
It is the same with several other collaborative projects. You can't empirically have a building without construction workers, but you can replace them (for several reasons) and the end product will not be affected; however, try to replace the architects or engineers so easily and the end result will be different. You can't have a Broadway musical without music, but you can change the third trumpeter from it with little effect, but changing the actors would have a lot of effect.
Again, not talking about what role is more important, but which role offers the people the most job security, which role has the people that are more easily replaceable. Again, this is not an attack to VA, with a wake up call that developers should do better.
I'll say the same thing that I said in the last thread, just use synthetic speech and nothing of value would be lost.
I don't see why so many people are harping on the voice actors here and upholding the developers. Developers get shit on too, and if they wanted to strike, go ahead. I don't understand this need to lash out at people standing up for themselves just because someone else has it worse off.
Except for the fact that it kind of is. There's only a finite amount of money to go around, and if more goes in one direction, then less goes in another, and if you think the executives will be volunteering for a pay cut then you're mistaken. Best case scenario is that the voice actors get paid more, and something has to be scaled back to compensate for already ridiculous budgets of modern games. Either they simply have less voice acting, or less pay for others, or slightly lower graphics and animation, or more microtransactions and other shady bullshit. Something somewhere has to get cheaper and/or more profitable to compensate.erttheking said:
I don't really get why we should be ignoring the symptoms just because of how horrible the overall mess is. What should the actors be doing? Saying "Well our situation sucks, but video gaming work conditions are such a diseased ridden carcass we should just take our lumps?" Change has to start SOMEWHERE. Working conditions are fucking pathetic, our priorities could be to get rid of it, not play along to the whims of executives on the vain hopes that they won't cut more corners. I don't really know why we're concerned our actions would cause that, they seem to do it on their own without any prompting.FirstNameLastName said:
Simply put, they're going to hit us whether we speak up or not. Might as well make ourselves heard.
Not asking for back end payments would be a good start. I'd be far more supportive of them if that was left out. I've heard that it might simply be something they mean to put on the table just to be removed during negotiations, and if that's the case then I'm more or less okay with this.erttheking said:
The thing about royalties is, I can more or less understand giving them to the big name actors, since some people genuinely will be more likely to buy the game if it has big name voice actors. If they want royalties then they can negotiate them; if it prices them out of a job, then I guess they'll have to go else where. But the idea of every random nobody who voices a character getting royalties is just absurd. If they feel their payment isn't enough, or the working conditions are bad, then I'm okay with them demanding better, assuming the problem is severe enough to warrant it. But why should the pay of some third party with sporadic involvement in the game's development get paid more or less depending on how well the game sold?