NEWS: Hollywood Stars Get Extra Credit For Videogame Roles

CULTURE: Hollywood Stars Get Extra Credit For Videogame Roles

Not content with commanding huge salaries for their full on-screen presence, actors have backed down from strike action over video game voiceovers, and will now receive a pay rise.

Initially, the members of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (Aftra) wanted residual payments, similar to the repeat fees they receive when a TV show is repeated or a DVD is sold but struck this settlement instead. The unions have vowed to keep fighting for such payments.

It does seem surprising that while Hollywood studios, such as Dreamworks and Pixar, can make films that make use of millions of hours of computer processing time, little work has been put in to getting rid of the "star" and these films still have the usual suspects associated with them. The video games industry should be lauded in one sense for starting to put effort into game storylines, but then they spoil it by wasting large sums of money on stars to voice the roles. Surely both of these could act as breeding ground for new talent? Or more work could be done on computer generated voices?

because Hollywwod actors really do need more money.

Name actors definitely do contribute to the appeal of some games, but not in the way they draw a crowd to a new movie. Plus the vast majority of games don't have legs the way movies do, so residuals are a really pointless idea - not to mention that if the developers don't get them, why should some actor who sits in a booth for a few hours? The next Grand Theft Auto could have all community theater players and still sell ten million units. I'm all for fair compensation; if Jim Carrey puts asses in seats, Jim Carrey should have a multi-million dollar payday. But this is a case of the actors or their representatives being completely out of touch with an evolving industry.

Update for full disclosure: I'm in the video game industry so natch I'm a little biased.

[Edited on Jun 10, 2005 8:44AM]

Uh, why shouldn't they be paid more? If they make more money for industry fatcats, actors should score more cash. At least they do more work than the financial geeks.

my main problem with this is that game developers, the people that essentially sweat blood to get these games finished for publishers, don't get residuals, and probably never will. until they do, i fail to see why actors who spent a few hours in a studio get a better deal than the people who made the game.

I wonder what Alec Baldwin , President of the Film Actors Guild has to say about this...

Hate to hijack, but I hate when Dreamworks is compared to Pixar.

Pixar promotes and sells movies.

Dreamworks tries to promote on star name alone.

/hijack

I'm sure one answer would be:
MATT DAMON!!!!!

people are free to make whatever the hell they can get.

that and a developer can walk down the street to the deli and order a sandwich without getting hassled and sued by everyone they walk past.

people are indeed free to get whatever money they can. i also believe in unions. but the point here is that the video game industry is not the movie industry, and the people who put the bulk of the creative effort into these games don't get what sag was demanding. it isn't the way the game industry works. and the second part of your argument... well... that made no sense at all.

And believe me, we developers think the voice actors are arrogant assholes for trying to pull this shit. There's nothing even remotely deserving of royalties that goes into voice-acting work. We're talking about people who sit down for one four-hour session and are paid very, very handsomely for every hour. People are free to demand whatever they want and make what they can get, but that doesn't mean they're not a dipshit for making unreasonable demands.

If you want to make this an argument about creators being compensated for their work, fine. They could have tried to earn developer's respect by making a general issue of working conditions in our industry, or offered to throw us some a bone, but of course they just want to exploit us to line their own pockets, to swoop in for one four-hour day of work and get a piece of years of developer's collective work.

Sure, great voice acting can add greatly to a gaming experience. But bad voice acting can and has detracted from many games, and my opinion is that by and large most voiceovers are more trouble than they're worth, and I'd rather be able to push the A button and make the text advance faster than sit through some poorly delivered line of dialog. I actually like what Nintendo's done in their first-party GC games with the not-quite-a-language babbling. At the risk of offending the two or three decent voice actors out there, the majority of voice work speaks for itself. It's crap, it's obvious the actor's didn't give a shit, and it annoys me when I have to listen to it. If actors would show some pride in their work and and put some effort into it across the board, maybe I'd have some sympathy.

Nick