SAG, AFTRA Decline to Strike Games Industry

Dachannien writes "The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists have voted against going on strike against the video and computer games industry. The agreement reached between the unions and several participating companies, including Electronic Arts and Activision, increases minimum pay for voice actors to $695 per hour immediately, and increases contributions to the unions' benefits funds. Voice actors will not receive residuals on games that sell well, which was a major sticking point for publishers. While the vote turned out with a majority voting in favor of striking, supermajorities of three-fourths of SAG members and two-thirds of AFTRA members were required in order to cause a strike."

But voice acting is /hard/!

[yotto]

They totally deserve $700/hour for this.

Good.

[KDR_11k]

I hope we'll see more coders voicing their games then. Can't be worse than professional voice acting and leaves budget for QA and stuff like that.

Re:Good.

[RealityMogul]

Personally, nothing ruins a gaming or movie experience more than hearing a "professional" voice-over. I can't stand to watch most of the animated flicks with my kid because I hear a voice, and then I'll spend 15 minutes trying to figure out who's voice that it.

Its not really like that in games unless you count the David Duchovny one, 13(?) or something like that. I never played it though.

Most game voices sound the same to me though, there's no real character to them. They all have a standard sound to t

Re:Good.

[jone1941]

Let's not forget Louis Gossett Jr as the Vortigaunt in Half-life 2.

Re:Good.

[nomadic]

I hope we'll see more coders voicing their games then. Can't be worse than professional voice acting and leaves budget for QA and stuff like that.

Yes, it can be very much worse than professional voice acting. It usually is.

Re:Good.

[KDR_11k]

The thing is, that's physically impossible since some of that "professional" voice acting is already bottom of the barrel. You really have to try to get even worse.

Let me be the first to say:

[Reorax]

W-w-w-what!? $695 an hour? That seems a bit high for pretty much any job, especially one where you're not subject to extreme amounts of overtime and rushing at the end of every project.

I can't count

[Reorax]

Fine, I'll be the third to say it. Whatever. Screw you all.

Re:Let me be the first to say:

[KDR_11k]

They justify it by saying they're not working more than ten hours per job anyway. I'd say that clearly justifies making your grunt staff do the VA then.

If they can't afford to live on a decent hourly wage they should look for another job or go to Japan or something. Voice acting isn't a fulltime job, you're fully capable of working as, say, a coder at a dev house and only doing VA when they need it. Considering those "actors" usually do piss-poor performances the money is clearly not justified.

Re:Let me be the first to say:

[mwvdlee]

If I say I can only work half the time, will my boss double my salary? ;)

Worked vs recorded

[myspys]

Is that $695 per hour RECORDED (ie sound that will be used) or is that per WORKED hour?

I can understand if it's per recorded hour, but $695 per worked hour?

Re:Worked vs recorded

[Bagels]

Apparently, it's per four-hour-session.

The companies offered a 35% increase in the rate for voice-over actors, to $750 from $556 per four-hour session, by 2008. The agreement reached Wednesday would increase the rate to $759 over the same period, with an immediate 25% increase to $695. It also includes a 7.5% increase in contributions to the unions' benefits plans.

Slightly more reasonable, I guess.

Profit Sharing

[lbmouse]

Although I don't agree with the outrages salaries and guarantees that people in the entertainment and sports businesses receive, residuals are very similar to profit sharing. I'm sure many of these game companies have some type of profit sharing plan for their employees. So yes, it is not fair to give residuals to actors when programmers don't receive the same, but then shouldn't the actors be able to participate in the same profit sharing? Maybe it comes down to private contractors vs. employees. So if

NOT $695 per hour

[porcupine8]

If you RTFA, it's $695 per four hour recording session.

Still, I'd take those wages. Of course, if you're a struggling actor, that might be all you make that month.

Re:NOT $695 per hour

[NinjaFarmer]

You realize you can live pretty well if you only record for three hours a month at that rate?

Re:NOT $695 per hour

[porcupine8]

In what city? Most actors are in New York or LA (or maybe Chicago) - those are expensive places to live. 3 hours at 231 an hour... That's $519 a month. You'd be hard-pressed to pay rent in any city for that much, let alone utilities and food or rent in NYC.

Re:NOT $695 per hour

[porcupine8]

Sorry, that should be 3 hours at $173 an hour. $519 is correct, I just forgot to change the first # after I fixed my math.

Re:NOT $695 per hour

[NinjaFarmer]

Ah $695 for a 4 hour session. Congrats to article summary for totally misrepresenting the pay. You can live off two sessions a month decently (in DC), and if you get three you are pretty well off, but most people probably couldn't get more than one session a month average. Thats good to supplement a part time job.

Hmm, vioce acting, eh?

[senocular]

Good news mom; you can stop paying for college. I'm giving up my career as a programmer and becoming a voice actor!

$700/hours sounds like a big deal, but..

[Jarlsberg]

But it doesn't mean anything unless you can tell us how many hours they work per week. The bit about voice actors demanding residuals on sold copies, however, is big. The argument goes, that if they get residuals, then why shouldn't the programmers, the artists, the script writers etc. also not get this? This could cost EA and the others a lot of money.

Re:$700/hours sounds like a big deal, but..

[nb caffeine]

so they get paid $700 AND dont have to work a full week? MAN, thats some great scam they got going on there.

Re:$700/hours sounds like a big deal, but..

[Detritus]

How much time do they spend practicing, preparing, going to auditions, and hustling for work?

Re:$700/hours sounds like a big deal, but..

[droleary]

But it doesn't mean anything unless you can tell us how many hours they work per week.

It really shouldn't matter. While the actual worth of the "work" can be debated, the fact remains that if you have many idle hours (i.e., your argument is that they don't get much work), your time isn't that valuable. It's wrong to make this a wage issue. If they don't make enough working their dream job, they can get a real job just like everyone else.

The bit about voice actors demanding residuals on sold cop

Simple solution

[Scott7477]

Use computer generated voices in games. Problem solved...

Really, though, it is interesting that there has been so much focus on virtualizing the imagery in games and not so much in virtualizing the speech.
Game purchasers have been willing to accept less-than-lifelike imagery since the beginning of video games; why is live voice-over so important?

In the first section of Revenge of the Sith, during the battle scene, the scenery seemed indistinguishable from film of actual places. I think that movie produc

Re:Simple solution

[garett_spencley]

Even in completely animated films actors still do the voices. And even when characters are animated they often have actors do the motion.

It's easy to create scenery, effects, explosions etc. entirely in CGI .. but anything that tries to replicate human motion and emotion pretty much requires a human behind the scenes to believable.

Re:Simple solution

[Chyeld]

Your mind is willing to accept imperfect visuals and extrapolate from there. It's part of what you do in normal everyday life.

Your mind is not willing to accept imperfect audio and extrapolate, at least not to the same extent we are with visuals.

Think of it this way, you are perfectly capable of watching a cartoon and being able to identify almost anything you see in any scene in that cartoon, even though it is probably not anything close to the actual look of the object being represented.

Now, take a typ

fucking unions...

[araczynski]

...can go to hell. can't wait for the technology to make these voiceover idiots obsolete.

Re:fucking unions...

[saarbruck]

I'm a game dev. On my last project, our "official" crunch consisted of mandatory 60-hour weeks for 3 months to meet our ship date (unofficially it went on much longer than that). The ship date then slipped after everyone was already exhausted, sick, and really pissed of. So my reaction to these voice actors and their prima donna attitude is they can go fsck themselves. If the dev team is treated so shamefully, why on earth should someone providing the voice of Officer Payday get $695/hr. and residuals?

Re:fucking unions...

[Detritus]

Your problem isn't the $695 a session actor voicing Officer Payday, it's the management of your company, who view their employees as serfs.

Too many employees have the mentality of a prisoner in a Soviet gulag. They would prefer to see everyone get moldy bread and cabbage soup, rather than see another prisoner get better rations.

wwwwd?

[chronovoreprime]

FWIW, Wil Wheaton has posted an insightful article on this topic [wilwheaton.net]. Personally I didn't understand the difference between royalties and residuals, the difference in reasoning behind them, and agree with the criticism he raises about the divisive way this was handled between two ranks of creative professionals.