BoogerBomb
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Programmers will now have to donate a piece of their paycheck to these so called hard-working long hours "actors" who do onothing more than talk into a mic.
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Video game actor strike
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lets not forget that $40k is only $3,333 a month. when you are working 60 - 80 week for 8 weeks, you are now making $10 hour.
Compare that to what voice actors are raking in. I am thinking about doing some voice acting on the side. I yell for free. I might as well get $695 for it and take a few latte breaks while I am making that money... w00t!
Compare that to what voice actors are raking in. I am thinking about doing some voice acting on the side. I yell for free. I might as well get $695 for it and take a few latte breaks while I am making that money... w00t!
Steve said:
Thanks Steve. We need more ppl to understand what we do and how we, to a degree, get screwed. And "crunch time" is more often months (sometimes as long as 3 to 6) rather than weeks, and since we are "salary" employees, we dont get any compensation for it.
bonkrowave
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Salary jobs rarely get overtime pay, I know I dont.
ashmedai said:
But we arnt paid by the hour, we are "salary". I put the quotes because, we only get paid for the hours we put in, up to 40, and then after that we get no compensation. So for instance, if we work 36 hours one week, we only get 36 hours of pay, but if we work 64 hours in one week, we only get 40 hours of pay. I have at least looked into the laws behind it and it seems legal where I am employed unfortunately.
Steve said:
Looks fine to me, and I'm a programmer. I'm not working for a game development studio because it's very painful to break into the industry in the traditional way, and the wages and environment suck.
What's the problem exactly with rest periods? Do you really expect all voice actors to put in their best performance after a forced day of nonstop takes? A voice actor wants to do their best job too. The rest seems to refer to wanting standard wages and prompt payment. Voice actors aren't getting paid what they're worth, and they're demanding more. Asking for residuals is a mistake in my mind, but that's how they're used to getting paid, so it's put on the laundry list of demands.
Developers and artists have been screwed by game companies for years. Voice acting is just starting to take off, and the SAG won't stand for it like the rest of us have. They've been organized in a union for a long time, and know how to leverage it. The other people in the gaming industry (and observers like most of us) shouldn't be ridiculing actors, they should be taking notes. The SAG isn't saying that they're worth more than devs and artists, only that they should be worth more period. What devs and artists get isn't their concern, and it shouldn't be expected to go out of their way to help them. Having said that, if some sort of developer or artist organization finally forms, I think that it would be in their best interest to team up.
I bet if you took your prototypical actor and asked them "Why should you get residuals when the developers and artists don't?", you'll get a lot of responses that say "What, they don't get residuals?"
BoogerBomb
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Actors are in the limelight. People recognize them dayin and day out. They have the paparazzi after them morning noon and night. Voice actors have no such worries at all in any shape form or fashion in regards to screen actors like thye seem to think they do. 99 percent of the world would never recognize a video game voice over actor if they arent already a big screen star.
How amny voice actors are in tabloid magazines every month? Comparing the two is apples and oranges.
Voice actors feel they are worth more to games than the developers which they aren't even in the same universe.
How amny voice actors are in tabloid magazines every month? Comparing the two is apples and oranges.
Voice actors feel they are worth more to games than the developers which they aren't even in the same universe.
Steve said:
Totally agreed. Even the teenagers working in fast food or retail get two 15 minute breaks to take whenever.
Again, it's because the actors union knows how to negotiate and is willing to do so. Developers would love to get that cookie, but they suck at it, and there are too many gullible developers graduating every year that don't know any better.
Programmers complain about their hours and ask for raises all the time, and sometimes get more than 36%. They also know that they have to be prepared to walk if they don't get it, and not enough game developers are willing to walk. If the developers as a whole are willing to put up with bad working conditions, that's what they're going to get. Maybe these SAG cookies will smarten them up, especially the ones who are willing to work for almost nothing in order to get their credits on their first game.
Torgo
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Until you get to the random gangmembers and pedistrians and what not. They snuck in a few employees.Steve said:
Now how they're getting around the union rules I don't know. I do know that it's much easier to do it outside of California and do everything in Texas, Seattle, or Canada. It's hard to tell because the big deals are kept highly under wraps.
Amen brotha. I'd also rather that money spent on voice talent was used for a professional writer. Give me the days when Douglas Adams, Orson Scott Card, Michael Crichton, and D.C. Fontanta wrote the stories for games. You first need to make a good game before you can make a great game.
bonkrowave
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msde said:
I can understand why, when greedy voice actors, on this side of the ocean, are not content with there already extremely high pay.
Torgo
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As an aside, SAG and AFTA would have been better served strategically if they were able to help unionize the game developers. Then they could have been better able to leverage the publishers by having the developers go on strike as well.
It happens all the time in the airline industry where the three unions often collaborate to help each other out.
It happens all the time in the airline industry where the three unions often collaborate to help each other out.
Steve said:
Multiply by $556 (current minimum), divide by 4 voice credits/actor... comes out to about one developer or artist for one year.
Their requested increases would make it more like 1 developer for 18 months, and is their starting point for negotiations.
bonkrowave said:
high compared to McDonalds maybe. I know that at least one voice actor is notorious for going in and doing his job blind, but the rest do research and make far less than $556 for 4 hours work. If they wanted to make money, they would have gotten a business degree and made more right out of college than they could get voice acting.
bonkrowave
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msde said:
Everyone starts out on the low end of the spectrum, its called paying your dues.
This is clearly much more then they should be paid. The large majority of people make in a week, what they make in 4 hours.
I can understand why they wouldnt want to stand / sit in front of a mic for 8+ hours on end going hoarse, no one would really. But the increase in pay is something I cannot see any validity for.
Actors in general make a nice chunk of change, yeah their jobs arent the easiest, some might think of them that way but its long hours and a lot of involved work for most movies.
Voice overs for some games can be finished in a few days to a weeks worth of hard work, sitting in a recording studio doing take after take after take. The longest game still wouldnt take forever to VO. Not compaired to the ammount of time that goes into creating the game and characters to sync up with their voices. Not to mention the maps and GUI and many many many lines of code.
I dont think that the voice actors should have been given that hike. Or even been used. They want too much and take too much from the company and consumer. Game budgets will stay the same, so its the consumer who will most likely have to foot the added price tag of some big name or union actor.
While I dont want to hear someone who cannot use tone inflection or act as good as my cat in the next game I buy, I know there is a lot of talent out there having problems finding work outside of these unions, im sure acting schools, theater groups and other places have people who can use their voice well, projection and tones. Point is theres an alternative to spending a lot more money for talent that is not the driving point behind sales. The people who deserve the raise are the ones who will most likely and historically not get one.
IMO.
Actors in general make a nice chunk of change, yeah their jobs arent the easiest, some might think of them that way but its long hours and a lot of involved work for most movies.
Voice overs for some games can be finished in a few days to a weeks worth of hard work, sitting in a recording studio doing take after take after take. The longest game still wouldnt take forever to VO. Not compaired to the ammount of time that goes into creating the game and characters to sync up with their voices. Not to mention the maps and GUI and many many many lines of code.
I dont think that the voice actors should have been given that hike. Or even been used. They want too much and take too much from the company and consumer. Game budgets will stay the same, so its the consumer who will most likely have to foot the added price tag of some big name or union actor.
While I dont want to hear someone who cannot use tone inflection or act as good as my cat in the next game I buy, I know there is a lot of talent out there having problems finding work outside of these unions, im sure acting schools, theater groups and other places have people who can use their voice well, projection and tones. Point is theres an alternative to spending a lot more money for talent that is not the driving point behind sales. The people who deserve the raise are the ones who will most likely and historically not get one.
IMO.
bonkrowave
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msde said:
No I'm reading it clear. That is way to much to be paid. If you want to try and persuade someone that 4 hours of studio time equals a 40 hour work week, I would suggest a bobble-head doll, as that is the only thing that is going to agree with you.
Why does it take a day or two for me to research military specs and codes for parts, apply the correct amount of cushioning as per the stated drop height, research part damage thresholds and come up with a suitable design solution, and yet it takes a voice actor 40 hours to get a voice down ?
I think voice actors need to "research" much more efficently.
BoogerBomb
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Well that plumber had to study to learn his skill and has to keep refining it as well and if they are liscened had to go to school to do so. Voice acting requires no schooling at all. The prep work cant be nothing more than reading the script and rehearsing while wathcing tv at home or surfing the internet.
Ripskin said:
agreed and agreed. But on a game with a $50 million+ budget (halo, GTA: SA), this raise comes out to about $15k based on the number of voices used in GTA:SA.
voice actors aren't the most underpaid people in the industry, but that doesn't mean they're not deserving of more pay as well. Consumers need to wonder why the publisher and retailer are taking 1/3 of their money each when online delivery (like steam, now that bugs have been largely ironed out) gives all of the money to the studio. Developers and artists need to say "We demand more money too!", not "Make the actors miserable like us!"
BoogerBomb said:
The best amateur voice acting I've seen in a video game was in the original Command and Conquer. I liked it at the time, but it doesn't compare to professional stuff. You get what you pay for. If a studio can afford to pay $1m to license doom3, source, or whatever the new unreal is called, then they can afford to pay a few thousand on decent voice acting. ($759/contract still means you get close to 40 voices for 1% the cost of the license.)
bonkrowave said:
Because specs and codes have a correct answer. While most voice acting still leaves a lot to be desired, you can't just go to a professional writer and ask him to write you a novel in two days. (I can give you 300 pages of garbage in a day easy at 50 wpm, and I'm not that fast a typer.) Art and engineering can't be compared this way.
bonkrowave
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ashmedai said:
Its pointless. Im done banging my head against the wall.
I clearly stated I do much more then look up specs and codes, I use all the information and design a suitable soltuion all in about 12-16 hours work time.
For engineering, coding, et cetera...an answer may be WRONG...or it may be varying degrees of right. For that matter there are even varying degrees of wrong, some of which will pass for acceptable. Any program that actually runs involves thousands of right answers...but that doesn't mean there aren't better ones that would make the program run faster, or be more stable, or whatever. Like bonkrowave said...he finds a suitable solution, not the correct answer. This isn't fricking grade school arithmetic here where there's one right answer. Any building that stands up involves a number of right answers by an architect, but not every architect is Frank Lloyd Wright.
-(Xyphox)-
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page is not up anymore.... 
bonkrowave
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ashmedai said:
That last line in your post is awesome. That is going to become my new favorite saying at job related schmooze fests.
HardOCP News
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Torgo said:
You are on to something there bro.
Funny (as in odd, not ha ha) but true story:
We had a lady who worked for one of our businesses. She was an outstanding employee, been with the company 10 years....she comes to me, in tears, with her resignation letter after getting her latest evaluation and raise.
a.) She started with the company 10 years ago at (fictional numbers here) $5hr
b.) She was given a 10% raise every year for the last 10 years
c.) She makes double what she started at.
LOOKS GREAT ON PAPER...RIGHT?!?!
The problem she had is this....We currently START people at $11hr now, $1 an hour more than we pay our VALUED employees. If you walk in the door today and got hired, you would make $1 an hour more than this lady.
To remedy the situation, I terminated her employment and brought her back into the company as a rehire. I hired her at the current base rate plus benefits which effectively gave her an immediate raise. It also gives her the opportunity to get her 10% raised based on her NEW salary and she is happy....
...so, in the end, we had to fire her to make her happy.
The point is, you can lose sight of your GOOD employees (programmers, artists, designers), who are being screwed by the system, while you are dealing with the st00pid crap like voice acting royalties. BUT if your management is determined AND creative, you can make the people that count happy.
Game publishers can make things right, they can give Hollywood the boot and dedicate the resources to where they NEED to be dedicated and let Hollywood cannibalize themselves.
From what we have seen in this thread, the people that BUY games would support the publishers 110%...too bad they don't listen to us.
bigbadgreen
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I see a lot of people posting saying that 278 and hour is ridiculous etc... without considering that it could be a few weeks or longer before that actor gets another job. It's not like they are getting paid 278 per hour, 40 hours a week all year long. you can't equate this type of work to a normal 40 hr per week job.
and while people don't buy games for the actors, these are the details that seperate great games from good games. Even in games with lots of acting they won't work more than a few days doing voices.
Say a voice actor works 20 hours on a game. getting paid 278/hr gets him 5560 gross, now figure in taxes, roughly %20 he takes in 4448. If this is his only job in a month, he gets 1112 per week or 27.8 per hour if he was pulling a 40hr work week. we all know somebody who is making that much. that's not even 60 grand a year.
This scenario is probably middle of the road, with some actors getting more and some less, but that's how it goes. Also how many games are there developed per year? Now thik of all the voice actors out there and consider what the compition must be like to get those jobs.
and while people don't buy games for the actors, these are the details that seperate great games from good games. Even in games with lots of acting they won't work more than a few days doing voices.
Say a voice actor works 20 hours on a game. getting paid 278/hr gets him 5560 gross, now figure in taxes, roughly %20 he takes in 4448. If this is his only job in a month, he gets 1112 per week or 27.8 per hour if he was pulling a 40hr work week. we all know somebody who is making that much. that's not even 60 grand a year.
This scenario is probably middle of the road, with some actors getting more and some less, but that's how it goes. Also how many games are there developed per year? Now thik of all the voice actors out there and consider what the compition must be like to get those jobs.
backflipper
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bigbadgreen said:
Listen, I am a salary employee that works at least 40hrs/wk. This argument doesn't pull any weight with me. This person would make ~$4,500 in a month, off of 20 hours of work. That is more than I make for working 160+ hours. If this person has a side job that pays them minimum wage, they are suddenly making 60K or more in a year. I don't have the luxury of taking a side job without severely limiting the time I can spend with my family and friends.
Darkjestir
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Why dont they just use the voices of the developers themselves after all their already working on the game as it is.
I haven't read this entire thread so sorry if this has been posted, but what those voice actors are getting is actually quite cheap. And no, not just anyone can step up to a mic and lend their voice. I've worked with some of the worse talent out there doing voice overs and you end up paying more in the long run due to the extra effort you have to spend in post to make their reads sound decent or the time just trying to get the damn actor to give a solid read. I've also worked with some of the best talent out there and that professionalism and experience more than pays the normal $150/hr we pay out and this is for extremely extremely low budget local projects. Nothing like a $5million + game.
Most of those actors have paid their dues and are just trying to scrape by making a living at something they are good at. They'll be lucky to get a job or two a month and those jobs usually only last 4 hours if that since most can't go that long, you lose your voice. You may think they are making butt loads, but they aren't.
In the grand scheme of things, these wages are a drop in the bucket for most game companies. And probably 1% of those actors make more than $40k a year, and that's including their second job which nearly all will have. In the end, this helps the thousands of little guys out there that really are good at what they do. We'll still get bad voice actors but maybe now the casting director will actually listen to whom their casting..
Just my view from inside a similar profession.
Most of those actors have paid their dues and are just trying to scrape by making a living at something they are good at. They'll be lucky to get a job or two a month and those jobs usually only last 4 hours if that since most can't go that long, you lose your voice. You may think they are making butt loads, but they aren't.
In the grand scheme of things, these wages are a drop in the bucket for most game companies. And probably 1% of those actors make more than $40k a year, and that's including their second job which nearly all will have. In the end, this helps the thousands of little guys out there that really are good at what they do. We'll still get bad voice actors but maybe now the casting director will actually listen to whom their casting..
Just my view from inside a similar profession.
Operadragon
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Yeah....let's tell a dev team at EA that their job duties and hours just increased with the same salary. I can see that job situation going from tepid to postal. I doubt the poor programmers would support that. It's one thing to do cameos like many games do now, but all the lines for a main character in a game? Yikes.
[general comments]
Guys, I can completely understand the knee-jerk rage that many of you are venting towards the voice-over folks. But some of you are really getting it, when you observe that many actors get 1-2 gigs a month, if they're lucky and the actor's agent is doing their job. But let's be honest, guys. Not every voice actor gets a gig for multiple voices, which cuts the scale down.
But let's not kid ourselves, folks...there is a *whole lot* more to voice acting than walking into a studio, picking up a script cold and working a requisite 4 hours and walking out on the minute. The prep time involved cuts into that phantom hourly rate over which everyone's getting so testy. In reality, this argument is so apples-to-oranges, but for actors, it's a minimum ratio of 2:1 preparation time-to-studio time, so all of a sudden, it's a 12-hour gig, not 4, and a $695 gig goes to $57.92/hour for 12 hours, but the reality is closer to a 3:1 rehearsal-to-performance ratio. I digress from this, though, because I understand how many feel regardless of how many real hours are put in by voice-over actors.
Torgo, you and I are starting to see eye to eye, man. I think it'd be just great (and a helluva strategic move) for SAG to plant that seed in the dev boys' and girls' ears. Talk about a major coup if some of the publishers' cash cow were finally diverted to the cube-dwellers. Maybe then the art and the science of games can be friends. It would be a good day for all.
Steve said it was time to give Hollywood voice actors the boot. I agree. Film actors crossing over is the worst thing to happen to rank and file SAG VO folks. It's because of the current obsession with *having* to have the film talent in video game ports of movies that makes Joe Q. VO want more money, because work is being taken from the commoners (who are usually way better) and given to the "stars." If it weren't for the cost of those actors (who make way the hell more than SAG scale per session), then more (let's call them) "blue-collar" voice actors would be getting work, and everything gets better, because the average SAG voice-over actors are getting more work (plus more money), and then maybe everyone forgets about residuals because some primadonna film actor isn't taking work away from the real hard workers. It's a problem solved if they use scale actors and just pay the rights for impersonations of the movie stars. Money saved, and the wealth gets spread around. They did this in the Rogue Leader games on the Gamecube.
I saw how a lot of the dev guys that post to this board don't think that unions are the answer, but what if pushing for no salaries and more term contracts with only hourly pay and agree for a slightly lower per-hour wage. At last that's fair pay during crunch time. maybe just take your personal salary and figure the hourly rate for it, then figure (say) 85% of that hourly rate, and you come out ahead in the long run. Maybe it's possible, I don't know. *shrug*
Something else everyone should remember: independent contractors (Voice actors) don't get benefits. That's another out-of-pocket expense for the actors. Do the math. It's a significant omission.
Oh yeah, almost forgot. Non-union actors in Tulsa get $100 per commercial spot on radio. Most of those last less than an hour. Don't hate the actor. Hate the fat cats in advertising. (Hmmm....maybe if congress bans ads for video games, that multimillion dollar budget would get diverted to the appropriate places, right dev folks?)
I'm eager to hear you guys' response (Torgo, Steve, some others).
Best regards,
Brad Venable
I appreciate everyones POV here, but Ill be blunt. I dont buy all that junk. People complain about actors only getting paid for a few hours of work, and only getting to work so much during a month
having time in between jobs. Did they not know that before they started doing that full time? You cant complain over a wage you agree to. If you dont like what a job pays, dont do it. Starving artists arent being starved, they are starving themselves. Do you know why VO fees are what they are
because people will do it for that much. Dont whine about how little you make doing it in a year. If you dont like it, find another line of work. Thats what people do. You chose your career, deal with it. Same goes for programmers. If you feel you are overworked and underpaid, find a different gig. Youre only at your job because its worth it to do it. If you can make twice as much programming somewhere else, then go do that, but dont complain about the wages where you work when there are people lined up at the door to take your job for the same pay. If you are truly as necessary and in demand as you think you are, then youll get paid what you want. The union only serves to keep supply and demand from determining what the actual value of the work invovled is.
Unions were created to protect workers from being taken advantage of. Nobody is being taken advantage of here. People are entering into mutual agreements. There are plenty of options available for work if you dont like what you do. Unions were instituted to keep people from getting killed and maimed on their jobs, is that the current situation? They were put in place in an era where people didnt have options. Now they are used as leverage to get above average benefits and payments for workers. I dont see that the SAG union helps the overall situation in the gaming industry at all.
If you do your job because you love it, then by your own admission your happiness is part of your compensation. If you dont like your compensation, then do something else.
So strike. But dont try to tell me that youve got it hard. Not everyone gets to work in their desired field.
P.
[edit]Fixed a punctuation error.[/edit]
Unions were created to protect workers from being taken advantage of. Nobody is being taken advantage of here. People are entering into mutual agreements. There are plenty of options available for work if you dont like what you do. Unions were instituted to keep people from getting killed and maimed on their jobs, is that the current situation? They were put in place in an era where people didnt have options. Now they are used as leverage to get above average benefits and payments for workers. I dont see that the SAG union helps the overall situation in the gaming industry at all.
If you do your job because you love it, then by your own admission your happiness is part of your compensation. If you dont like your compensation, then do something else.
So strike. But dont try to tell me that youve got it hard. Not everyone gets to work in their desired field.
P.
[edit]Fixed a punctuation error.[/edit]
bonkrowave
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Pneuma said:
I agree with everything you posted, except one little thing. When you say no one is being taken advantage off, I think this is incorrect. It is the gamers that are being taken advantage off, because the additional costs voice actors are asking for ... will be passed on to us.