This morning I read a really interesting article in the Washington Post about voice actors in video games. It was centered around Ashley Burch who is known for her earlier role in "Hey Ash Whatcha Playin'?" and more recently in her voice acting in Borderlands and Life is Strange. It covers what has been the complaint in the video game voice acting industry for some time now in that the pay just isn't good. This whole premise was what led to the voice actors strike last year that took 11 months. According to Burch, this was the actual reason why she did not take up that role in the Life is Strange prequel.
The main thing that game voice actors wanted was the same thing that voice actor get in movies which are residuals and royalties. This union behind these voice actors is The Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA). As well as not being able to condense their name down to something reasonable they were not able to get this deal with the companies after the strike. According to Polygon, they were able to strike a deal that allowed for bonus compensation based off of how many sessions they do. They were also able to get a deal where the companies would have to disclose the type of material the actors would be performing just in case it contained racial charged or sex scenes they didn't want to do.
There is a strong point that these actors are being underpaid as the amount of voice acting for some of these titles will far exceed anything that someone would have to do for a movie. A movie is a few hours and some game titles can be as much 40 hours with multiple paths. There is a lot of dialogue that needs to be said. EA has a dip in overall net income from $1.16 billion to $967 million but I hardly find the company is being squeezed by their portfolio. (gamesindustry.biz) The one glaring issues here is if the actors get it, there is one other group of people who are most likely going to start asking for it and that is the game developers.
Game developers seem to be pretty well paid for the industry they work in. According to Glassdoor, the average pay for a Game Developer is a little less than $90K a year while a generic software developer is around $81k a year. It would make sense that if other teams start to make royalties on a game they would be asking for their fair shake of it as well. This would drive the overall profit of the studio down and, for those who are publicly traded, this is not going to be accepted.
The issue is rich with the political implication that I think I will avoid as much I can for this post. When it comes to wages for studios making an abundance of money from others talent I would hope they fairly compensate their employees. This runs directly into the perils of being a publicly traded company because large shareholders will vote you out of the job of CEO of if they feel the employee pay to revenue ratio is too high. This is where the most pushback will be and, since a lot of money is involved, where it will stay.
I am a huge fan of some voice actors and I enjoy what they can do for games. I am glad to have seen the pay increase but the lack of it could also be keeping really good talent from going from movies to games. Of course, all of this is from the perspective of the outside looking in, which might be off base. It just seems games with known names do pretty well, even if the content isn't great.
The main thing that game voice actors wanted was the same thing that voice actor get in movies which are residuals and royalties. This union behind these voice actors is The Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA). As well as not being able to condense their name down to something reasonable they were not able to get this deal with the companies after the strike. According to Polygon, they were able to strike a deal that allowed for bonus compensation based off of how many sessions they do. They were also able to get a deal where the companies would have to disclose the type of material the actors would be performing just in case it contained racial charged or sex scenes they didn't want to do.
There is a strong point that these actors are being underpaid as the amount of voice acting for some of these titles will far exceed anything that someone would have to do for a movie. A movie is a few hours and some game titles can be as much 40 hours with multiple paths. There is a lot of dialogue that needs to be said. EA has a dip in overall net income from $1.16 billion to $967 million but I hardly find the company is being squeezed by their portfolio. (gamesindustry.biz) The one glaring issues here is if the actors get it, there is one other group of people who are most likely going to start asking for it and that is the game developers.
Game developers seem to be pretty well paid for the industry they work in. According to Glassdoor, the average pay for a Game Developer is a little less than $90K a year while a generic software developer is around $81k a year. It would make sense that if other teams start to make royalties on a game they would be asking for their fair shake of it as well. This would drive the overall profit of the studio down and, for those who are publicly traded, this is not going to be accepted.
The issue is rich with the political implication that I think I will avoid as much I can for this post. When it comes to wages for studios making an abundance of money from others talent I would hope they fairly compensate their employees. This runs directly into the perils of being a publicly traded company because large shareholders will vote you out of the job of CEO of if they feel the employee pay to revenue ratio is too high. This is where the most pushback will be and, since a lot of money is involved, where it will stay.
I am a huge fan of some voice actors and I enjoy what they can do for games. I am glad to have seen the pay increase but the lack of it could also be keeping really good talent from going from movies to games. Of course, all of this is from the perspective of the outside looking in, which might be off base. It just seems games with known names do pretty well, even if the content isn't great.
Comments
Post a Comment