One of my good friends was one of the voices on LA Noire years ago and gets zero residuals from it. It's maddening.
🤷‍♂️I've made multiple million-dollar titles and haven't gotten more than a paycheck from them. I really don't think VAs should get much if any in the way of residuals. Engineers, artists, and designers should get a huge portion of the profits. Giving VAs even a 1% residual is a slap in the face of the rest of the team who build those games. Not to mention the whole team of LA Noire was laid off later that year.
just give everyone residuals
Someone else made an interesting point how a lot of people don't get residuals. That residuals don't make sense for some jobs. For a VA in the background of a small indie games, do you think it's okay for them to require residuals for their work? This lawsuit focuses on large AAA studios but it will set a dangerous precedent. There any many actors who have to find loop holes to build smaller movie projects. "We technically paid ourselves then invested it into the movie" sort of thing.
That said giving everyone residuals is better than giving no one residuals.
I will just say I think everyone involved in a project should be paid a fraction of the proceeds roughly in proportion to the work and sweat they contribute
Absolutely agree. But I think if we are going to start doing that we'll have to start with the designers, engineers, and artists. Not the voice actors that spend weeks on the project and never think about it again.
x_doubt.jpeg
What people might not catch is that this isn't artists, designers or engineers. It's voice actors only. I'm all for people getting what they deserve but as I see voice actors in the games industry demand profit sharing and more rights, I'm reminded that those who actually make the games don't get that. They have overtime without pay.
Voice actors are among "those who actually make the games." Voice acting in particular also is strenuous work that can and does cause physical injury when workers are compelled to work long hours doing rough voices and so on. People end up having to have surgery on their vocal cords.
We don't need to devalue voice actors to value other game industry workers. The only difference is the voice actors organized first, probably because of the injury risk, and when you form a union you have to define a group that you can reach and coordinate. It shouldn't be an us vs them among works.
Don't forget mocap. A lot of actors are doing mocap for games now, which also potentially results in injury.
This also includes stunt workers (who do the more intensive motion capture work) and stunt coordinators, many of whom are in the Screen Actors Guild already.
They should then let engineers, artists, and designers in their union.
There are different unions for different trades. Stop trying to sound so smart, you keep failing.
There are no unions for those trades in games currently. I'm not trying to sound smart. I am trying to tell you why I think VAs are overreaching here.
Oh, great, trade unions. That never caused any issues for worker's unity. If you can't organise everyone, from tech lead to cleaning staff, in the same industrial union you're playing right into the capitalists' divide and conquer game.
Not so. It makes sense to organise in trade unions. The heads of those unions are on the same side most of the time, as it would be in this case, and they can easily coordinate their actions. But in some cases the interests of one trade have no bearing on another, or are even in opposition, in which case it would be somewhere between difficult and impossible to organise a balloted action across the entire union. Thus nullifying the strength of the union and playing right into the capitalist's hands.
So instead of coming to terms with your fellow workers you rather have them fight capitalists by themselves? Leave them to the scraps the bosses deem sufficient while you're wheeling away a wagonload of concessions won through your unique bargaining power?
You're limiting the strength of worker's. If train conductors don't strike for train toilet cleaners noone will.
And any opposition between worker's interests is negligible compared to that between workers and capital, who have no interests in common at all.
You've misread my comment I think. Unions can coordinate and organise together. So nobody would be leaving their fellow worker to fight by themselves.
They need to unionize too. Also count actors are included in the "actually make the games" group. Everyone should be paid well, don't drag a group trying to fix that down because the rest aren't doing anything.
My bad I didn't mean to imply they don't work on the game.
Voice actors have a union.
Designers and engineers generally don't. Yet.
for those in america, CWA, Communication Workers of America, is a union that's trying to reach out to the developers in the game industry
A better deal for one group helps the rest of them by setting precedent.
Or ensures the others get locked out, as the business feels the financial sting of the first effort
I’m reminded that those who actually make the games don’t get that. They have overtime without pay.
Yes, capitalism fucks everyone every day unless you fight for what you deserve, usually for decades, and even then only getting half of it. It's surprising that keeping this in mind requires reminders.
Well maybe every one should be getting a Lil slice? Ehh
Yeah, that's how I run my studio.
I think they asked for that in the last strike, but I haven't seen it mentioned in this one. And some speculated it was only included for something they could drop in the eventual resolution as a form of compromise.
The Bayonetta lady was asking for profits and took to Twitter to boycott the game when she didn't get what she wanted. Claiming that she made those games what they are.
That's not this strike though.
I never said it was about this strike directly but instead overall how VAs have been pushing to get more than those on the front line of game creation.
You say VAs plural but then gave a singular example
Correct me if I'm wrong, but since this strike is against certain companies and not some entity that represents the entire industry like it does for movies and television, that means that other individual companies who come to an agreement can still hire these people, right? If so...imagine if we had that in movies and television.
We do. A24, for instance, is still making a couple movies by agreeing to work under the proposed terms by SAG. As far as I know, no one else has made such agreements yet. The more of such exceptions that get made, the weaker the AMPTP's position will get.
Dropout.tv (formerly CollegeHumour) is also an unstruck company.
One more reason to love dropout!
Because they have a different contract for work not covered by the current strike? That seems kind of a weird take, especially since they thought the strike did apply to them originally and they shut down for several weeks until the lawyers got together and said, oh no, you have a different type of agreement.
It's not like they changed or updated their contract to become exempt. SAG just went, oh, your business doesn't fall into the terms of the strike so you don't have to strike with the rest of us.
I didn't know that! I just subbed to their service for Make Some Noise so I kind of feel better about shelling out for it now.
Oh, I see. I thought all of Hollywood was AMPTP and that's why we can't have nice things like DRM-free movie purchases.
I never wondered about the conditions of videogames workers, but I'm really happy that they get better thanks to this movement !
It's 10x worse than whatever you're imagining.
It all depends on where you work and what lines you personally draw in the sand. Some novice game developers will not draw a line in the sand near release and management will work them to death. Stress causality is the term for when people don't quit, don't say anything, and just stop showing up for work. If you work at a studio where crunch is normalized then usually there is a stress causality normalization too.
No guarantee anything gets better yet.
And there’s no reason to think it will
Oh I can provide context with an entertaining and informative video!
Shout out to Matt McMuscles who makes these. What a champ.
Thanks for sharing !
Looks like the usual "small white male feeling powerful because he's the boss" bullshit more than a problem specific to the gaming industry.
Anyway, unionizing should protect them better from these kind of abuse, which is good :)
Either everyone needs to get royalties or nobody does.
Pay your voice actors right the first time instead of paying them shit per line. Or if your video game becomes an astounding success, all 1,000 people get a slice of that 100,000,000 million it made in sales via residuals. A cool $100,000 for everyone!
Don't forget to advocate for yourself even if you have a union. Nobody ever gets paid more by saying nothing.
Either everyone needs to get royalties or nobody does.
Absolutely agree. Otherwise giving someone royalties is a spit on the face of everyone else on the team.
The coders have their copyrighted works replicated infinitely without royalties as well.
What makes a voice actor’s contributions more meaningful than that? Especially since they can get a half decent voice performance out of any coder and the right generative software which already exists.
Yeah perpetual royalties are a nonsense slippery slope. People are pushing for it in all the wrong ways wanting a piece of the pie from the higher ups when in reality the way the money flows just needs to be altered.
Bridge and road crews don't get to get a penny every time someone drives over stuff.
Creation does not mean benefit in perpetuity. It means you created something. You should be paid properly for it, yes, but it doesn't mean every time someone mentions your book you get a penny from them lol.
Melancholy Elephants was a great Hugo Award short story about this very thing written in 1983. It's a great read for those who want to go in a bit blind. http://spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html
How the hell do you spoiler tag on Kbin? lol
I think that the main problem is that companies keep getting revenue even if actors don't. Book writers don't stop earning money just because they wrote their book 5 years ago, and yes, they don't win money for reselling, but companies like Amazon and their editorials will keep earning money because of their work, so why shouldn't the writers earn money?
If your work isnt being streamed or sold, well, you won't see much. But still, you signed a contract, like the old perpetual pensions.
Creation does not mean benefit in perpetuity. It means you created something. You should be paid properly for it, yes, but it doesn’t mean every time someone mentions your book you get a penny from them lol.
Frankly, this is what people in this thread are missing. I'd argue profits are reserved for those who dedicated themselves to making the game. Putting heart and soul into it. Sometimes that can be a VA but most of the time those VAs are like "Listen, we got a week to do this within budget and I AM NOT doing any more than that!"
It's absolutely fine to draw that line but it's not fine to then expect profits for doing just the minimum to get the job done. You'll see a lot of studios just go get non-unionized VAs. People trying to break into the games industry as VAs are a dime a dozen and so any attempt at getting profits as a whole is going to fail.
or nobody does
Be careful, Disney might like that idea
Great. Their CEO can make $2,000,000 / year and the rest $100,000 capping their maximum pay at 20x their lowest paid employee.
I wonder how many are actually in union to gain that bargain power?
I know most if not all of the cast of Critical Role (who are voice actors for many video games) are members. Ashley Johnson is the voice of Ellie for TLoU, so if they’re working on TLoU3, they’ll likely have to delay it.
I was hoping this extends to many other departments.
It doesn't, unfortunately. Programmers, animators, concept artists, designers, each need to unionize in order to leverage collective action grants at the bargaining table. With last week's decision by the NLRB though, it's certain to be easier than ever to get unionized. Still, the amount of coordination it gets to even petition the NLRB to have your union recognized is no small feat. Just now it'll be that much more difficult to bust a union election
Wasn't there a threat of a game VA strike a few years ago and it turned out that some of the bigger names like Troy Baker aren't in the Union?0
Good.
One of my good friends was one of the voices on LA Noire years ago and gets zero residuals from it. It's maddening.
🤷‍♂️I've made multiple million-dollar titles and haven't gotten more than a paycheck from them. I really don't think VAs should get much if any in the way of residuals. Engineers, artists, and designers should get a huge portion of the profits. Giving VAs even a 1% residual is a slap in the face of the rest of the team who build those games. Not to mention the whole team of LA Noire was laid off later that year.
just give everyone residuals
Someone else made an interesting point how a lot of people don't get residuals. That residuals don't make sense for some jobs. For a VA in the background of a small indie games, do you think it's okay for them to require residuals for their work? This lawsuit focuses on large AAA studios but it will set a dangerous precedent. There any many actors who have to find loop holes to build smaller movie projects. "We technically paid ourselves then invested it into the movie" sort of thing.
That said giving everyone residuals is better than giving no one residuals.
I will just say I think everyone involved in a project should be paid a fraction of the proceeds roughly in proportion to the work and sweat they contribute
Absolutely agree. But I think if we are going to start doing that we'll have to start with the designers, engineers, and artists. Not the voice actors that spend weeks on the project and never think about it again.
x_doubt.jpeg
What people might not catch is that this isn't artists, designers or engineers. It's voice actors only. I'm all for people getting what they deserve but as I see voice actors in the games industry demand profit sharing and more rights, I'm reminded that those who actually make the games don't get that. They have overtime without pay.
Voice actors are among "those who actually make the games." Voice acting in particular also is strenuous work that can and does cause physical injury when workers are compelled to work long hours doing rough voices and so on. People end up having to have surgery on their vocal cords.
We don't need to devalue voice actors to value other game industry workers. The only difference is the voice actors organized first, probably because of the injury risk, and when you form a union you have to define a group that you can reach and coordinate. It shouldn't be an us vs them among works.
Don't forget mocap. A lot of actors are doing mocap for games now, which also potentially results in injury.
This also includes stunt workers (who do the more intensive motion capture work) and stunt coordinators, many of whom are in the Screen Actors Guild already.
They should then let engineers, artists, and designers in their union.
There are different unions for different trades. Stop trying to sound so smart, you keep failing.
There are no unions for those trades in games currently. I'm not trying to sound smart. I am trying to tell you why I think VAs are overreaching here.
Oh, great, trade unions. That never caused any issues for worker's unity. If you can't organise everyone, from tech lead to cleaning staff, in the same industrial union you're playing right into the capitalists' divide and conquer game.
Not so. It makes sense to organise in trade unions. The heads of those unions are on the same side most of the time, as it would be in this case, and they can easily coordinate their actions. But in some cases the interests of one trade have no bearing on another, or are even in opposition, in which case it would be somewhere between difficult and impossible to organise a balloted action across the entire union. Thus nullifying the strength of the union and playing right into the capitalist's hands.
So instead of coming to terms with your fellow workers you rather have them fight capitalists by themselves? Leave them to the scraps the bosses deem sufficient while you're wheeling away a wagonload of concessions won through your unique bargaining power?
You're limiting the strength of worker's. If train conductors don't strike for train toilet cleaners noone will.
And any opposition between worker's interests is negligible compared to that between workers and capital, who have no interests in common at all.
You've misread my comment I think. Unions can coordinate and organise together. So nobody would be leaving their fellow worker to fight by themselves.
They need to unionize too. Also count actors are included in the "actually make the games" group. Everyone should be paid well, don't drag a group trying to fix that down because the rest aren't doing anything.
My bad I didn't mean to imply they don't work on the game.
Voice actors have a union.
Designers and engineers generally don't. Yet.
for those in america, CWA, Communication Workers of America, is a union that's trying to reach out to the developers in the game industry
A better deal for one group helps the rest of them by setting precedent.
Or ensures the others get locked out, as the business feels the financial sting of the first effort
Yes, capitalism fucks everyone every day unless you fight for what you deserve, usually for decades, and even then only getting half of it. It's surprising that keeping this in mind requires reminders.
Well maybe every one should be getting a Lil slice? Ehh
Yeah, that's how I run my studio.
I think they asked for that in the last strike, but I haven't seen it mentioned in this one. And some speculated it was only included for something they could drop in the eventual resolution as a form of compromise.
The Bayonetta lady was asking for profits and took to Twitter to boycott the game when she didn't get what she wanted. Claiming that she made those games what they are.
That's not this strike though.
I never said it was about this strike directly but instead overall how VAs have been pushing to get more than those on the front line of game creation.
You say VAs plural but then gave a singular example
Here is an article going back to 2015 talking about sag atfra asking for gross profits https://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2015/09/22/developing-video-game-voice-actors-are-considering-a-strike.aspx
Correct me if I'm wrong, but since this strike is against certain companies and not some entity that represents the entire industry like it does for movies and television, that means that other individual companies who come to an agreement can still hire these people, right? If so...imagine if we had that in movies and television.
We do. A24, for instance, is still making a couple movies by agreeing to work under the proposed terms by SAG. As far as I know, no one else has made such agreements yet. The more of such exceptions that get made, the weaker the AMPTP's position will get.
Dropout.tv(formerly CollegeHumour) is also an unstruck company.One more reason to love dropout!
Because they have a different contract for work not covered by the current strike? That seems kind of a weird take, especially since they thought the strike did apply to them originally and they shut down for several weeks until the lawyers got together and said, oh no, you have a different type of agreement.
It's not like they changed or updated their contract to become exempt. SAG just went, oh, your business doesn't fall into the terms of the strike so you don't have to strike with the rest of us.
I didn't know that! I just subbed to their service for Make Some Noise so I kind of feel better about shelling out for it now.
Oh, I see. I thought all of Hollywood was AMPTP and that's why we can't have nice things like DRM-free movie purchases.
I never wondered about the conditions of videogames workers, but I'm really happy that they get better thanks to this movement !
It's 10x worse than whatever you're imagining.
It all depends on where you work and what lines you personally draw in the sand. Some novice game developers will not draw a line in the sand near release and management will work them to death. Stress causality is the term for when people don't quit, don't say anything, and just stop showing up for work. If you work at a studio where crunch is normalized then usually there is a stress causality normalization too.
No guarantee anything gets better yet.
And there’s no reason to think it will
Oh I can provide context with an entertaining and informative video!
https://youtu.be/DN-Hv3pnVz0?si=y11gki97RBZ5paQa
Shout out to Matt McMuscles who makes these. What a champ.
Thanks for sharing ! Looks like the usual "small white male feeling powerful because he's the boss" bullshit more than a problem specific to the gaming industry.
Anyway, unionizing should protect them better from these kind of abuse, which is good :)
Either everyone needs to get royalties or nobody does.
Pay your voice actors right the first time instead of paying them shit per line. Or if your video game becomes an astounding success, all 1,000 people get a slice of that 100,000,000 million it made in sales via residuals. A cool $100,000 for everyone!
Don't forget to advocate for yourself even if you have a union. Nobody ever gets paid more by saying nothing.
Absolutely agree. Otherwise giving someone royalties is a spit on the face of everyone else on the team.
The coders have their copyrighted works replicated infinitely without royalties as well.
What makes a voice actor’s contributions more meaningful than that? Especially since they can get a half decent voice performance out of any coder and the right generative software which already exists.
Yeah perpetual royalties are a nonsense slippery slope. People are pushing for it in all the wrong ways wanting a piece of the pie from the higher ups when in reality the way the money flows just needs to be altered.
Bridge and road crews don't get to get a penny every time someone drives over stuff.
Creation does not mean benefit in perpetuity. It means you created something. You should be paid properly for it, yes, but it doesn't mean every time someone mentions your book you get a penny from them lol.
Melancholy Elephants was a great Hugo Award short story about this very thing written in 1983. It's a great read for those who want to go in a bit blind. http://spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html
How the hell do you spoiler tag on Kbin? lol
I think that the main problem is that companies keep getting revenue even if actors don't. Book writers don't stop earning money just because they wrote their book 5 years ago, and yes, they don't win money for reselling, but companies like Amazon and their editorials will keep earning money because of their work, so why shouldn't the writers earn money?
If your work isnt being streamed or sold, well, you won't see much. But still, you signed a contract, like the old perpetual pensions.
Frankly, this is what people in this thread are missing. I'd argue profits are reserved for those who dedicated themselves to making the game. Putting heart and soul into it. Sometimes that can be a VA but most of the time those VAs are like "Listen, we got a week to do this within budget and I AM NOT doing any more than that!"
It's absolutely fine to draw that line but it's not fine to then expect profits for doing just the minimum to get the job done. You'll see a lot of studios just go get non-unionized VAs. People trying to break into the games industry as VAs are a dime a dozen and so any attempt at getting profits as a whole is going to fail.
Be careful, Disney might like that idea
Great. Their CEO can make $2,000,000 / year and the rest $100,000 capping their maximum pay at 20x their lowest paid employee.
https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2021/
I wonder how many are actually in union to gain that bargain power?
I know most if not all of the cast of Critical Role (who are voice actors for many video games) are members. Ashley Johnson is the voice of Ellie for TLoU, so if they’re working on TLoU3, they’ll likely have to delay it.
I was hoping this extends to many other departments.
It doesn't, unfortunately. Programmers, animators, concept artists, designers, each need to unionize in order to leverage collective action grants at the bargaining table. With last week's decision by the NLRB though, it's certain to be easier than ever to get unionized. Still, the amount of coordination it gets to even petition the NLRB to have your union recognized is no small feat. Just now it'll be that much more difficult to bust a union election
Wasn't there a threat of a game VA strike a few years ago and it turned out that some of the bigger names like Troy Baker aren't in the Union?0