Since I wrote about voice actors the other day, I’ve been personally attacked, called names, and vilified all over the Internets, often by people whose work I respect and admire. I’m not under the delusion that I’m going to change any minds, but this has bothered me all weekend, so I want to just clarify a couple of things:
- I am proud of my union, and I completely support my fellow working actors. I’m not going to apologize for that. However, I’ve read several other blogs, and comments on my own blog, which suggest that I believe that actors should get paid before or instead of the other people who work on the game. I never said that, and I don’t feel that way.
- Most actors don’t live in huge mansions, drive around in expensive cars, and live the lifestyle many people seem to think we do. I, for example, still live paycheck to paycheck. I’m not complaining, just trying to correct what I believe is a serious misconception.
- For many of the actors who are affected by this contract, the raise they will get — the first in twelve years — could make the difference between having health coverage, or being uninsured. I think that’s pretty important.
- I completely respect and admire the people who work so hard to create the games that we all love to play. The blog I wrote, from a working actor’s perspective, was in no way meant to demean or disrespect the people who are currently very busy attacking me, my union, and my fellow actors. Without you guys, there wouldn’t even be a game for us to perform in, much less play. I sincerely hope that you all get the recognition and compensation that you clearly deserve.
I’d also like to reprint a few things I wrote to a developer whose work I very much enjoy and admire:
I completely support developers getting seriously improved wages, including profit-sharing. As many have pointed out, without the developers, there is no game, so when a game (or the engine that drives it) really takes off, the people who created the damn thing
should absolutely share in the profits their hard work helped create.
It seems like many developers are angry with SAG because SAG stood up for its members, which is what a union is supposed to do. It just doesn’t make any sense to me that SAG is being viewed with such animosity, just for doing its job. Actors represent less than 3% of the total budget on games, so it’s incredibly unlikely that if SAG were able to make some residual gains, it would even affect developers’ pay. I could be wrong, but I seriously doubt that producers are going to tell developers that they can’t afford to pay them, because actors are now taking up 4.5% or 5% of the budget.
SAG doesn’t have it out for developers, and neither do I. SAG doesn’t want actors to profit at the expense of developers, and neither do I. To be honest, I bet you that the SAG negotiating committee didn’t spend any time thinking about developers — not because SAG doesn’t respect the incredibly hard work developers do, but because SAG is an actors union, and is therefore focused on actors’ interests.
I don’t understand what developers gain by spending energy attacking SAG, when SAG is just doing what its membership expects it to do. As far as I can tell, voice actors and developers have the same ultimate goal, and I just don’t get why developers are so angry with SAG for trying to reach that goal. It seems like a lot of developers and gamers are pissed at SAG because SAG has the ability to stand up to our employers and ask for better wages, and from an Art of War standpoint, that is an awfully huge waste of energy. It makes much more sense to me for developers to take that energy and those resources, point it at producers, and take the fight to them. Because, ultimately, getting angry at SAG, or me, or other working actors, isn’t going to get developers better contracts or profit-sharing. All it’s going to do is take focus away from the people who can make those things happen.
As I said, I don’t expect this to change any minds, but I hope it clarifies some things, at least a little bit. But just to belabor one point, because this is incredibly important to me: I did not intend to disrespect, discount, or demean developers, level designers, artists, programmers, or any of the people who put thousands of hours into the games they help create. I know what it feels like when someone insults and belittles the work you do, and if I caused anyone to feel that way, I sincerely apologize.
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I have felt, and always will feel, that actors, like Wil, and the developers, programmers, code monkeys, even the play testers should get more for their efforts when a game becomes wildly popular: It will help drive the industry to prevent crap like “The Simpsons: Road Rage” from ever being developed.
I also feel that if any entity in any industry makes business decisions fairly and non-exploitively, then more money can be passed out to it’s people without the aid* of a union. In the same vein, any organization behaving so poorly that its employees have to band together with a MONEY-MAKING entity (such as a union) in order to force that organization into treating them better, then that organization should not exist. It’s not a strike against the union, only against the environment that company fosters that requires union intervention.
Brilliant talent, like Wil, should be rewarded richly without SAG having to pry the cash out of their tight fist with a crow-bar.
At a time where we see studio after studio close, until we’re all either out of work, or labor drones in EA’s salt mines, actors demanding points, where most of us don’t get them, certainly feels like a slap in the face – and I have a hard time understanding how hardly anybody round here is able to see this.
Often, the recordings for the original language version of a game are paid *by the developer*, as they are an integral part of the delivery of a finished game (an exception might be a celebrity lead, who might be paid from the publisher’s marketing budget).
If the publisher pays for the recordings, they will take this as a reason to negotiate lower royalty rates for the developer, because they have to pay more advances — so, again, it’s actually the developer who pays for the recordings.
Agreed, voice talent is “only” 5% of the budget. But: it isn’t 5% of the work involved creating a game. It’s rather 0.5%, if at all. If you had a company of, say, 25 people working a full two years, 12 hour days, weekends, holidays, to create a game — would you consider giving *points* to 20 half-a-day freelance people?
Of course, actors deserve appropriate payments, and nobody wants to take that away from them. But – points? From the developer’s money?
Yeah, I know: The obvious and simple solution is: Points for everyone! Unionize! Kill EA! The SAG can do it, why don’t you? Everyone who doesn’t do it just DESERVES no better! Right?
Actually, no. The claim that all we need to do is “just” unionize, is easy to make – but our industry is young, and hit hard by all kinds of globalization issues. Who founded the SAG, and when was that, actually? As far as I know, the SAG was founded in the 1930’s, when unionizing was much more, um, fashionable, than it is today, and nobody could just outsource your job to Asia in the blink of an eye.
I guess that nobody in the SAG who want to get a share of our royalties, will want a share of our business risks — but this is what *I* would actually consider a *reason* to ask for points in the first place. The developers involved in the making of a game risk their health, and often times their personal money, spare time, and relationships, all for a minimum wage and the prospect of later royalties and a cool job. What do the voice actors risk in that process?
Yeah, I know: the SAG is an *actors* union and can ignore all these issues.
The problem is: We, the developers, can’t. We have to do this on a daily basis, trying to make a living from creating games. We can’t “just” leave the recording booth, and be done with it, after a half-a-day’s job. We see EA_spouses writing open letters to EA, we see our jobs not only ruining our finaces, but also our families and friendships.
So, you still wanna get points for games you work on? Fine. Learn to live with the fact that others in this industry have actually thought about that too, and before you. Learn about what there is to share. Learn about why and in how far others consider themselves to be more deserving. Learn about the buisness model of the gaming industry, and our working circumstances.
Calling people stupid, and implicitly calling them coward dumbasses, because they don’t demand what you get, just because you have a joined an early 20th century union without any kind of fight, won’t be considered socialist heroism by anyone.
But actually, that’s not even my point. My real point is, if it’s only *your* working conditions that you care about (and that’s what your reprinted post about the SAG basically says), then fine — but in that case just stop expecting other people to care about other working conditions than theirs.
I tried my best to keep up with a lot of this, but I guess I just don’t feel quite passionate enough to read it all. I was going to stick with my usual do-what-you-want-to-hell-with-anyone-else opinion, but I guess I’m jumping in anyway.I agree with VeronicaKnight. Just because I’m good at something, doesn’t mean I want to do it the rest of my life to keep food on the table. I don’t want to struggle constantly. I want to go out and see the world. It’s like a stepping stone to the things you really love. Actors don’t have to be just voice actors and there’s really no way they CAN be on the pay and few jobs they are getting. Anyway, I’ll just jump into my starving musician POV, so I’ll stop there on that point.My other point is that people spend too much time creating conflict. I seriously think some people have nothing better to do except go out and find someone else to attack. Everyone behind the scenes in the gaming industry should be seeking more money if they aren’t getting their due. Unfortunately, this world has been trained to believe it can’t treat its workers like crap if it gives them a bigger paycheck. Apparently it’s even happening in the restaurant I work. Sacrifice the many lowlifes doing the actual work to give the higher-ups more money. The point of unions is to protect the interests of those that may be taken advantage of. Sadly, even joining unions isn’t always the answer because in my town, if you join an actor’s union, they just won’t hire you 95% of the time. They don’t have it in… scratch that. They WON’T make the effort to pay you what you deserve which is usually what the unions go for.Some people might hate me for it, but this has been my experience in paid theater and I already don’t like it. Thought I’d put it in anyway. I put an entire month of nightly rehearsals toward a stage production, worked on my own skills because I did my own makeup, played several parts, was understudy to several others AND was stage crew. I got $150 for the whole thing because I was a college student and they were doing the college a “favor” by hiring us and doing the show in our theater. On top of that, my work study job for the college was in the scene shop (at barely above minimum wage), where I kept up the scenery and props, helped establish lighting, among other things. I did almost everything you could do in a production besides be director, but then we were left to our own devices so I was my own director unless she didn’t like what we had chosen to do. The only credit I got was my name in the program as a chorus member. They didn’t even list me where they listed the classmates I worked with during the day. Because I was getting paid? I don’t know. It’s incredibly frustrating to know I spent 6-12 hours on that a day and people think I was just some lowly chorus girl. Anyway, rant over. It was unimportant I’m sure, but I wouldn’t have even been picked if any of us college students had been part of a union.
Canuck, I have to wonder how accurate your estimate is. Halo 2 is one of the most successful games in video game history, yet according to some sources, it “only” made $6m profit. That can either be really good, or really bad, depending on who you ask.
The comment you and many people have made about small struggling studios, well, that’s definately the down-side to unionizing. I’ve worked in semi-professional theatres that wouldn’t be able to pay more than two or three actors at union scale (I once figured my wages around $1.50 an hour). I’ve also worked in fairly powerful game studios that seemed to be doing all right, but they had to let me go because they couldn’t afford to pay me $14 an hour.
But still, I see nothing to support the idea that actors are taking money away from developers with this, or indeed any, pay raise.
Heated discussion, heated discussion, yay! At least people are *talking* now, for god’s sake.
I couldn’t make ends meet doing the job I wanted.
Now I’m doing a job I hate, a job that makes me cry twice a day. Ends? Still not meeting. (A bit worse off than before, actually.) While unemployment rates in the States aren’t terribly high at the moment, underemployment rates are huge — my $100k+ college degree allows me to make $7k a year at a part-time customer service job or two, plus hate going to work every day.
If I’m going to be stressed out, poor, and banging my head against a wall every time I have to choose between food and electricity, I’d rather be happy with my job.
Wil, I checked out your resume on IMDB and I can see why this matters so much for you as voice acting seems to be the only acting job you done the past three years (except for a one part role in CSI).
Hope your books give you enough income for you and your family or that you else can make some on the Star Trek convention circuit (after all if people who play minor roles can make some money selling autographs there then you should do well, having had a major role in ST:TNG for 3 years).
Life’s hard on most of us and it makes life more bearable when you read that others are in the same water as you are. Even someone famous like you.
I started to go into this matter, but since I’m still in the video game industry, I don’t want to risk blowing things out of proportion. Suffice to say that I find SAG’s position in this matter rather untenable. It’s one thing to stand up for the people you represent. It’s another to ask for terms so egregious that what you’re doing will hurt your constituents in the long run.
Sometimes I wonder if the people who lose their rags with you actually finish reading what you write, or whether their anger prevents them from processing it. When I read your comments on the voice-over thing, I saw absolutely no disrespect to developers whatsoever – I just saw you making the point that voice-over artists deserve a decent wage. Gosh, how revolutionary.
Canuckotter said:
The eventual figure was that on a game with $1M profit, with 90% being shared equally with all the folks who worked on the game based on the number of hours they’d worked, someone who’d contributed four hours of voice acting deserved $164.
***
In a fantasy world where the profits get split up equally among everyone who contributes based on their contributions, your math might work out. In the REAL world, that’s not how it works. I mean, how exactly do you calculate the value of what a person contributes to a game?
People need to get off of Wil’s case on this and stop making it seem like the SAG is taking bread out of the mouths of developers and programmers. Because if that’s your take on this, then the same thing could be said of developers by anyone who gets paid less than them to do work on a game.
Wil-
I’m very late with this. Hopefully you have some type of notification thing set up…well I’m sure you do, who are we kidding…anyway here goes…
Like the majority of others who have posted comments to either of these two posts, I
I know people often confuse fameous and rich, and have this idea that actors they know of are rich.
To give people an idea (this is a reality Mr. Wheaton already lives with) — I’m a mid-level secretary with a small college. When you figure in benefits, I make quite a bit more than most actors, even the ones who are lucky enough to make a living ONLY acting.
I understand your comments, Wil, I just disagree with them.
You say that the actors are paid 2%-3% of the budget for a video game, but do they do .2%-.3% of the work in creating the game??
To simply say that the union is justified in being as selfish as possible because that’s their job seems like a naive and very parochial comment. If nobody ever looks out for the greater good, then we have cancelled NHL seasons and long strikes which tend to only benefit the union leadership and hurt everyone else in the process.
Just ask the UPS workers who went on strike in the mid
What people need to remember is that the reason that SAG is so powerful is that it can threaten to have people like Brad Pitt, Tom Hanks, and Harrison Ford walk off the set. That’s great for them, and the reason actors have a shot at getting better compensation. Yes I know you’re not rich, Wil…yeah, you’re certainly underpaid. But you’re union has got the backing of some extremely rich and powerful people. We don’t.
So don’t tell developers to shut up an unionize, because we don’t have a Brad Pitt to make those sorts of threats. The harsh reality is that were the developers at the average game company to strike, they’d be replaced within the week.
If you want to know where the bile it’s coming from, it’s there. Yes, you guys deserve what SAG can get you. But is SAG willing to back the developers when they demand better working conditions?
It’s not just actors who get flack from developers when they ask for more money. A friend of mine is a musician who worked on the soundtrack for the original GFA. He got paid peanuts for the work he did and many of the developers gave the impression that what little he was paid was too much. Sure there is a lot of work that goes into the tech side of the games, but the developers really need to remember that no matter how kick-ass their work is, if there is no atmosphere generated by the soundtrack and the voice characterisation then gamers will leave the product on the shelf.
Then I owe you an apology, Wil, for one of my earlier comments.
Right On Wil!
I have always thought/felt that the general public is misinformed about the difference between a STAR and an ACTOR. Actors work and get paychecks and have to live like the rest of us. STARS are the ones the paparazzi chases around trying to get them in controversial situations while they are in the BMWs and Malibu estates. It may not be as glamorous as everyone thinks. I, for one, would NEVER want to do what you do. I cannot even fathom what it would be like, even if I could act ( I was in school plays, that is about it). I have to give people in your line of work credit, because it does NOT seem easy to me!
People do seem to forget that everyone’s human, don’t they? I don’t think you were “ugly” about the way you added it. Occasionally, people need to be told exactly what you mean (Sad as it is that you would even have to explain yourself) because they’re not understanding your train of thought. I’ve always said, If only common sense was so common…People wouldn’t see something ‘between the lines’ that just isn’t there. Everyone that works on projects like that deserve fair pay. If people don’t have something positive to say, they shouldn’t make you out to be the villian because they feel guilty. And they certainly shouldn’t read more into your words than you intended.
coming from the game production side, i’d like to say at last for me, you don’t need to apologize. i never took personal offense to your post, never thought you meant offense to anyone, and my comments were never meant as personal attacks. having said that, i think you really don’t need to go and apologize to the handful of commenters who took personal offense. it’s far too easy for some to take personal offense with someone who has a different opinion than them.
on the points you clarify, i will back you up on 2, 3, and 4. on 1, however, i will disagree, simply because the bottom line means, if you (voice actors) get more money, we (producers, designers, coders, artists, etc.) get less money. if a voice actor is paid 5%, they’re paid that 5% instead of someone else. it just comes down to getting a bigger piece of the pie, and people felt voice actors didn’t deserve a bigger piece.
lots of comments in this and the other post mentioned that nay-sayers were speaking from ignorance… i thought it was the opposite, really, considering the large majority of posters who actually work in the game biz argued against the voice actor pay raise.
the most humorous position i’ve heard here is one calling game devs to unionize. they truly don’t understand that unlike hollywood, game development is a global industry where development can be – and is often — produced overseas at a fraction of the cost, with little to no loss of quality. i would even argue in many areas such as character design, online pc gaming, coding for consoles, work from overseas is superior to u.s. production for much less cost. you can’t outsource the movie talent for “peter parker” or “snow white” to india or taiwan. in the game biz, a producer can, and will, in a heartbeat. this is the reality people not in the game biz, pushing for game devs to unionize, do not understand.
either way, voice actors have more money money, which is a good thing for them. if producers want to go with sag talent, fine. if not, fine. let the market determine which type of jobs will be more prevalent. will this raise affect consumers? probably not. discs will continue to spin. =D
How about the fact that there are people who would give anything to make over $600 an hour for a few hours of voice work? It’s about paying what they’re worth, the developers of the game are the most important part of the picture, voice actors are just window dressing. No they do not deserve residuals, they were paid for a service they provided and that is it, there is no reason to share the profits of a game with someone who did only a few hours work. It is their game not yours, you were a temporary employee who did a job and was paid well for it.
I don’t care about voice acting in video games as much as I do good design. Nonames who actually appreaciate the job and scrolling text works fine for me.
I normally just read, but since the game industry is where I work, I had to post this time. I agree with your opinion very strongly. As someone working at a game company over in Japan, I can attest to the fact that most of us get paid very little and the profits (if we are even lucky enough to have one) for most companies are very poor (and getting poorer). However, that is not a valid excuse for denying a pay increase to voice actors if they deserve it. I think the anger that most programmers, graphic artists, musicians, etc. in the game industry feel towards voice actors is because of their own low pay. That is why, if anything, they should see what SAG is doing and redirect the anger towards their own company with unions if they feel that they are getting slighted. I doubt SAG is unreasonable because I am sure they know that if they set the wages too high, game companies will just go up to Canada for voice acting or go with non-union talent. I may be in the minority, but I do support you guys, and I hope someday game companies can get the business side of things working right to actually turn a decent profit, so that the programmers and other game developers on my side of the fence can fight for what they deserve too. Good luck!