Hollywood Set to Vote on Videogame Strike

[Stryfe01]

I found this article on reuters, and was wondering why game news sites haven't been covering this. This has a great potential for increasing the cost of gaming for us worldwide. This is one reason why I hate unions. Why should these actors receive residual compensation when their contribution into the whole project is less than 1% ? This should have been seen coming. Everytime Hollywood gets involved with anything creative they find ways to squeeze.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2005-05-25T143057Z_01_N25378635_RTRIDST_0_TECH-MEDIA-VIDEOGAMES-HOLLYWOOD-DC.XML

I say developers should go back to using non-union\guild workers. It's cool to hear familiar voices playing your favorite game characters, but not worth adding to a title's cost.

[Orphiuchus]

Unions tend to follow an all to familiar ark, where for about the first half hour they really help all the members, then for about two and a half hours they kind of sit around and steal money from members, then within three hours of inception they become corrupt money-grubbing bastards who ruin everything for everybody.

Bloody commies.

[Klade]

I like how they refer to the other side as "the video game industry". If I remember correctly its really only a handful of companies that have no actual authority over anything other then their own businesses.

And unions are a fine thing when the employees are being screwed over but I'm not feeling sympathy for these actors at all. Voice talent is afterall a hell of a lot easier to find then acting talent. For instance you don't have to be pretty to do voice work.

[Hieremias]

Agreed, forget about celebrity voice work. It's entirely overrated, and not worth increasing the price of the games.

[Orphiuchus]

Well lets keep in mind just how bad voice work can get sometimes. I'm not saying we need Pachino doing a voice in the next gta game, but... actually that would kick ass.

[Mason]

Go tell an EA employee just how crappy unions are. He might not hear you though, it gets hard to focus on your twentieth hour of unpaid overtime.

And you're making up out of thin air the claim that this will increase the cost of gaming. They're only talking about how to divide the profits, actors want residuals while studios want to pay in a lump sum. None of this will raise prices for us.

And yes, if actors get uppity and want a big cut of a game's royalties for the afternoon of work they put in reading lines, then the game industry will use different actors. No big deal there.

But you will benefit your entire life from the efforts of the labor movement. If you have a 40 hour work week, if you have paid overtime, if you have a safe/clean/healthy workplace, or enjoy paid vacations and sick leave, then you're receiving the benefits of those old blue-collar guys who stood up for their rights as workers, and often got their skulls bashed for it. Unions, like any institution, can do both right and wrong, but if America had never had a labor movement, this would be a horrible place to live and work.

And in case you haven't noticed, America's labor movement has been weakening over time, because everyone knows unions are just lazy and corrupt. Mysteriously, jobs have stopped offering health benefits, and wages have stayed flat even as corporate profits and inflation have risen (a major economic problem in the long run). American workers are getting left further and further behind. And like it or not, unions are the only organizations that can stand up for them.

[Redline]

I love how some of you twits dismember news and report it in a way that suits your own agenda. Anyone would thinkg you were training for a job at CNN.

[Doctor Setebos]

Oh, no! A voice-actor strike?! How will Mark Hamill survive?! :D

[Rafer]

I don't think this will drive up budgets too much, like most actors would be willing to work for less up front if they know they'll be getting residuals, and if a game flops the developer has actually saved money.

[if76]

I personally think if someone wants to make a career in voice acting they should be able to do so and still feed their families.

[Fonz]

I know that 90% of blizzards voice overs are done inhouse to cut down on expense, most of the voices you hear are blizzard employees or family members. This is a great way not to deal with unions. Im sorry but I agree, Unions just want to make a choke hold on everything.

[MosBen]

It has always shocked me how little gamers, and people more generally these days, know about the labor movement and how much good unionization has done for American workers. Can a union go awry? Sure, any organization can, but unions as a general concept are the only method with which workers can counteract the strength of corporate clout. I don't mean to say that all corporations are evil or any nonsense like that, but if you don't think that every situation of power needs checks and balances you need some serious history lessons.

[Herodotus5]

Unions started off great, but have actually been a primary factor for the current labor market. After too many years of pushing too hard for the wrong things in the wrong industries, corporations have finally said fuck it you're on your own, we're going over seas. A perfect example is the car industry. My uncle works in the power train HQ for GM and he says that 70% of the people in the building are either contract workers or in house reps from companies they have out sourced to. Some of his friends have moved to go work for Honda or Toyota because even though they wont be unionized, they'll get better pay and medical, which still makes for lower labor costs for those companies.

[jeffool]

I know that 90% of blizzards voice overs are done inhouse to cut down on expense, most of the voices you hear are blizzard employees or family members. This is a great way not to deal with unions. Im sorry but I agree, Unions just want to make a choke hold on everything.

Ahhhhh, so THIS is why the voices in WoW tend to be 'eh' at their best.

My problem with this isn't with paying voice actors the money they're worth. It's with the idea that developers would essentially get paid less than the voice actors. And my initial reaction is "voice actors shouldn't!" But then I think about it and say "Maybe the problem is that developers aren't getting enough money either." So, who's getting the money? Publishers?

[MosBen]

Unions gone awry may be part of the problem facing our labor market today, but free trade is certainly partially to blame too. Workers in other countries are willing to work for next to nothing for insanely long hours because the cost of living there is low and thier country doesn't have labor laws to protect them. Countries are willing to let companies wreak havok on thier environment because they need the industry and haven't had the opportunities we've had to learn from our mistakes. The US just can't compete with that, nor should we have to or want to.

[NACIONAL]

So, who's getting the money? Publishers?

bingo!... i thnik that is the main problem!

[netcraazzy]

So if the Screen Actors Guild and the AFTRA strike does that mean no more crappy games based on movies!? I'm really not seeing the problem here. ;)

[bradlay]

OK. Bash unions. Then bitch when your health coverage gets slashed to shit and your job gets shipped over to Indonesia. Yes, let's all forgoe worker organization and just lie down on the floor and let management have their way with us.

Stupid fucking thread.

[ÜberJumper]

Bradlay:

But you're hurting the workers in Indonesia!

[bradlay]

Bradlay:

But you're hurting the workers in Indonesia!

They'll pull through.

[Deadend]

Yeah, the very idea that the voice actors, who work on a game for AT MOST a couple months, should be able to make as much or more money off a game than those who worked for YEARS, is kind of fucked up.

Yes, I know actors make lots of money in Hollywood, where their performance IS the important thing, and special effects are the icng on the cake.
But in Videogames, the tech IS the important thing and voices are icing on the cake.

In other words, I don't know how much I would miss voiceovers, as good voicework does not make a bad game good.

[Herodotus5]

bradlay, there is a fine balance in all thing. If either side gives or takes too much, it destroys said balance. You can not be one dimensional about this, nor can unions or corps, or else we'll all just end up giving it all over to China (which by the way is already happening)

[see colon]

i'll say it again...
the videogame industry is broken.

noone is forcing the videogame industry to use celebrity or even professional voice talent. some companies use in house talent and everything goes over just fine. but if you use pro talent you should expect to pay for it in the same manor that other industries (tv, movies, advertising ect...) do.

[bradlay]

bradlay, there is a fine balance in all thing. If either side gives or takes too much, it destroys said balance. You can not be one dimensional about this, nor can unions or corps, or else we'll all just end up giving it all over to China (which by the way is already happening)

How am I being one dimensional??? I'm responding to the "unions suck" theme in this thread by saying unions are important.

[mister_slim]

Yeah, the very idea that the voice actors, who work on a game for AT MOST a couple months, should be able to make as much or more money off a game than those who worked for YEARS, is kind of fucked up.
And what does this have to do with the voice actors? Obviously it's the fault of the voice actors that developers can't make enough money to hold together, and nothing to do with industry business practices.

You people who think unions are uniformly catastrophic need to wake up. Do you really think a union could do worse at advocating your interests than your employer? Have you looked at the change in wages? The federal minumum wage, corrected for inflation, is now less than half what it was at the beginning of the '70s. Do you really think it's in your benefit to have your employer dump or bankrupt your pension plan?

[GodFather]

I read next gen titles are going up $10 already..yeah what are we going to do go back to the Nintendo64 days when games came out at 80 bucks

[Nerv]

Surely this doesn't just refer to "celebrity" voices, but also to having proper actors in general?