A programmer can be replaced by anyone, too! Sure, they might take a little longer to write your code since they gotta look up tutorials and shit, but they'll get it done eventually.
The thing to remember is with these responses... yes, they're absolutely not realistic. So is the notion that anyone off the street would do for a voice role. It's not a realistic thing to say.
Not true, development studios have literally grabbed random designer who has never done voice work before, and included it in the game. This is something that has happened repeatedly across multiple studios.
While grabbing the designers to fill out the vocal work has happened, it was primarily during the era when vocal work in games was a new thing. Doing such things resulted in the following gems (and yes, these are among the high points of getting random devs to do the voice work)
To draw a comparison here to your earlier example: this is the 250,000/400,000-years ago ancient human just starting to figuring out how to cook food...it may have sufficed back then, but these days they just seem unrefined and campy.
Eventually, studios got the notion that voice work actually required some acting skill, and started hiring professional, established actors for their voiced roles (and some studios jumped on this track earlier than others - one that prominently sticks out being Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers).
EDIT - to be fair though, I will admit that, occasionally, even professionally trained actors can't save a poorly written script (prime example: Privateer 2: The Darkening...not even Christopher Walken could save this one)
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Assuming the situation arises where, in order to pay and treat all people involved in game development, publishers whined "But then we can't make a profit!", 2 things can happen.
-They can raise the price so their profit margin remains the same. And have fun with the backlash and the reality of people buying even less games and making it that much harder to profit. If you thought the AAA industry was shit now, hoo boy...
-Scale back overall costs, development, and expectations. No more 150+ million dev costs and 7+ million sales.
I would be in total support of 2. Stop breaking your piggy bank going to the bleeding edge
Games are long overdue a price increase.
On inflation alone, a game that cost $60 USD in 1996 should cost $90 in 2016, twenty years later. And that's just if you want to abruptly catch up with inflation! Nevermind all the lost dollars from the twenty intervening years where prices did not keep up with inflation!
For a more recent example, a 2006 game for $60 should now cost $72. Except that $60 in 2006 was already behind inflation.
If prices had kept up with inflation, then in 2006 that sixty dollar game would have already been at over $75.
I would be perfectly happy if the industry as a whole decided that AAA games now cost $100 and started paying their employees and contractors reasonable wages as a result. Entertainment in this world is already too cheap.
Alternatively, they could stop bloating budgets with all the latest and greatest in graphics tech and lean more of appealing art styles that won't age poorly in five years.
AAA budgets are TERRIFYINGLY high, which is why so many IP are just one flop away from being retired or having their developer dissolved.
Assuming the situation arises where, in order to pay and treat all people involved in game development, publishers whined "But then we can't make a profit!", 2 things can happen.
-They can raise the price so their profit margin remains the same. And have fun with the backlash and the reality of people buying even less games and making it that much harder to profit. If you thought the AAA industry was shit now, hoo boy...
-Scale back overall costs, development, and expectations. No more 150+ million dev costs and 7+ million sales.
I would be in total support of 2. Stop breaking your piggy bank going to the bleeding edge
Games are long overdue a price increase.
On inflation alone, a game that cost $60 USD in 1996 should cost $90 in 2016, twenty years later. And that's just if you want to abruptly catch up with inflation! Nevermind all the lost dollars from the twenty intervening years where prices did not keep up with inflation!
For a more recent example, a 2006 game for $60 should now cost $72. Except that $60 in 2006 was already behind inflation.
If prices had kept up with inflation, then in 2006 that sixty dollar game would have already been at over $75.
I would be perfectly happy if the industry as a whole decided that AAA games now cost $100 and started paying their employees and contractors reasonable wages as a result. Entertainment in this world is already too cheap.
Alternatively, they could stop bloating budgets with all the latest and greatest in graphics tech and lean more of appealing art styles that won't age poorly in five years.
AAA budgets are TERRIFYINGLY high, which is why so many IP are just one flop away from being retired or having their developer dissolved.
Public perception would need to shift for that to be plausible large scale, plus the higher fidelity can actually mask less effective art direction.
The notion of "entitled to" in this context is totally meaningless. They're "entitled to" whatever agreement they can negotiate. That's why they're negotiating. You know what a great negotiating tactic is? A strike.
A strike only works when you have leverage. The majority of the most prolific performers are union but you still have 75% of the industry who are non union and would be happy to work for the currently offered rates, especially now that they don't have to compete with the most popular union VAs for gigs.
This isn't UPS desperately searching for scabs, there is a huge amount of voice talent out there.
If they have insufficient leverage, they won't get what they want. That has nothing to do with my point.
Your point is that a strike is a great negotiating tactic. Without leverage a strike is not a great negotiating tactic and it doesn't look like SAG-AFTRA has leverage.
Strikes as a concept are great negotiating tactics. They're the heaviest weapon in the union arsenal. Will this one get things done? We'll see.
I tend to think of voice acting as more of a talent than a skill.
Can just anyone do it? Yeah.
Can just anyone do it well? Probably not.
If you pull some rando off the street to do some voice acting, chances are he's gonna suck.
But there's also a chance that he'll be fuckin' phenomenal even without any training or experience.
That said, I do have an appreciation for the time and effort voice actors put into their work. A lot of games just wouldn't be nearly as good without them.
Savants or otherwise gifted people aren't unique to anything. Most people would call piano a skill, but then you have the rare kid who's playing at a level far beyond their years at age five. Just because you have the incredibly rare person that can do it well with no formal education or training doesn't undermine the work professionals put in.
I mean, we just had a trilogy of Batman games where a major selling point was having Conroy and Hamill reprise their roles. There's some leverage here.
Assuming the situation arises where, in order to pay and treat all people involved in game development, publishers whined "But then we can't make a profit!", 2 things can happen.
-They can raise the price so their profit margin remains the same. And have fun with the backlash and the reality of people buying even less games and making it that much harder to profit. If you thought the AAA industry was shit now, hoo boy...
-Scale back overall costs, development, and expectations. No more 150+ million dev costs and 7+ million sales.
I would be in total support of 2. Stop breaking your piggy bank going to the bleeding edge
Games are long overdue a price increase.
On inflation alone, a game that cost $60 USD in 1996 should cost $90 in 2016, twenty years later. And that's just if you want to abruptly catch up with inflation! Nevermind all the lost dollars from the twenty intervening years where prices did not keep up with inflation!
For a more recent example, a 2006 game for $60 should now cost $72. Except that $60 in 2006 was already behind inflation.
If prices had kept up with inflation, then in 2006 that sixty dollar game would have already been at over $75.
I would be perfectly happy if the industry as a whole decided that AAA games now cost $100 and started paying their employees and contractors reasonable wages as a result. Entertainment in this world is already too cheap.
Alternatively, they could stop bloating budgets with all the latest and greatest in graphics tech and lean more of appealing art styles that won't age poorly in five years.
AAA budgets are TERRIFYINGLY high, which is why so many IP are just one flop away from being retired or having their developer dissolved.
Probably wouldn't hurt to go in and trim out all the wasteful bits of the marketing budget as well. Probably could save millions on the budget that way.
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The most in-depth behind the scenes stuff that I have heard regarding voice acting (while not actively seeking it out) is from The Indoor Kids podcast. Troy Baker was a guest for a couple episodes and his discussions with Kumail and Emily give you a pretty good idea of how much work is involved when you are one of the leading voice actors for a AAA game.
Turns out, its a lot! And you are likely to get called back for additional recording sessions based on how the games story changes or for additional content. There is a lot of finished work you might have done that doesn't make it into the final product too (not to mention all of the takes required to get the line readings that do make it into the game).
Assuming the situation arises where, in order to pay and treat all people involved in game development, publishers whined "But then we can't make a profit!", 2 things can happen.
-They can raise the price so their profit margin remains the same. And have fun with the backlash and the reality of people buying even less games and making it that much harder to profit. If you thought the AAA industry was shit now, hoo boy...
-Scale back overall costs, development, and expectations. No more 150+ million dev costs and 7+ million sales.
I would be in total support of 2. Stop breaking your piggy bank going to the bleeding edge
Games are long overdue a price increase.
On inflation alone, a game that cost $60 USD in 1996 should cost $90 in 2016, twenty years later. And that's just if you want to abruptly catch up with inflation! Nevermind all the lost dollars from the twenty intervening years where prices did not keep up with inflation!
For a more recent example, a 2006 game for $60 should now cost $72. Except that $60 in 2006 was already behind inflation.
If prices had kept up with inflation, then in 2006 that sixty dollar game would have already been at over $75.
I would be perfectly happy if the industry as a whole decided that AAA games now cost $100 and started paying their employees and contractors reasonable wages as a result. Entertainment in this world is already too cheap.
Alternatively, they could stop bloating budgets with all the latest and greatest in graphics tech and lean more of appealing art styles that won't age poorly in five years.
AAA budgets are TERRIFYINGLY high, which is why so many IP are just one flop away from being retired or having their developer dissolved.
Public perception would need to shift for that to be plausible large scale, plus the higher fidelity can actually mask less effective art direction.
I agree, it would be nice though.
Yeah... I don't think public perception has to change all that much. The entire point is that things can be aesthetically appealing to the masses without being photorealistic.
As a simple example, look at a lot of Mario stuff. Not remotely going for hyper-detailed realism but it can still look great because it has it's own style. I'd bet money Nintendo has spent less on the graphics of all the Wii U Mario games put together than was spent on the latest CoD alone.
And again, if they choose to live outside of those areas, why is that the developers problem? Don't apply for a job that is too far away.
You do realize the cost of living in areas where game developers tend to congregate is normally quite high, right?
Yes, and that is the case for anyone in that industry. Why do VA deserve special treatment?
Why do VA deserve residuals when a lot of other people at that same company don't get them? They are an incredibly non-vital part of the industry, that are already payed extremely well for the little amount of work they actually have to do. Are we now lobbying for every position at the studio gets a cut of the profits? How are we determining percentage of the cut for each person?
Even if normal employees did have them, they typically also lose them if they go to work at another company.
I'm curious about something, Morkath: what, in your view, do you consider being "payed extremely well"? And I don't mean the per-hourly wage, I mean the actual take-home per project (we'll use the $100/hr wage as a starting point). I have a feeling that there's a substantial disconnect happening between your views of how much VAs make and what other people are saying they make.
So we are saying they make $100/hr, and lets say work for 4 hours? They just made $400 in half a day. For unskilled, non-physical labor. How is that NOT being payed extremely well? They have already made more than what someone on minimum wage makes in the entire week, and nothing is preventing them from doing any other work in the remaining 36 hours in the week.
Lets say the game takes 2 years to create. Let's also do the impossible and create it using only 40 hour work weeks. That is 3840 hours per employee, per game. We are a middling studio and have 40 employees. That puts us up to 153,600 hours to create the game.
That puts the VA at roughly, 0.0026% of the total effort to create the game.
Math spoilered;
Say we sell a million copies. We have 60mil gross. (Not accurate, since this doesn't account for retail cut, but w/e)
Say every employee makes 50k a year. Deduct 4mil.
Lease deducts say, 2mil.
Deduct another 1mil for operating expenses (computers, etc).
Publisher cut of ~30%, 18 million.
That leaves us with, 35million net. Let's dump half of that into keeping everyone employed while we work on the next game.
0.0026% of 17.5 mill, is $455 dollars.
A normal employee is at 2.5%, of 17.5 mill - 455, is $437,488.62 dollars.
This obviously isn't going to fly. So lets say we cut it down to a more likely 1/40th.
Morkath, you really need to learn how being a freelancer works. 100/hr for a freelancer is not all equatable to 100/hr for a salaried or hourly employee.
Morkath, you really need to learn how being a freelancer works. 100/hr for a freelancer is not all equatable to 100/hr for a salaried or hourly employee.
This is why I don't quit my salaried job to go full time as a photographer.
The notion of "entitled to" in this context is totally meaningless. They're "entitled to" whatever agreement they can negotiate. That's why they're negotiating. You know what a great negotiating tactic is? A strike.
A strike only works when you have leverage. The majority of the most prolific performers are union but you still have 75% of the industry who are non union and would be happy to work for the currently offered rates, especially now that they don't have to compete with the most popular union VAs for gigs.
This isn't UPS desperately searching for scabs, there is a huge amount of voice talent out there.
If they have insufficient leverage, they won't get what they want. That has nothing to do with my point.
Your point is that a strike is a great negotiating tactic. Without leverage a strike is not a great negotiating tactic and it doesn't look like SAG-AFTRA has leverage.
Strikes as a concept are great negotiating tactics. They're the heaviest weapon in the union arsenal. Will this one get things done? We'll see.
If the statement that 25% of the talent used is union, then they don't really have much leverage. This isn't the same scenario as the writer's strike at all. Given the time scale of game development, and talent pool... the impact just doesn't seem to be there.
As an aside, being a member of SAG-AFTRA doesn't necessarily mean that they are automatically a good voice actor either, so posting that one video with bad voice acting is silly given that. It's also needlessly shitting over other professionals in that field who have either chosen not to join the union, left the union, or were never eligible to do so. It may even be a net positive for those actors.
Wouldn't be surprised if new popular voices come out of this, if it lasts long enough.
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
Savants or otherwise gifted people aren't unique to anything. Most people would call piano a skill, but then you have the rare kid who's playing at a level far beyond their years at age five. Just because you have the incredibly rare person that can do it well with no formal education or training doesn't undermine the work professionals put in.
I mean, we just had a trilogy of Batman games where a major selling point was having Conroy and Hamill reprise their roles. There's some leverage here.
A good friend of mine wrote his first program when he was five years old.
I didn't learn anything new when I went to school for programming. It was a huge waste of time and money to actually get trained. Going by Morkath, since programming is something a five year old can do, I suppose it's unskilled.
Which is, of course, ridiculous.
Further, the one thing I did learn going to post-secondary for programming was that even after all that training, about half the class still wasn't able to write a program on their own. They still needed someone to break it down for them. They knew the syntax for the language, they knew the words, but they couldn't speak it. The syntax of C++ or C# or Python or whatever doesn't matter. Programming is not syntax. It's the ability to break a problem down into a series of steps that a computer can understand. That's something I found people can either do or they can't. It couldn't really be taught.
A lot of those people got programming jobs, though.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
As for the issue of game budgets versus game prices, step Number One With A Bullet has to be getting publishers to stop linking cost and success.
Except for a relatively few cases, big successes don't get to be successful because they had the shiniest graphics. They get there because they do something really well that people want to experience. Graphics can be a factor but usually it's got to be some pretty groundbreaking stuff, which is way harder to do now just because game graphics are approaching much more closely to parity with reality.
Case in point, No Man's Sky. Yeah, it has turned out to be a disaster of unprecedented proportions, but it sold craploads with pretty minimal advertising (compared to AAA games) on the basis of some neat stuff (that it just happened to never deliver on). Make stuff that is new and interesting, and people will buy it in droves. And that sort of development doesn't require assloads of photorealistic texture development, which is the sort of thing sucking up so much AAA budget these days.
Assuming the situation arises where, in order to pay and treat all people involved in game development, publishers whined "But then we can't make a profit!", 2 things can happen.
-They can raise the price so their profit margin remains the same. And have fun with the backlash and the reality of people buying even less games and making it that much harder to profit. If you thought the AAA industry was shit now, hoo boy...
-Scale back overall costs, development, and expectations. No more 150+ million dev costs and 7+ million sales.
I would be in total support of 2. Stop breaking your piggy bank going to the bleeding edge
Games are long overdue a price increase.
On inflation alone, a game that cost $60 USD in 1996 should cost $90 in 2016, twenty years later. And that's just if you want to abruptly catch up with inflation! Nevermind all the lost dollars from the twenty intervening years where prices did not keep up with inflation!
For a more recent example, a 2006 game for $60 should now cost $72. Except that $60 in 2006 was already behind inflation.
If prices had kept up with inflation, then in 2006 that sixty dollar game would have already been at over $75.
I would be perfectly happy if the industry as a whole decided that AAA games now cost $100 and started paying their employees and contractors reasonable wages as a result. Entertainment in this world is already too cheap.
Alternatively, they could stop bloating budgets with all the latest and greatest in graphics tech and lean more of appealing art styles that won't age poorly in five years.
AAA budgets are TERRIFYINGLY high, which is why so many IP are just one flop away from being retired or having their developer dissolved.
Public perception would need to shift for that to be plausible large scale, plus the higher fidelity can actually mask less effective art direction.
I agree, it would be nice though.
Yeah... I don't think public perception has to change all that much. The entire point is that things can be aesthetically appealing to the masses without being photorealistic.
As a simple example, look at a lot of Mario stuff. Not remotely going for hyper-detailed realism but it can still look great because it has it's own style. I'd bet money Nintendo has spent less on the graphics of all the Wii U Mario games put together than was spent on the latest CoD alone.
On the console that is a pretty large flop, and CoD outsells, even when you account for multiple platforms vs one?
I didn't say it wasn't possible to make a good game, I said the public by the large, won't care. There are still too many people who look at cell shading or whatnot and call it "kiddy graphics", and buy their games based on what the screenshots/trailers look like.
There is a market for those games, but it is still not as big as with photorealistic graphics. It's not like the publishers/designers pull features out of a hat to spend money on, they would absolutely love to pay less to increase their profits. However they do market research and that is still telling them they need to spend the money on graphics.
However they do market research and that is still telling them they need to spend the money on graphics.
As much as people (myself included) like to bitch about videogame budgets, this is absolutely true.
If you look at the top selling games from any year it's all photorealism AAA monster budget games (with the exception of Minecraft and occasional graphical outliers like Lego games).
The top-selling games usually are AAA monster budget games.
But those games need to be top sellers in order to recoup their monster budgets.
And the profits from those oft are what funds the smaller more niche games from a publisher.
And if the AAA game doesn't sell well enough the publisher just fires everybody who worked on that game and starts fattening up a different studio to make the next AAA game.
I'm not a super-huge fan of how the major industry players function right now.
I've been to VA studio recordings. I was the localization boss, and I went over to see how's the work done, and the process, and talk with a few of the actors.
Doing a good VA job is fucking hard. And it was amazing to see my translation gaining life through a talented performance. Gives me chills to this day.
Oh, and the director put me in that booth and made me record a couple of lines for REAL, under pressure, being directed. It's so hard. I got all stressed and did a shitty job. He did that so I could appreciate how hard it is.
I'll defend VAs and VA rights to the end. And I'll completely ignore any "it's not that hard" or "they're not that important to games" pseudo-arguments. Morkath has no ideia what he's talking about. That much is pretty clear.
I've been to VA studio recordings. I was the localization boss, and I went over to see how's the work done, and the process, and talk with a few of the actors.
Doing a good VA job is fucking hard. And it was amazing to see my translation gaining life through a talented performance. Gives me chills to this day.
Oh, and the director put me in that booth and made me record a couple of lines for REAL, under pressure, being directed. It's so hard. I got all stressed and did a shitty job. He did that so I could appreciate how hard it is.
I'll defend VAs and VA rights to the end. And I'll completely ignore any "it's not that hard" or "they're not that important to games" pseudo-arguments. Morkath has no ideia what he's talking about. That much is pretty clear.
I've seen plenty of big-name actors do crap VA work in games. If it was all that easy, it shouldn't be any challenge at all for a "real" act to drop in and nail the work, no problem. Factoring in things like having to do the work isolated from scenes that will never physically exist and not necessarily doing lines with the other voice actors who are having a dialogue with one another, there's is a definite developed skillset to being able to deliver a convincing, quality performance.
And VA work has a huge impact on how a player receives the setting of a game. Part of the reason I won't touch the new Splinter Cell games is because, to me, the voice of Michael Ironsides is Sam Fisher. The enhanced Twin Snake version of Metal Gear Solid 1? I hate it, largely because the ninja voice was terribly inferior than in the original.
VA work can handily take a mediocre story and make it shine, or take an excellent story and make it unbearable. It's some pretty important stuff.
Even if the random VA savant you pull off the street is phenomenal at voice acting, there's still a ton of other aspects to the job they might not be so good at. Maybe their stamina is low and they can only pull off that perfect performance for an hour, maybe they're terrible at taking direction and can't/won't alter their performance to match what the director wants, maybe they're terrible at cold reads or maybe its the opposite and they're only good cold and they get nervous and second guess themselves as the session goes on. A professional voice actor has a ton of responsibilities outside of the voice work, and that's not even including potential mo-cap work.
I believe unskilled labor requires two things: a skill ceiling that's very close to the skill floor and that there's an objectively "correct" outcome. For example, running a fast food register: there's a cap on how fast and how accurately you can enter someone's order into the register such that even the best damn register jockey in the world is only fractionally better than an average one. Voice acting doesn't fall into either of those buckets: the skill ceiling is far higher than the skill floor and the outcome is purely subjective, driven by what the director deems correct/acceptable.
I just get the feeling that the people who think voice acting is something any ol' bum can do weren't around during the PSX era and the birth of voice acting in games (well console games anyways, t'was already alive and kicking in the PC market). I sometimes forget there are grown adults out there now that weren't even alive during that time.
But man, I was around during those times. I've seen things, man. Er, well heard.
Most "bad" VA work I hear these days is still done by professionals, they're just phoning it in. Which to their credit is still passable. Steve Blum on a shit day is still a higher bar than a rank amature doing his best. But man... you think you know bad VA work. You don't know bad VA work.
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BeezelThere was no agreement little morsel..Registered Userregular
edited October 2016
I'm all for some of their requests. Like breaks, better safety practices and being told what the hell they're working on beforehand. The thing about residuals? Ehhh. Being told what they're working on can lead to being able to negotiate for a better rate but it's contract work. And aren't these the same people that kicked Nico Bellic's VA under the bus for suggesting the same thing?
Also the bit where the want to "Stop non-union voice actors from working on "union projects" " It's like, the voice acting industry is already super inclusive so why make it harder for new talent to break in?"
Edit: on the flip, I think people are misinterpreting the "800 dollars for 4 hours of work." From what I understand the contracts typically go per session. And that session can take 2 hours or it can take 10 with no concept of overtime. I doubt very seriously the voicework for Last of Us was banged out in 4 hours
Whenever I think about excellent voice acting in video games, I think of the Soul Reaver and Legacy of Kain series - one of my all-time favorite game series.
I'm all for some of their requests. Like breaks, better safety practices and being told what the hell they're working on beforehand. The thing about residuals? Ehhh. Being told what they're working on can lead to being able to negotiate for a better rate but it's contract work. And aren't these the same people that kicked Nico Bellic's VA under the bus for suggesting the same thing?
Also the bit where the want to "Stop non-union voice actors from working on "union projects" " It's like, the voice acting industry is already super inclusive so why make it harder for new talent to break in?"
Edit: on the flip, I think people are misinterpreting the "800 dollars for 4 hours of work." From what I understand the contracts typically go per session. And that session can take 2 hours or it can take 10 with no concept of overtime. I doubt very seriously the voicework for Last of Us was banged out in 4 hours
Yeah. Their two primary issues are the ones that are the most problematic when you look at it from from the other angle. Didn't know they wanted to try and block non-union members from jobs too. Where did you read/see that being stated. Not that it isn't unexpected, given that's how one gains leverage and all.
Really not sure why Markoth keeps arguing the point (badly) though... the direction of the wind in this thread is pretty clear, but eh to that too.
edit: VA work is a skill just the same as all the others.
Conversely, non-union VA work isn't automatically horrible by virtue of it being non-union VA work.
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Forming a strong union and negotiating from a position of as much relative strength as possible makes a lot of sense. I hope they successfully twist the arms of companies that slowly but surely started treating VA as a necessity but pretending that it was still a luxury.
Also as for the residuals: EA can attempt to negotiate that down if it's such a ridiculous request, it's not my job to make sure they don't need to spend money on labor. I hope the VAs are able to extract as much as they can out of the strike, and that other groups in the industry unionize and do the same.
Videogame production involves an enormous amount of stolen wages and unpaid labor, it's important to work to prevent that.
The notion of "entitled to" in this context is totally meaningless. They're "entitled to" whatever agreement they can negotiate. That's why they're negotiating. You know what a great negotiating tactic is? A strike.
A strike only works when you have leverage. The majority of the most prolific performers are union but you still have 75% of the industry who are non union and would be happy to work for the currently offered rates, especially now that they don't have to compete with the most popular union VAs for gigs.
This isn't UPS desperately searching for scabs, there is a huge amount of voice talent out there.
If they have insufficient leverage, they won't get what they want. That has nothing to do with my point.
Your point is that a strike is a great negotiating tactic. Without leverage a strike is not a great negotiating tactic and it doesn't look like SAG-AFTRA has leverage.
Strikes as a concept are great negotiating tactics. They're the heaviest weapon in the union arsenal. Will this one get things done? We'll see.
If the statement that 25% of the talent used is union, then they don't really have much leverage. This isn't the same scenario as the writer's strike at all. Given the time scale of game development, and talent pool... the impact just doesn't seem to be there.
As an aside, being a member of SAG-AFTRA doesn't necessarily mean that they are automatically a good voice actor either, so posting that one video with bad voice acting is silly given that. It's also needlessly shitting over other professionals in that field who have either chosen not to join the union, left the union, or were never eligible to do so. It may even be a net positive for those actors.
Wouldn't be surprised if new popular voices come out of this, if it lasts long enough.
I would not be surprised if that 25% makes up the majority of "main character" voice actors however. Because while being in SAG does not mean you are talented, being talented probably means you are in SAG. My understanding is that film is basically a closed shop. So if we assume that talented voice actors want to work in film, which I don't think is a crazy assumption given that your Pixars and Disneys are probably the most prestigious you get in voice acting, they would have to join SAG.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
The notion of "entitled to" in this context is totally meaningless. They're "entitled to" whatever agreement they can negotiate. That's why they're negotiating. You know what a great negotiating tactic is? A strike.
A strike only works when you have leverage. The majority of the most prolific performers are union but you still have 75% of the industry who are non union and would be happy to work for the currently offered rates, especially now that they don't have to compete with the most popular union VAs for gigs.
This isn't UPS desperately searching for scabs, there is a huge amount of voice talent out there.
If they have insufficient leverage, they won't get what they want. That has nothing to do with my point.
Your point is that a strike is a great negotiating tactic. Without leverage a strike is not a great negotiating tactic and it doesn't look like SAG-AFTRA has leverage.
Strikes as a concept are great negotiating tactics. They're the heaviest weapon in the union arsenal. Will this one get things done? We'll see.
If the statement that 25% of the talent used is union, then they don't really have much leverage. This isn't the same scenario as the writer's strike at all. Given the time scale of game development, and talent pool... the impact just doesn't seem to be there.
As an aside, being a member of SAG-AFTRA doesn't necessarily mean that they are automatically a good voice actor either, so posting that one video with bad voice acting is silly given that. It's also needlessly shitting over other professionals in that field who have either chosen not to join the union, left the union, or were never eligible to do so. It may even be a net positive for those actors.
Wouldn't be surprised if new popular voices come out of this, if it lasts long enough.
I would not be surprised if that 25% makes up the majority of "main character" voice actors however. Because while being in SAG does not mean you are talented, being talented probably means you are in SAG. My understanding is that film is basically a closed shop. So if we assume that talented voice actors want to work in film, which I don't think is a crazy assumption given that your Pixars and Disneys are probably the most prestigious you get in voice acting, they would have to join SAG.
That is true, which is why I said that I wouldn't be surprised if new popular voices come out of this situation?
edit: Forgot to add this, I don't know how many actors are "Financial Core," which is basically them having to pay the union, but not being in the union for work and such. That type of information is well hidden. But the overlap between talent/popularity and union-membership isn't 100%.
But finding out who is fi-core is difficult. Really havent followed SAG stuff much since a former coworker failed at making it into the acting business and getting into SAG and such, years ago.
It should also be noted that most SAG related fi core information is anti-SAG. Tthe other reason I didnt bring it up before, as whether or not SAG (or unions) are good/bad isnt really on subject. There being talent that wasnt in the union and it not equating to VA work being crap was.
(1604) : Cleaned it up, combined the edits.
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As for the issue of game budgets versus game prices, step Number One With A Bullet has to be getting publishers to stop linking cost and success.
Except for a relatively few cases, big successes don't get to be successful because they had the shiniest graphics. They get there because they do something really well that people want to experience. Graphics can be a factor but usually it's got to be some pretty groundbreaking stuff, which is way harder to do now just because game graphics are approaching much more closely to parity with reality.
Case in point, No Man's Sky. Yeah, it has turned out to be a disaster of unprecedented proportions, but it sold craploads with pretty minimal advertising (compared to AAA games) on the basis of some neat stuff (that it just happened to never deliver on). Make stuff that is new and interesting, and people will buy it in droves. And that sort of development doesn't require assloads of photorealistic texture development, which is the sort of thing sucking up so much AAA budget these days.
Very late, but I get the feeling the real issue with most AAA publishers is they feel they're in a Mexican standoff. If they release a game that doesn't feature the highest level of visuals possible and individually animate every single eyelash, they'll be viewed as inferior and not sell compared to every other ultra-shiny game. Or so the feeling goes.
But there are a few other examples of games that didn't go 100% shinies and succeeded. Fallout 4 barely had more team members than Fallout 3, and it was a monster success. The Witcher 3 was also (relatively) cheap and did extremely well. Then again, those are sequels to games that were never really known for visual power to begin with. Would fans stick with a Call of Duty sequel that took a bit of a visual downgrade?
Really, I agree with everyone else that games need to just cost $80 already, so the big publishers can treat their employees decently and take some damn risks without being in danger of dying.
More on-topic: the guy who played Kellogg in Fallout 4 worked on the part for a year and a half before he knew what game he was working on. He understandably feels that lack of knowledge gives publishers an unfair advantage.
On inflation alone, a game that cost $60 USD in 1996 should cost $90 in 2016, twenty years later. And that's just if you want to abruptly catch up with inflation! Nevermind all the lost dollars from the twenty intervening years where prices did not keep up with inflation!
For a more recent example, a 2006 game for $60 should now cost $72. Except that $60 in 2006 was already behind inflation.
If prices had kept up with inflation, then in 2006 that sixty dollar game would have already been at over $75.
I would be perfectly happy if the industry as a whole decided that AAA games now cost $100 and started paying their employees and contractors reasonable wages as a result. Entertainment in this world is already too cheap.
Aside from the previous recommendation that game publishers get their AAA spending in check, this also doesn't factor in modern DLC, in-app purchases, expansions, cosmetics, season passes, monthly fees etc. that probably bring up the overall average price of any given game significantly.
Actually I'm curious, if you look at the average AAA game, how much does each game actually pull in on average these days. Does it work out to $75? With some obviously being up in the $100 range or more?
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Another thing to keep in mind (and one of the main driving forces behind the strike) is that video games are not a VA's only source for work. It is however the only source of work to have shitty conditions, pay, lack of residuals/royalties, no before/current knowledge of the project, and the expectations of doing mocap (something most people are not trained for) without any extra pay.
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On inflation alone, a game that cost $60 USD in 1996 should cost $90 in 2016, twenty years later. And that's just if you want to abruptly catch up with inflation! Nevermind all the lost dollars from the twenty intervening years where prices did not keep up with inflation!
For a more recent example, a 2006 game for $60 should now cost $72. Except that $60 in 2006 was already behind inflation.
If prices had kept up with inflation, then in 2006 that sixty dollar game would have already been at over $75.
I would be perfectly happy if the industry as a whole decided that AAA games now cost $100 and started paying their employees and contractors reasonable wages as a result. Entertainment in this world is already too cheap.
Aside from the previous recommendation that game publishers get their AAA spending in check, this also doesn't factor in modern DLC, in-app purchases, expansions, cosmetics, season passes, monthly fees etc. that probably bring up the overall average price of any given game significantly.
Actually I'm curious, if you look at the average AAA game, how much does each game actually pull in on average these days. Does it work out to $75? With some obviously being up in the $100 range or more?
That's a good question; though I couldn't pull up anything definitive. Anyone know?
I suspect that, for the companies that survived the last decade, the average cash flow from fewer games + add-ons is, in general, roughly the same as the game companies made when they released more games and didn't go quite as crazy for DLC. Which would mean it successfully supports publishers putting out games as long as they still treat most of the game developers like dirt. But watch me be wrong on this one.
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As for the issue of game budgets versus game prices, step Number One With A Bullet has to be getting publishers to stop linking cost and success.
Except for a relatively few cases, big successes don't get to be successful because they had the shiniest graphics. They get there because they do something really well that people want to experience. Graphics can be a factor but usually it's got to be some pretty groundbreaking stuff, which is way harder to do now just because game graphics are approaching much more closely to parity with reality.
Case in point, No Man's Sky. Yeah, it has turned out to be a disaster of unprecedented proportions, but it sold craploads with pretty minimal advertising (compared to AAA games) on the basis of some neat stuff (that it just happened to never deliver on). Make stuff that is new and interesting, and people will buy it in droves. And that sort of development doesn't require assloads of photorealistic texture development, which is the sort of thing sucking up so much AAA budget these days.
Very late, but I get the feeling the real issue with most AAA publishers is they feel they're in a Mexican standoff. If they release a game that doesn't feature the highest level of visuals possible and individually animate every single eyelash, they'll be viewed as inferior and not sell compared to every other ultra-shiny game. Or so the feeling goes.
But there are a few other examples of games that didn't go 100% shinies and succeeded. Fallout 4 barely had more team members than Fallout 3, and it was a monster success. The Witcher 3 was also (relatively) cheap and did extremely well. Then again, those are sequels to games that were never really known for visual power to begin with. Would fans stick with a Call of Duty sequel that took a bit of a visual downgrade?
Really, I agree with everyone else that games need to just cost $80 already, so the big publishers can treat their employees decently and take some damn risks without being in danger of dying.
The Witcher 3 was made in Poland (depressed wages compared to America) and the cost to make the game was in check, but if you look at the cost break down it doesn't take in to account what was spent on the RED engine, which is a technical masterpiece and has "all the shinies". I wonder if any of the programmers on the RED engine are getting residuals, despite that engine being far more important to the success of Witcher 3 than any VA?
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While grabbing the designers to fill out the vocal work has happened, it was primarily during the era when vocal work in games was a new thing. Doing such things resulted in the following gems (and yes, these are among the high points of getting random devs to do the voice work)
To draw a comparison here to your earlier example: this is the 250,000/400,000-years ago ancient human just starting to figuring out how to cook food...it may have sufficed back then, but these days they just seem unrefined and campy.
Eventually, studios got the notion that voice work actually required some acting skill, and started hiring professional, established actors for their voiced roles (and some studios jumped on this track earlier than others - one that prominently sticks out being Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers).
EDIT - to be fair though, I will admit that, occasionally, even professionally trained actors can't save a poorly written script (prime example: Privateer 2: The Darkening...not even Christopher Walken could save this one)
AAA budgets are TERRIFYINGLY high, which is why so many IP are just one flop away from being retired or having their developer dissolved.
Public perception would need to shift for that to be plausible large scale, plus the higher fidelity can actually mask less effective art direction.
I agree, it would be nice though.
Strikes as a concept are great negotiating tactics. They're the heaviest weapon in the union arsenal. Will this one get things done? We'll see.
Can just anyone do it? Yeah.
Can just anyone do it well? Probably not.
If you pull some rando off the street to do some voice acting, chances are he's gonna suck.
But there's also a chance that he'll be fuckin' phenomenal even without any training or experience.
That said, I do have an appreciation for the time and effort voice actors put into their work. A lot of games just wouldn't be nearly as good without them.
I mean, we just had a trilogy of Batman games where a major selling point was having Conroy and Hamill reprise their roles. There's some leverage here.
Probably wouldn't hurt to go in and trim out all the wasteful bits of the marketing budget as well. Probably could save millions on the budget that way.
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Turns out, its a lot! And you are likely to get called back for additional recording sessions based on how the games story changes or for additional content. There is a lot of finished work you might have done that doesn't make it into the final product too (not to mention all of the takes required to get the line readings that do make it into the game).
Yeah... I don't think public perception has to change all that much. The entire point is that things can be aesthetically appealing to the masses without being photorealistic.
As a simple example, look at a lot of Mario stuff. Not remotely going for hyper-detailed realism but it can still look great because it has it's own style. I'd bet money Nintendo has spent less on the graphics of all the Wii U Mario games put together than was spent on the latest CoD alone.
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This is why I don't quit my salaried job to go full time as a photographer.
If the statement that 25% of the talent used is union, then they don't really have much leverage. This isn't the same scenario as the writer's strike at all. Given the time scale of game development, and talent pool... the impact just doesn't seem to be there.
As an aside, being a member of SAG-AFTRA doesn't necessarily mean that they are automatically a good voice actor either, so posting that one video with bad voice acting is silly given that. It's also needlessly shitting over other professionals in that field who have either chosen not to join the union, left the union, or were never eligible to do so. It may even be a net positive for those actors.
Wouldn't be surprised if new popular voices come out of this, if it lasts long enough.
A good friend of mine wrote his first program when he was five years old.
I didn't learn anything new when I went to school for programming. It was a huge waste of time and money to actually get trained. Going by Morkath, since programming is something a five year old can do, I suppose it's unskilled.
Which is, of course, ridiculous.
Further, the one thing I did learn going to post-secondary for programming was that even after all that training, about half the class still wasn't able to write a program on their own. They still needed someone to break it down for them. They knew the syntax for the language, they knew the words, but they couldn't speak it. The syntax of C++ or C# or Python or whatever doesn't matter. Programming is not syntax. It's the ability to break a problem down into a series of steps that a computer can understand. That's something I found people can either do or they can't. It couldn't really be taught.
A lot of those people got programming jobs, though.
Except for a relatively few cases, big successes don't get to be successful because they had the shiniest graphics. They get there because they do something really well that people want to experience. Graphics can be a factor but usually it's got to be some pretty groundbreaking stuff, which is way harder to do now just because game graphics are approaching much more closely to parity with reality.
Case in point, No Man's Sky. Yeah, it has turned out to be a disaster of unprecedented proportions, but it sold craploads with pretty minimal advertising (compared to AAA games) on the basis of some neat stuff (that it just happened to never deliver on). Make stuff that is new and interesting, and people will buy it in droves. And that sort of development doesn't require assloads of photorealistic texture development, which is the sort of thing sucking up so much AAA budget these days.
On the console that is a pretty large flop, and CoD outsells, even when you account for multiple platforms vs one?
I didn't say it wasn't possible to make a good game, I said the public by the large, won't care. There are still too many people who look at cell shading or whatnot and call it "kiddy graphics", and buy their games based on what the screenshots/trailers look like.
There is a market for those games, but it is still not as big as with photorealistic graphics. It's not like the publishers/designers pull features out of a hat to spend money on, they would absolutely love to pay less to increase their profits. However they do market research and that is still telling them they need to spend the money on graphics.
@cB557 I want you to read my posts.
As much as people (myself included) like to bitch about videogame budgets, this is absolutely true.
If you look at the top selling games from any year it's all photorealism AAA monster budget games (with the exception of Minecraft and occasional graphical outliers like Lego games).
But those games need to be top sellers in order to recoup their monster budgets.
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And the profits from those oft are what funds the smaller more niche games from a publisher.
And if the AAA game doesn't sell well enough the publisher just fires everybody who worked on that game and starts fattening up a different studio to make the next AAA game.
I'm not a super-huge fan of how the major industry players function right now.
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Doing a good VA job is fucking hard. And it was amazing to see my translation gaining life through a talented performance. Gives me chills to this day.
Oh, and the director put me in that booth and made me record a couple of lines for REAL, under pressure, being directed. It's so hard. I got all stressed and did a shitty job. He did that so I could appreciate how hard it is.
I'll defend VAs and VA rights to the end. And I'll completely ignore any "it's not that hard" or "they're not that important to games" pseudo-arguments. Morkath has no ideia what he's talking about. That much is pretty clear.
You know I think the one thing this thread can agree on in solidarity is that the videogame industry (in general) is all kinds of fucked.
I've seen plenty of big-name actors do crap VA work in games. If it was all that easy, it shouldn't be any challenge at all for a "real" act to drop in and nail the work, no problem. Factoring in things like having to do the work isolated from scenes that will never physically exist and not necessarily doing lines with the other voice actors who are having a dialogue with one another, there's is a definite developed skillset to being able to deliver a convincing, quality performance.
And VA work has a huge impact on how a player receives the setting of a game. Part of the reason I won't touch the new Splinter Cell games is because, to me, the voice of Michael Ironsides is Sam Fisher. The enhanced Twin Snake version of Metal Gear Solid 1? I hate it, largely because the ninja voice was terribly inferior than in the original.
VA work can handily take a mediocre story and make it shine, or take an excellent story and make it unbearable. It's some pretty important stuff.
I believe unskilled labor requires two things: a skill ceiling that's very close to the skill floor and that there's an objectively "correct" outcome. For example, running a fast food register: there's a cap on how fast and how accurately you can enter someone's order into the register such that even the best damn register jockey in the world is only fractionally better than an average one. Voice acting doesn't fall into either of those buckets: the skill ceiling is far higher than the skill floor and the outcome is purely subjective, driven by what the director deems correct/acceptable.
But man, I was around during those times. I've seen things, man. Er, well heard.
Most "bad" VA work I hear these days is still done by professionals, they're just phoning it in. Which to their credit is still passable. Steve Blum on a shit day is still a higher bar than a rank amature doing his best. But man... you think you know bad VA work. You don't know bad VA work.
Also the bit where the want to "Stop non-union voice actors from working on "union projects" " It's like, the voice acting industry is already super inclusive so why make it harder for new talent to break in?"
Edit: on the flip, I think people are misinterpreting the "800 dollars for 4 hours of work." From what I understand the contracts typically go per session. And that session can take 2 hours or it can take 10 with no concept of overtime. I doubt very seriously the voicework for Last of Us was banged out in 4 hours
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PSX - 2 era, too.
It was a pretty good platformer/puzzle/action game, but that voice acting is what I remember.
Yeah. Their two primary issues are the ones that are the most problematic when you look at it from from the other angle. Didn't know they wanted to try and block non-union members from jobs too. Where did you read/see that being stated. Not that it isn't unexpected, given that's how one gains leverage and all.
Really not sure why Markoth keeps arguing the point (badly) though... the direction of the wind in this thread is pretty clear, but eh to that too.
edit: VA work is a skill just the same as all the others.
Conversely, non-union VA work isn't automatically horrible by virtue of it being non-union VA work.
Also as for the residuals: EA can attempt to negotiate that down if it's such a ridiculous request, it's not my job to make sure they don't need to spend money on labor. I hope the VAs are able to extract as much as they can out of the strike, and that other groups in the industry unionize and do the same.
Videogame production involves an enormous amount of stolen wages and unpaid labor, it's important to work to prevent that.
I would not be surprised if that 25% makes up the majority of "main character" voice actors however. Because while being in SAG does not mean you are talented, being talented probably means you are in SAG. My understanding is that film is basically a closed shop. So if we assume that talented voice actors want to work in film, which I don't think is a crazy assumption given that your Pixars and Disneys are probably the most prestigious you get in voice acting, they would have to join SAG.
That is true, which is why I said that I wouldn't be surprised if new popular voices come out of this situation?
edit: Forgot to add this, I don't know how many actors are "Financial Core," which is basically them having to pay the union, but not being in the union for work and such. That type of information is well hidden. But the overlap between talent/popularity and union-membership isn't 100%.
But finding out who is fi-core is difficult. Really havent followed SAG stuff much since a former coworker failed at making it into the acting business and getting into SAG and such, years ago.
It should also be noted that most SAG related fi core information is anti-SAG. Tthe other reason I didnt bring it up before, as whether or not SAG (or unions) are good/bad isnt really on subject. There being talent that wasnt in the union and it not equating to VA work being crap was.
(1604) : Cleaned it up, combined the edits.
Worth a listen.
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Very late, but I get the feeling the real issue with most AAA publishers is they feel they're in a Mexican standoff. If they release a game that doesn't feature the highest level of visuals possible and individually animate every single eyelash, they'll be viewed as inferior and not sell compared to every other ultra-shiny game. Or so the feeling goes.
But there are a few other examples of games that didn't go 100% shinies and succeeded. Fallout 4 barely had more team members than Fallout 3, and it was a monster success. The Witcher 3 was also (relatively) cheap and did extremely well. Then again, those are sequels to games that were never really known for visual power to begin with. Would fans stick with a Call of Duty sequel that took a bit of a visual downgrade?
Really, I agree with everyone else that games need to just cost $80 already, so the big publishers can treat their employees decently and take some damn risks without being in danger of dying.
Aside from the previous recommendation that game publishers get their AAA spending in check, this also doesn't factor in modern DLC, in-app purchases, expansions, cosmetics, season passes, monthly fees etc. that probably bring up the overall average price of any given game significantly.
Actually I'm curious, if you look at the average AAA game, how much does each game actually pull in on average these days. Does it work out to $75? With some obviously being up in the $100 range or more?
That's a good question; though I couldn't pull up anything definitive. Anyone know?
I suspect that, for the companies that survived the last decade, the average cash flow from fewer games + add-ons is, in general, roughly the same as the game companies made when they released more games and didn't go quite as crazy for DLC. Which would mean it successfully supports publishers putting out games as long as they still treat most of the game developers like dirt. But watch me be wrong on this one.
The Witcher 3 was made in Poland (depressed wages compared to America) and the cost to make the game was in check, but if you look at the cost break down it doesn't take in to account what was spent on the RED engine, which is a technical masterpiece and has "all the shinies". I wonder if any of the programmers on the RED engine are getting residuals, despite that engine being far more important to the success of Witcher 3 than any VA?