Some developers not as enthusiastic at videogame voice actors's demands amid the possibility of a strike

[binary solo]

The Fury said:

binary solo said:

I say yes to actor royalties, but only under specific conditions.

Part of their contract. Isn't this how everything is supposed to work? To get royalties just because you demand it seems unreasonable but if the actor/actor's agent negotiates it in part of their contract then that is fine. However there can be problems with this. Game development costs are high and games are risky meaning an actor could get paid one sum for their work (less risk) or get paid less for their time and get royalties based on game sales (higher risk). This is how a lot of deals in hollywood work, I think Tom Cruise does this a lot. Yet he can demand to do it as he is Tom Cruise.

So, I'd say, it's up to that person to get that in their contract. I think a good question should be why didn't they?

All good points btw.

That's a different thing again. Actors like Tom Cruise are big enough to demand a % of the gross of the initial theatrical run on top of a straight salary for being in the movie. No one other than A listers have the personal clout to do this, A- / B+ listers cant even do this. Studios simply do not do % gross deals with actors who are not mega stars. Royalties are different.

Royalties are part of the standard actor's union contracts. Basically if you are in the actor's union and the movie / TV show you're making is covered by the actor's union then royalties are guaranteed and you don't need to negotiate them in. The size of the royalty you get might be subject to negotiation and if you're a minor actor with a minor part the royalty fee will be very small. Royalties kick in when the movie / TV show gets syndicated, and in some cases when the TV show gets sold to broadcasters in other countries, unless the original contract was for global release (e.g. I expect movies with global release would cover global release in setting the actor's base fee, but maybe not, maybe the base fee only covers release in the North America, and all other countries attracts royalties). With TV shows, the network pays the actor for the first time the season airs, that's what their per epiosode fee covers. Once a TV show goes on syndication to local TV networks / affiliates for re-runs and also if the TV show is sold overseas, the actors get royalties for those situations.

Really this isn't a strike, it's more like a boycott. You can only go on strike if you're an employee. But if you are a union of contract labourers (which is what the actors are) then all you can do is turn down contract offers en masse. The tricky thing is video game production is probably not captured by the SAG (screen actors guild) contract, which is why royalties are not a standard part of the contract. The video game industry is pretty much immune to the star power element of actors, because most gamers don;t give a shit about who's voicing a character. Who really cares that Nathan Filian is playing a character in Halo 5? It's not going to help the game sell. And neither is Kieffer Sutherland voicing Big Boss helping to sell MGSV. The video game industry can easily revert to hiring unknown actors because the unknown actors have no pwoer to bring the video game industry to heel.

My first gambit as Activision, EA, Ubisoft, R* and other big publishers would be to say, "Eh, who cares? We don't need you anyway, we sold millions of games before we started hiring you people, we'll sell millions of games after we go back to hiring no-name actors. See ya!"

Then the ball will be in the actor's court. The actors might be able to get the no-names to join them, but it's highly unlikely, no-name actors are desperate for work and they will take non-union gigs in order to put food ont he table. They can't afford to refuse contracts, because if they do they don't eat. The actor's guild is more likely to get people like Nolan North, Jennifer Hale, Troy Baker and a handful of other video game VAs, who have become famous in their own right within the video game fandom, to throw their lot in, but I think the industry is as likely to kick them to the curb too than to bow down and go, "Nolan North we neeeeed you!" And I suspect Nolan North and the like might just look at the hand that's been feeding them, and then look at the screen actors and say "What have you done for me lately? We've always been looked down on by you, so why should we swing in behind you now? You're just muscling in and taking work we used to have, and now demanding more money, WTF man?" It's a risky play for people like Nolan North and Troy Baker. If they go with the actors and the actors win then they will get much better pay deals for future games. But if they go with the actors and the actors lose, then they will be blacklisted in the games industry (maybe), find it tough to get future gigs on video games, and they still won't be taken seriously by the "real" actors, possibly worse because the real actors will be all pissy about losing to the video game industry. And even if the actors do win in the USA, the advantage of game development is that you can record VA work anywhere in the world, so you can simply avoid using US actors. Any wannabe foreign actor has an American accent voice, because they need it if they want to have any hope of making it big. And those actors will not be covered by any US actor's guild contract.

Like I said, while I think royalties for all VAs on video games under certain circumstances is fair play, I just don't think the actors are in a very strong position. It's only when your name is on the billboards that you can start demanding things from the industry in which you're performing, and the video game industry somply does not plaster actor's names all over their game cases of their advertising. The people who's names do get put up in lights are the creative genuises behind the games, like Kojima. But look at what Konami did to Kojima when they thought he was getting to big for Konami's liking. If Kojima can get kicked to the curb, then some upstart Hollywood actors have a pretty low chance of success.

It's going to be an interesting conflict to watch what happens.

@Rol, in this case the actors can be easily replaced, in terms of electing not to use big name actors in games and still selling buttloads of games.