I'm amused by people continously assuming that Voice Actors can't exist without video games.

While market is significantly smaller than Japan, you do know what there are many other business that requires voice actors, right? Why do you think Japanese VAs have such strong leverages than developers?

My position on this matter is that almost everyone in video game industry need to demand more for their work.

Thats why i edited my post, im refering specifically to Videogame Voice Actors.

Im not pricing anyones work, what im saying is that they sign a contract before actually doing the work, agreeing with all the terms and conditions of the job.

Why do they complain after? I dont understand.

They are not the ones risking everything, putting their balls on the line like the investors are. Why do actors have to earn royalties?

in a movie i'm more likely to watch it if johnny depp is in the movie than if the same movie starred hayden christiansen. in movies the performance is everything and probably deserves high compensation.

in games, in general, i don't know or care who is voice acting. to be completely honest most of the time the voice acting is the worst part of the game.

that said,.. performance is becoming a bigger part of games. kevin spacey in CoD:AW, ellen page in beyond, hayden panettiere in until dawn. if your name and personality is being used by marketing as a selling point of the product then i can see the argument for royalties. that personality is selling their name to make the product bigger than it would be without that attention grabbing, headliner name.

..but most of these voice actors are as replaceable as the light bulb.

I am not trying to dismiss voice actors or the challenge of their work. It's just personally been very rare for voice acting to affect my decision to purchase a game. While in film acting represents a big part of my enjoyment I can over look it in games if the game is fun. Meanwhile could have amazing voice acting and if the game is poor or not enjoyable to me I'll have zero interest in it.

I also think people generally look at the major success stories like a GTA, but then ignore flops. What if voice actors made less base pay (say, 50%), and then the relative success of a title could see their earnings either stay that level or potentially increase by 1000% of base salary. Would they prefer that sort of risk and reward model over guaranteed compensation?

The devs have a point, they work years and years on titles and dont see royalties.... why should voice actors?
Everyone should get payed more though, everyone wins.

Gameing makes enough money that more should be able to go to both devs and voice actors.

THIS THIS THIS.

I can assure you that they wouldnt risk their pay with 99% of the games not called GTA or COD.

They are not the ones putting the cojones at risk, if the game flops they walk happily to their houses with money on their pockets.

As a dev myself i think its ridiculous to demand more, the guys developing the game work fuckn hard and some will make less Than the voice actors

im with the devs

That GTAIV guy is fucking entitled.
The massive success of GTA IV had ZERO to do with his voice work.

I'm with the devs on this one.