Mr.Playstation said:
Lol, they're about as replaceable as someone working at McDonald's. Good riddence if you ask me, maybe developers won't have to deal with all of this nonsense. |
That's a very ignorant thing to say. For every competent burger flipper at McDonalds there are 100 other people who can flip burgers as competently. There are not 100 people who could competently replace Ashley Johnson as Ellie in The Last of Us.
There is no reason actors shouldn't get royalties from video games in some form, because video games are not so very different from other acting work that they should be excluded from the industry norm of actors earning royalties. However I would argue that the level of royalties, and the circumstances under which royalties get paid should differ by degrees to take account of the differences that ar there compared to film, and TV. Games do not rely on big name actors to sell, therefore who the actor is is less important to a game's success, which means the royalties an actor gets for doing game voice work should be lower. And Actors should get paid a contract rate for the initial release of a game, and royalties should only kick in some time later.
The problem with royalties (actually called residuals) is that under the traditional TV/movie model residuals are paid for re-use of the work:
"In the context of SAG television programs and films, the term residuals refers to the money actors receive when a production is reused. After the initial use, which is either the first run in the theatre or on television, the production company or distributor must pay the performers in order to show the motion picture or television program again. For work on a film, residuals are due if the movie appears on video or DVD (including Internet rental and/or download), basic cable, and free or pay television. For work on a television show, residuals are due if a show starts reruns on the same network or is released to video or DVD (including Internet rental and/or download), pay television, broadcast television, or basic cable. All performers hired under or upgraded to a principal-performer agreement whose performance remains in the final product receive residuals. Background actors do not receive them unless they are upgraded to principal performers."
Actors get no royalties / residuals for the first time a TV show is aired or for the theatrical release of a movie they only get residuals when there are re-runs/DVD releases and of course when a movie gets played on TV. But in the video game context what is "re-use"? you don't get video game re-runs, except for things like remasters and remakes that use original VA recordings.
SAG want's residuals to be paid for games selling over 2 million. But we all know that in some cases because budgets are getting huge selling 2 million may not be anywhere near break even. If you have financial transparency in contracts then you could say that residuals should kick in when a game has made an X% return, which means a game must have made profit before residuals can be claimed. If you force a publisher to pay residuals before a game becomes profitable then that can cause problems. And a game should become at least somewhat profitable before it should be regarded as sufficiently successful to warrant actors getting bonuses for their work. And of course if this becomes more like a bonus, then developers should also be up for bonuses when a game reaches a certain level of profitability.
VAs should get fair reward for their work, but I don't want their demands for residuals to wind up making it harder for publishers and developers to make a profit.
The one bit of leverage that SAG has over the taking of VA work offshore so as not to be covered by the SAG contract is that if it's seen as a union-busting move then the foreign actors involved will be blacklisted for all work inside the USA, and most foreign actors (at least the English-speaking ones) have ambitions of working in Hollywood one day.
