Voice talent strike may hamper videogame development
25-May-2005 • Gaming
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On Tuesday, the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists sent ballots to about 2,000 members asking them to vote on whether they should strike.
Contract negotiations for the vocal actors broke off May 13 after bargaining teams for the two actors' unions rejected the latest offers by video-game publishers, which included a 34.8 percent wage increase through three years.
At issue is the actors' demand for a slice of the revenue from every game that's sold on top of the one-time, up-front payments.
The labor strife comes at a time when the rising popularity of video games and the industry's increasing partnership with Hollywood to base games on movies make the use of professional actors imperative for the publishers.
Games like the upcoming The Godfather by Electronic Arts features the voice of Marlon Brando, whose raspy voice as the Corleone family's patriarch was recorded before his death last year. The game will also include lines read by Robert Duvall and James Caan.
The Redwood City publisher is also working on a new James Bond game based on the old 007 movie, "From Russia with Love," which features Sean Connery.
Even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been involved in the game, doing work for Atari's Terminator: The Redemption before he became governor.
But even games not based on movies have celebrity voices. Samuel L. Jackson worked on the latest installment of one of the most popular video game franchises in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
"Game companies are trying to hire recognizable talent to make games seem more like movies," said Peer Schneider, senior publisher of IGN Entertainment, which operates several video game fan Web sites.
However, the number of celebrities pales in comparison with the much larger number of professional voice actors who work their craft in video games, he said.
The days of software engineers doubling as voice talent on their games or asking friends or family members to showcase their amateur talent have become a thing of the past for the video game industry, Schneider said.
Making games has become much more like making movies, with multimillion- dollar budgets and resources ranging from actors, song writers and singers to computer-animation artists and software engineers.
The video game industry has grown to a more than $10 billion enterprise just here in the United States, surpassing Hollywood's box-office receipts.
When Microsoft released its Xbox game, Halo 2, in November, the firm generated $125 million in the first day of sales, more than any movie's box office receipts for the opening weekend.
Actors deserve more of those profits, said Seth Oster, a spokesman for both unions. "The issue of profit sharing is one of fundamental importance to the actors in our unions," he said. "This industry is now a mature and thriving one, and we have reached a point where actors' share of this enormous pie needs to increase."
Paying actors additional fees according to sales -- called residuals --
is a common practice in Hollywood, as is the case with home video sales, Oster said.
However, Lev Chapelsky, one of the negotiators for the publishers, said the role of an actor is vastly different in video games than in movies or television.
In movies or television, "If you take the actor out, you don't have a production. In interactive entertainment, it's about the game play, and the game play is a function of technology, and actors' performance is an added element to the overall value," said Chapelsky, general manager of Blindlight LLC, a Hollywood firm that provides voice actors to game publishers.
While nine out of the top 10 games sold last year were made using union actors, the vast majority -- about 85 percent -- of all games produced did not involve people under union contract, the guilds say.
Union actors must turn in their votes on whether to authorize a strike by June 7. The Screen Actors Guild requires at least a 75 percent approval to strike, while the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists needs 66 percent, Oster said.
Thanks to `JP` for the alert.
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