Main Character
And there will be plenty of aspiring voice actors willing to work for less.
Utterly laughable!
edited 23rd Sep '15 12:29:39 PM by Grounder
Lost in Space
I don't mind this; voice actors have to undergo very stressful working conditions and modern video games typically contain many, many times the voice content of films. They should be compensated as any other actor, especially when they do motion capture as well.
edited 23rd Sep '15 12:35:51 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Maybe this means cheap ass devs will make less games with voice acting to cut the costs, which would be fine for me since I like retro-ish games ![[lol]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lol2v12_4863.png "[lol]"){kind=small}
(Seriously though, they should definitely get paid better. Even though that would definitely mean that game budgets would get even more ridiculous)
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
And let's be honest...voice-acting half-assed is frequently quite horrid and better off not being there.
I've heard it said that the scope of modern games is being held back by the perceived necessity of voicing all the dialogue, and that if studios and gamers could learn to respectively make and play games with text-only dialogue, we could have far bigger and more dynamic game worlds. Part of me hopes that a tougher voice actor market could at least incentivize more experiments along those lines.
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About a decade ago Ray Liotta voiced complaints similar to this about his experience with GTA: Vice City. He felt that for the amount of workload he had to do, that he wasn't fairly compensated. Michael Hollick had the same complaints with GTAIV.
edited 23rd Sep '15 12:55:16 PM by Lionheart0
Perpetually Confused
Voice actors are lucky however in that they have a big union and name recognition in a lot of cases. In the last decade salaries for video game programmers have also melted; and the rush prior to release date often leads to insane work hours; That along with big studios having no issues outsourcing work k to countries with lower wages and looser work laws. They don't have the same push to fight for bigger pays. Coz no one cares or remembers the names of the guys who for example worked on the engine.
edited 23rd Sep '15 12:56:26 PM by Ghilz
Takat Empress
Well I look at voice acting as evolution and if you don't like it or not going back to the standards of the early 90's could be devolving which does not sound good...
Mileena Madness
belongs to the hurricane
A lot of the time it only highlights how Narmy or melodramatic the dialogue itself is, which ruins scenes.
though that in and of itself might be a good thing because it draws attention to a need for better-written dialogue in general.
Nobody wants worse voice-acting.
Ideally with this publishers simply wouldn't have every single line in the game voiced or just have no VA, which I think is fine. we would still have the high quality voice acting, just not as much of it.
edited 23rd Sep '15 1:01:25 PM by wehrmacht
It's not a claim without reason. There's a great deal of ASCII roguelikes with a pretty astounding amount of depth and potential in their gameplay that certainly couldn't have happened without working for decades if they had to bother coding in sound and 3D graphics.
It's still entirely possible for perfectly normal (not good, not bad...just there) dialogue to get awful by the delivery.
edited 23rd Sep '15 1:03:29 PM by VutherA
Perpetually Confused
Depends. I think voice acting has hurt some games. I think in particular The elder scrolls series had to tune down a lot of the dialogue since spoken dialogue is more expensive and slower so you have to limit exposition
edited 23rd Sep '15 1:02:41 PM by Ghilz
Damn, that's a lot of delayed games.
Exactly. There are just certain games that are actually better off without voice acting in my opinion. Others...not so much. And voice acting done wrong is worse than no voice acting at all. I'm looking at YOU, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. So few generic NPC voices...
edited 23rd Sep '15 1:04:12 PM by UndyingPhoenix
Takat Empress
Then I would argue games like Dragon Age or Bioshock had good voice acting. In the end it's just opinions, and they don't matter as much as the almighty dollar in the eyes of developers.
belongs to the hurricane
That's true which is why a good voice director is very important.
A lot of people blame VA's when in reality the VD is the one who chooses what takes go into the final game and gives well, direction to the VA's. not to say the actor doesn't matter at all, that's obviously false, but it's not as clear cut as some people think it is.
Perpetually Confused
Honestly when people look at the number of voices in oblivion they got it wrong. Look at the number of topics you can ask about compared to morrowind or daggerfall. Its like 10 percent. You can't ask about small topics coz that stuff costs money
Oh, I am quite aware of that. I'd blame the studios' standards rather than actor myself - in a perfect world, their playtesting would have realized "Yeah that didn't work" and a new performance replaced it...unless our perfect world has every voice actor does their job perfectly...I'm gonna shut up about this now.
Takat Empress
As far as pay I do agree they should have more money for their work, but it's not full acting. I don't want to sound like I'm downplaying a video game, but it's not the same like acting for a tv show or a film.
You have to make expression and do a lot more work for that kind of media. In games you have to just get the right tone and pronounce correctly.
Mileena Madness
Ever seen a recording studio? It's a white box. Traditional actors have sets, costumes, make-up and sound cues to aid their performances. Voice actors have a script and however much time the audio director can spare to coach them. Even in a back and forth dialogue it's very rare to have other actors with you. Voice actors have to do their performance alone with none of the support even a low-budget film can offer to its actors, and are expected to deliver a superior result.
Voice acting is considered very difficult by professional actors of all kinds.
edited 23rd Sep '15 1:26:51 PM by Watashiwa
Sharknado Warning
Thing is it's not easy to do reshoots for Video Games. Voice acting is generally recorded fairly early - before animation is done usually. That be years before final testing. Add that a lot of studios don't own recording studios, they need to rent those out, which require scheduling. So in both cases you can end up with the actor and the studio not available to re-do this. Then you might need to retouch the animation (Lip flaps and all that).
Indeed, many issues one can see in games can reasonably be explained by "neither enough time and money".
I definitely think this is a good thing. When you have actors going as far as throwing up in the booth to get the best take, I think it's fair to re-evaluate how much they're paid, especially compared to how much a game makes. I've read accounts from voice actors about VA work being a Doing It for the Art sort of field, and I think they could stand to make more money for recording hundreds, occasionally thousands of lines for each game.
I was just thinking about how weird and serious everyone takes video games now. Like ten years ago it was just games, today there are so many eyes on games development and industry practices that it can be hard to just play a game without fretting. I'm only twenty, and I already feel so burnt out on fun just from the last couple years of serious video game discussion. Nonetheless, I totally support this move for higher VA pay, especially with how damn lucrative video games have become. Cut a bigger slice for the people who contribute vital assets, y'know.
edited 23rd Sep '15 1:49:57 PM by MrMallard
Takat Empress
That's a good point and I see why it's such an issue. I was just saying how it's different than acting in a film or show.
http://www.polygon.com/2015/9/23/9383633/video-game-voice-actors-strike-union-sag-aftra
The hashtag began to show up in tweets from a variety of actors and their supporters yesterday as they rallied behind a shared cause: higher compensation for their work.
Must Read Why aren't video game actors treated like stars?
The union representing the voice performers, SAG-AFTRA, is considering a strike if their demands aren't promptly met. As detailed on its Interactive Negotiations site, SAG-AFTRA is looking to award its members with performance bonuses, such as royalties after a game makes a profit; stunt pay "for vocally stressful recording sessions;" the presence of a stunt coordinator on set, to prepare actors for motion capture as necessary; and more transparency on game projects.
An FAQ series on the site also explains the importance of residuals to the unionized actors, especially. The need for a "backend bonus" comes from the fact that "the industry has grown, boomed and morphed into something bigger and lucrative than any other segment of the entertainment industry," the page states. "The truth is, [backend] bonuses are not uncommon in the video game industry." The group then cites the seven-digit figures that executives from Activision and EA earned last year as bonuses to contrast the lack thereof for performers.
Striking could be the last straw for the union, which has unsuccessfully entered negotiations with big publishers, like EA and Activision, since February.
Union members have been voting on whether or not to go on strike since Sept. 16. The vote closes Oct. 5. If a strike is authorized, actors will be forbidden from working on games out of respect as the union re-negotiates with its employers.
In the meantime, tweeters like Jennifer Hale (Mass Effect's female Commander Shepard) and David Hayter (Metal Gear Solid's Solid Snake) have expressed their support, and encouraged gamers and others to do the same, under the #Performance Matters slogan, as well as #I Am On Board 2015.