i just mean for revali, he has just a few lines overall
VA claims he's made less money from voicing three characters in BOTW than he's made from Freedom Planet
- Thread starter Neat
- Start date
One colleague of mine is a translator, very highly qualified (PhD, experience, the whole nine-yards), done well-regarded work in about 5 languages, and gets paid practically nothing. I can't remember her rates precisely but my jaw hit the floor when she told me. 4K would be a dream paycheck for her for a project much bigger than this size. I know another person who translated a screen play for a major publisher (literary world now, not games) who is literally the most well-regarded expert on the subject in the world (i mean that, she is considered the top professor in that area - sorry to be vague - I don't want to out anyone, and an extraordinarily talented translator and scholar.) Not only did she not get royalties on the project and was paid peanuts (again way less than the $ we're talking about here which is already insulting but in this case for 100s of hours of work) she had to fight to even get her name - a well-known, highly respected name - on the book cover! Let alone royalties.
(And royalties in term vary from project to project; it's pretty hard to get the guild guideline rates or higher unless you are an over-the-top best selling author - we're talking Stephen King levels here. Also just as companies in general are notorious for wage theft, publishers very frequently forget or drag their feet on royalties even after negotiating down to tiny rates.)
They definitely should include more of the workers on a game in terms of who gets residuals/royalty payments, but royalties for every contractor on a game seems like it would somewhat defeat the purpose of hiring a contractor. As someone who works in the tech industry building solutions/parts of solutions for customers we certainly don't get any cut out of the revenue they generated from their products. Not to mention we also subcontract to other contracting firms who potentially also subcontract. Hell, I don't think we even get more than simply naming rights (aka being able to say "We built x" on our site/portfolio). But at the same time, I wouldn't complain if some of that revenue trickled down to me, however tiny such a cut would be
Last edited:
Ok, yeah, compared to the Bayo situations, this one is more cut and dry.
Goddammit Nintendo.
Especially NoA who should advocate for these VAs to NoJ.
Goddammit Nintendo.
Especially NoA who should advocate for these VAs to NoJ.
Based on his other tweets Nintendo seems to be paying according to the industry standard of $250/hr. So, the problem is less Nintendo specifically not paying his time rather than the industry in general not paying voice actors adequately. I feel like mentioning Freedom Planet kinda devalues his point since it kinda paints the picture of "even these small indies pay well, only big Nintendo isn't" (thus making the issue easier to sweep aside by identifying one bad guy) when reality seems to be that Freedom Planet was the exception to the shitty rule of almost the entire industry not paying enough.
(I'm not going to claim to be an expert of anything here though. Like, Sean voices a lot of niche JRPGs, that's probably a significant part of his income, but would more expensive English VA still be viable for those? Would those otherwise just be more commonly released Japanese only, cutting him out of work? What's definitely true, though, is that a company publishing a game that's projected to sell a gazillion copies should be able to pay more)
Last edited:
You don't pay for the amount of labor done.
If you get locked out of your house and call a locksmith, you don't pay them for 5 minutes of work. You pay them because they were skilled enough to complete it in 5 minutes.
Many many people get paid hourly wages.
If someone is voicing 10 hours worth of dialogue they would obviously get paid more than voicing two lines in the same project.
The actors are almost all union, and they forced studios to pay them residuals in the negotiations following a strike several decades ago. And the gaming industry largely refuses to hire union actors.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtAy2IbCONM
Freedom Planet is great, and the sequel (on PC now) is even better and my current GOTY.
You're paid to be there for a certain amount of time, you are not paid based on how much work you complete.
If the latter was the case, everyone on era would be broke.
And the time you're there is based on the amount of work you have to do.
The standard rate for video game VA seems to be directly derived from the union rate ($250/hr vs 975 for 4 hours) while SAG-AFTRA's push for royalties seems to have largely failed.
View: https://twitter.com/sonicmega/status/1581331297644908547?t=kSbGh1zbSd5YQcVlu-PUCg&s=19
have you played the game? Revali has like 5 minutes of dialogue total, im not saying VA doesnt deserve more pay, im saying this is a different a special situation compared to the Bayo3 controversy.
This is likely more on the Union than anyone else. They have outdated contracts.
Because the game industry is fucked. Remember years ago when there was a voice actor strike because of how toxic the game industry was being to voice actors and even then developers and gamers alike were scrutinizing VAs for feeling that they deserved better because "it's not like they made the game."
I have a hard time seeing how $250 an hour is terrible pay. Most stage actors don't get that.
If you are hired to do a 10 hours job (over 2 days) and are beeing paid $2500 for it, I think that's fine? This hourly rate allows them to have gaps in between gigs while still making a decent living if they're skilled/good enough.
How much do people think they should be making per hour?
If you are hired to do a 10 hours job (over 2 days) and are beeing paid $2500 for it, I think that's fine? This hourly rate allows them to have gaps in between gigs while still making a decent living if they're skilled/good enough.
How much do people think they should be making per hour?
A lot of the often quite decent terms in film work date back to the height of union power in the US and workers have fought tooth and nail to hold on to them.
By the time the first regulations and contracts for digital were being codified (I think in the... 90s?) it was considered small potatoes; firms were very close to the Clinton administration already and unions didn't really see it as a big issue. And here we are today.
These kinds of intra-worker (even within the same union sometimes) disputes are very common and in many ways encouraged by the legal structures set up after the famous Treaty of Detroit here in the US but also apply in countries like Germany with seemingly far superior labor laws. The post-war compromise in the Global North not only bought unions closer to firms but also set in place structures that could drive wedges within unionized labor. Two track systems, etc.
EDIT: I'm sure there are better ones but check out this article particularly the bits from the 1920s through the 1940s to see some of why Hollywood working conditions are generally much better than gaming ones: https://laist.com/news/la-history/hollywood-strike-1945-unions-iatse-bloody-friday
Cause you don't work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year.
Right I already adressed that. You're also not only working 10 hours a year or that's not your main job either.
Pretty sure that's more dialogue than Spade has in Freedom Planet 1, for the record. Spade only shows up in a few scenes and a boss fight.
Wonder if he also got royalties for Freedom Planet 2.
You're underestimating how large the gaps between jobs are. Go look at some VA credits and see how many jobs they have a year.
This doesn't invalidate anything I said. If there are large gaps and the income isn't high enough, then they have a secondary job. Again I'm asking how much per hour should VA make? Because getting say $1000 per hour and making say, one 2 days gig per month (to be at the absolute lowest point or prety much looking for work for a whole month in between very short gigs) would be a rather ludicrous levels of pay for the work involved.
I work in the cultural field, I'll say it again, most stage actors don't have long recurring gigs (but short seasonal ones) and aren't beeing paid anywhere near $250 an hour
No it's not lol
No one works the whole 8 hours a day. There's down time at every job
I don't have an office job but even office workers always comment how they're done in the first two hours and then just bullshit the rest of the time
The obvious answer, and the one mentioned in the tweet this entire thread is based on, is that they should get royalties/residuals or the like. Something that would give them an ongoing steady income, rather than occasional hourly gigs.
Yes it is.
Working an 40 hours a week doesn't mean you're required to do 40 hours of work per week, but it does mean you're expected to do a full time employee workload. It's why part-time jobs exist for doing the same work, but less of it.
Generally you wont get paid 8 hours a day if you're only doing an hours worth of work each day. You would have your hours cut.
You do realize that this is the industry standard? It's not a Nintendo specific problem, it applies to the games industry as a whole, with a few exceptions here and there (like with Freedom Planet). I highly doubt EA, Ubisoft, Sony or other big publishers are any different in this regard.
How much should they make overall then? Should they get a small fraction of a percent of sales? Should there be a cap on the royalties?
I think people should be paid for their work. But I'm not sure saying a few words into a mic warrants getting paid thousands of dollars.
I guess you always research how much a game's VAs were paid before just "gobbling it up"?
It's not going to be interesting because we already know if AI voices are feasible they are 100% going to be using them over humans if it saves money.
Yeah, since VA was pretty light for even the characters that even spoke. This isn't some AAA chatty game folks seem to forget. IMO that seems fair, and for a little more context, Sean liked my tweet pointing this out:
View: https://twitter.com/GoldMetalSonic/status/1581324317396152321
I was alerted his other two characters were Teba (another birb) and (spoiler in case as I didn't even know this one was in the game):
The Deku Tree
And even then those roles probably aren't much. When I played through Revali's section and beat it, Revali didn't get more than a couple scenes, and Teba MAYBE had one scene and some quick "NPC" words? But still, this is pretty small and despite how huge the game sold, unless Sean got royalties... that kind of doesn't matter as he gets paid by the hour as most do.
I was introduced to Sean Chiplock's work through Freedom Planet, and his VA is fantastic in it. Dail sounds great during boss battles.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cec-BxzEfYk
The game is also amazing and you should check it out, along with its criminally underappreciated sequel that just released a month or so ago.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cec-BxzEfYk
The game is also amazing and you should check it out, along with its criminally underappreciated sequel that just released a month or so ago.
That doesn't change the fact that they paid an enviable rate when they do work.
I swear that the gaming industry is the only industry where we see excuses like this. If a famous actor gets paid a few million to voice a handful of lines in some animated movie no one bats an eye but we're supposed to find it normal that an indie game is able to pay voice actors better than a title that sold 3 orders of magnitude higher than it and published by one of the most lucrative companies in the industry.
I understand that they are different situations and the VA had different terms that allowed him to earn royalties on the sales but given the sheer difference in sales numbers between the two titles and the size of the companies publishing/developing them it is absurd that they were paid less.
It would be the equivalent of defending that Vin Diesel being paid more to perform on an average stage play than he was for playing his role in one of the Fast and the Furious movies or heck, even Groot, is absolutely normal.
Last edited:
the way I see people talking about this $250/hour stuff for voice acting in games today i'm starting to get a little surprised I haven't seen anyone suggest that people should start tipping them like waiters so they can make a living wage yet
If he was paid the proper union negotiated rate I'm not really seeing the outrage here. I know I don't understand the economics of the industry, but presumably the union did when they agreed to that. If things have changed in such a way that makes that rate no longer sufficient, I assume they could do better at the next round of negotiations.
VA in games ARE paid for amount of work done, especially if they're not celebrities. when you're quoting for an audio project you know how many words/lines an actor can churn out in average given a constraint (is it timed? does it need to be lip synched?) and you work on those numbers. there are some other factors influencing the bottom line for an actor like how many times it's called in (if the same amount of lines is done, say, in one three-hour session pays X, in three one-hour sessions can pay maybe X2). in any case the overall amount is absolutely a key factor. source: it's what I do.
They could have spent more on VA for sure. Take that as you will!
