GTA4 Actor Decries Voiceover Equity
The man behind the voice of Grand Theft Auto 4’s Niko Bellic believes the gaming industry ought to take a page from Hollywood when it comes to compensating voiceover work, especially as it grows into an increasingly important part of blockbuster titles.
Under the current, most common arrangement, videogame voice actors earn a set fee for their work in a particular title; Michael Hollick earned about $100,000 for his work as the protagonist of GTA4.
Unfortunately, this rate doesn’t scale as a title becomes more successful.
“Had [GTA4] been a television program, a film, an album, a radio show or
virtually any other sort of traditional recorded performance, Mr.
Hollick and the other actors in the game would have made millions by
now. As it stands, they get nothing beyond the standard Screen Actors Guild day rate they were originally paid,” reports the New York Times.
Why would anyone have agreed to such a glaringly obvious oversight?
It seems that this particularly unfortunate discrepancy is a remainder from a time before electronic media dominated the popular consciousness.
“Contracts between the actors’ union and the entertainment industry make
little or no provision for electronic media like video games and the
Internet. It is a discrepancy that is expected to dominate negotiations
between Hollywood and the guild this summer, with many predicting an
actors’ strike to parallel the writers’ strike last year, which
revolved around similar issues,” according to the New York Times.
Additionally, these archaic contracts offer no reimbursement for the use of a character’s voice in promotional materials.
Mr. Hollick’s voice appears in a number of trailers and ads for Grand Theft Auto 4, yet under the current rules he sees absolutely no money as a result.
“The first GTA 4 trailer generated something like 40 million hits
online, and that’s my voice all over it, and I get nothing. If that
were a radio spot, I would have. Same thing for the TV ads. I recorded
those lines for the game, but now they’re all over television. It’s
another gray area,” he said.
Obviously it isn’t as simple as asking gaming executives to share their hard-earned cash, either.
“Among their executives, one real fear is that if they start paying
royalties to a handful of actors, they will soon face similar demands
from the legions of artists, designers, audio producers, musicians,
programmers and other people who work for years to make a top-end game.”
Sadly, this situation seems almost intractable and just thinking about the numbers behind it is giving me a headache.
I don’t think anyone wants to see another entertainment industry strike — particularly in a form of entertainment that, unlike television, isn’t completely creatively bankrupt — but I have absolutely no idea how the powers that be could possibly resolve this one.
Ideas?
A Video Game Star and His Less-Than-Stellar Pay [New York Times]
Image courtesy Rockstar Games
See Also:
- Uwe Boll: ‘The Right Guy’ To Direct Grand Theft Auto Film
- The Dangers of Driving After GTA
- SCEE Boss: PS3 Will ‘Probably’ Get Extra GTA IV Content
