Actors who supply voices for videogames are on strike for higher pay, financial participation in the games they voice and an end to certain practices in the business that can be harmful to one's health.
Longtime readers of this site will not be surprised to know that I am wholly on their side, especially on the last point. Those of you who've attended the Cartoon Voices panels I've hosted at comic conventions have heard actors tell tales of having to scream for hours or be dangled on wires while wearing "motion capture" suits. On the panels, those stories are often funny but they're not so funny when they happen. More than a few will do one of those throat-ripping sessions, then have to cancel all work for weeks and undergo extensive medical treatment.
Most of these games make huge amounts of money. The folks who make the games want to keep as much of that money as possible. When you leave aside the issues relating to the health and well-being of the performers, that's all this dispute is about. Nothing else.
As the strike goes on, one finds two kinds of opposition on the 'net. The videogame companies are setting up websites and planting "news" stories to try and paint the actors as greedy. I am reminded of a time when a producer wanted to hire me to write a script but he wanted to pay me $1000 less than I thought I should be paid. I held out for what everyone else paid me for comparable projects. He called me greedy because he didn't want to reduce his take-home pay from half a million dollars to an insulting $499,000.
You kind of expect that. What's more surprising are the attacks on the actors leveled by folks who have no direct stake in how the money is carved up. Last night, I read a message board peopled by folks who think it's some sort of obscenity for a human being to get paid $800 a day — as they hear most voice actors do — and then demand higher pay. I could side with this position if the money was being taken away from widows and orphans to pay the actors but not when it's otherwise going to folks who take home annual seven-figure incomes.
Also, of course, "$800 a day" sounds like more than it really is. That's $800 minus agent fees and maybe a manager's commission. It's also not a daily paycheck for most. If you have to do a dozen or more auditions (for $0) to land one of them $800 a day gigs, it doesn't seem so impressive — and some actors go months before they get one.
And also, there's something that a lot of people don't seem to understand every time some wing of show business goes on strike. As a trade-off for all the unpaid work and auditioning and instability, it has become a pretty well-established principle of the entertainment field that income is connected to profits.
If you star on a TV show that reruns for decades and makes its owners zillions of bucks, you oughta get more than what you're paid on one that gets canceled in two weeks and yields no ongoing revenue. Or if the book you wrote sells enough copies to make J.K. Rowling envious, you should get more bucks than, say, the guys who did some of the comics I've worked on. The money in the videogame market is growing and growing. Why shouldn't the compensation for being a vital part of the product grow as well?
I cannot believe the producers in the videogame arena believe the actors shouldn't get less. They just think that if they erect a stonewall and fight, they — the producers — can get away with paying less. It's just a game of another kind and like in politics, painting your opponents as bad, unreasonable people is sometimes a winning strategy.
In 1988 during a very long Writers Guild strike, I sat in a meeting room out on Ventura Boulevard and heard a man named Michael Eisner lecture the WGA Negotiating Committee on how "the business is hurting." And because it was, he explained, the producers of motion pictures and television could not possibly afford an additional six million dollars per year for all of the writers who were writing their products.
Mr. Eisner was then CEO for Disney and he probably made six million dollars that week, just for himself and his bank account. But we were being unrealistic and greedy.
In fairness, there are times when unions have pressed inappropriate demands at inappropriate times but this thing with the videogame voicers is not one of those. Their industry is not "hurting" and the CEOs are not taking haircuts out of financial necessity. I'm not even sure they're claiming that.
Here's a link to the SAG-AFTRA site explaining what's going on. And here's a good article from a site that covers the gaming industry discussing the issues in greater detail. And don't worry. The way the majority of these things end is that the two sides come together, they each give a little and take a little, the strike ends and life returns to normal. Most of the time.