5 ms·

Video game studios often go cheap on things besides contractors, my experience from the inside is that the majority of voice talent is used outside the usual Ho

Video game studios often go cheap on things besides contractors, my experience from the inside is that the majority of voice talent is used outside the usual Hollywood system because they don't want to pay close to a union actor's competitive wages, and forget royalties for people who are not Hollywood famous. For instance, this is part of the reason Bill Roper is the voice of a lot of Warcraft 1 characters - they didn't want to pay professionals, and he was already there. I haven't been on the inside in a while but we might have one musician on a AAA title and he/she would compose all the music and they might also do all the foley work because musicians you might have heard of would probably laugh at the wages and would demand royalties. Obviously part of the issue is making video games can be a crap shoot where a game with original IP is just as often a failure as a success so it can be hard to justify spending money on an unknown entity, and royalties don't exist except for bigger successes for the most part.

ido 10y ago
It is in fact a lot more often a failure than a success.
golergka 10y ago
I remember how Nival paid $5k for ALL music and sounds in Heroes of Might and Magic V. It was mid-2000 Russia, but still, software developers were already paid $40-50k (annually gross, which is a very untypical way to measure salary in Russia, so your mileage may vary because of opaque net/gross conversion).
- iMerNibor 10y ago
  I don't really see an issue if they got paid in accordance to the hourly work they put in - I mean devs don't get royalities, right?
  - stevenwoo 10y ago
    In the 90's got checks in six figures every year for games I was a primary developer for that were hits in the years those games were hits. I got five figure checks for games that were hits for the studio that the most I can claim I did was play test. Of course at the same studio I worked on games that were never released.
dazzawazza 10y ago
I worked on a bunch of Disney games during the PS1/2 era and I can add to this (but I was not employed by Disney): Even with the clout of Disney it was really hard to work with "professional" actors who were SO bad at doing the voices for games. They were slow and VERY error prone. They often demanded ridiculous extras and final say on lines used but couldn't match their performance in the original movie. We could hire professional voice actors and record quality accurate depictions of the characters in 1/10th of the time. In fact recording the foreign versions where we used the original foreign voice actor was nearly always easier and more efficient because there is less ego. The Hollywood system is a sham. There are fixed unionised rates for voice acting but that's not worth the top actors time so they roll in to the studio to do their $100/hr talk knowing that when they leave there is a brand new BMW, Lexus or even piece of art to add to their private collection waiting for them as a gift. We're talking Picasso's as sweeteners! The games industry has a lot wrong with it but it's nothing like the shambles of the movie industry.
- lj3 10y ago
  > couldn't match their performance in the original movie. Yikes. That makes me wonder what the director had to do to get a good performance out of them. Did they just have them say the lines over and over and over until they accidentally got a good take?
  - dvtv75 10y ago
    > Did they just have them say the lines over and over and over until they accidentally got a good take? Not everyone is George Lucas. Seriously, though, I think the various coaches (dialog, accent, acting) on set might have a lot more influence on the process than we're lead to believe.

ido 10y ago

It is in fact a lot more often a failure than a success.

golergka 10y ago

I remember how Nival paid $5k for ALL music and sounds in Heroes of Might and Magic V. It was mid-2000 Russia, but still, software developers were already paid $40-50k (annually gross, which is a very untypical way to measure salary in Russia, so your mileage may vary because of opaque net/gross conversion).

iMerNibor 10y ago
I don't really see an issue if they got paid in accordance to the hourly work they put in - I mean devs don't get royalities, right?
- stevenwoo 10y ago
  In the 90's got checks in six figures every year for games I was a primary developer for that were hits in the years those games were hits. I got five figure checks for games that were hits for the studio that the most I can claim I did was play test. Of course at the same studio I worked on games that were never released.

dazzawazza 10y ago

I worked on a bunch of Disney games during the PS1/2 era and I can add to this (but I was not employed by Disney): Even with the clout of Disney it was really hard to work with "professional" actors who were SO bad at doing the voices for games. They were slow and VERY error prone. They often demanded ridiculous extras and final say on lines used but couldn't match their performance in the original movie. We could hire professional voice actors and record quality accurate depictions of the characters in 1/10th of the time. In fact recording the foreign versions where we used the original foreign voice actor was nearly always easier and more efficient because there is less ego. The Hollywood system is a sham. There are fixed unionised rates for voice acting but that's not worth the top actors time so they roll in to the studio to do their $100/hr talk knowing that when they leave there is a brand new BMW, Lexus or even piece of art to add to their private collection waiting for them as a gift. We're talking Picasso's as sweeteners! The games industry has a lot wrong with it but it's nothing like the shambles of the movie industry.

lj3 10y ago
> couldn't match their performance in the original movie. Yikes. That makes me wonder what the director had to do to get a good performance out of them. Did they just have them say the lines over and over and over until they accidentally got a good take?
- dvtv75 10y ago
  > Did they just have them say the lines over and over and over until they accidentally got a good take? Not everyone is George Lucas. Seriously, though, I think the various coaches (dialog, accent, acting) on set might have a lot more influence on the process than we're lead to believe.