Quote:
i bet companies are constantly offering carmack tones of money to come work for them. Pretty much any game he programs, you can be sure it will look amazing.

Yes, but because of technical reasons, not because players want him to make their games...
The presence of the voice of tom cruise wont make the game better. At least, I think so, but where I live we follow mostly american actors/actress, even if we hardly know their voices, being them replaced by very good italian actors. And that's why I know there are a lot of good and semi-unknown good actors out there: every american movie that comes in italy is translated and all the voices replace: those actors are so good that when sometimes I view that same movie in english I switch it to italian for that reason. The actor that translates, for example, Samuel L. Jackson is amazing, as for the one that translates Al Pacino or Tom Cruise or Jody Foster... And too often I see movies actors that simply cannot play, as Monica Bellucci (when in matrix 2 I heared her speaking italian, I wanted to go out of the cinema). The 'Doppiatori', as the actors that translate the movies are called are those actors I would like to hear in my games!

I think it totally depends on the amount of voice acting they've done, for example in something like Civ3, which has near enough no voice acting (if any?) which has sound bytes of the units being hit or attacking, which are used again and again, then they shouldnt really get royalties.

Whereas in the command and conquer series, the movie clips were essential to the storyline, therefore they do more for the game, therefore should stand more of a chance of getting royalties

I would pay $15 more to get better voices in CSS, really, why would they hire a NUB or two, not even worth the 4 letters for noob. They're so annoying, and I usually try to insure the bot on my team dies before the round ends.

As far as them getting paid more, well, if they do a good enough job (those in Halflife2 did a good job) and they deserve SMALL royalties I'm sure.


Presonally, I would like to see everyone working on the game getting paid very little while they're working on it, and then get fairly good sized royalties for title sales.

At the very least, make sure the guys doing gameplay design get paid royalties. Maybe it will improve them over time after a few of em start hitting the unemployment lines to feed themselves.

I'd rather see us audio guys getting royalties more readily before voice actors. Some VA's do deserve it for providing memorable game experiences, but I'll guarantee you right now theres a LOT more blood, sweat and game-experience design going into flat-rate buyout music composition than into voice acting, and royalties are hard to come by anyway.

Quote: Original post by Talroth
Presonally, I would like to see everyone working on the game getting paid very little while they're working on it, and then get fairly good sized royalties for title sales.

I favor a model like that for most game development. That is, you should expect a minimal return on your time/career investment during the process of working on the game, and a huge payoff if the game is successful (and no payoff if the game flops). Under the current model, however, there's no incentive to produce a great game over one that's merely good. The people working on the game thus have no stake in it.

Since most people aren't willing to accept that kind of risk volatility, we get a lot of crappy games (Big Rigs, anyone?), some good ones, and a few rare gems that are great games.

I could see giving a chunk of the pie to the voice actors when the game is based on a movie and they are using the actors voice. It helps to create imerse the player in a world they've already seen. KOTOR did use professional voice actors and they did a great job, but I fail to see how the voice talent trumps a the graphical artist who lends their own unique style, or a game designer for that matter.

New and improved graphics are what propells the game industry. It's what gets people to buy the new consoles. One can argue that regular acting is actually hard work. The actor might spend time researching a part. (Leonardo Dicaprio researched Howard Hughes for a year before filming the Aviator) Besides that, the whole process seems rather rigorous and time consuming. A voice actor comes in and reads lines. IMHO the only reason you see crappy jobs being done is because whoever was directing the voice acting, sucked. And yes, it still takes talent, but hardly worthy of a portion of a multi million dollar release.

Edt: And even Audio being 50%. The other sound guys make up a huge portion of that audio. They are the ones creating that in game imersion. From full musical composition to sound effects. There is a LOT of talent that goes into sound design.

Quote: Original post by Talroth
Presonally, I would like to see everyone working on the game getting paid very little while they're working on it, and then get fairly good sized royalties for title sales.

Less than they do already? Because game developers already get paid a pittance given the hours they work compared to comparable, non-game work.

Also, the average development time of 2+ years is a long time to be living on a minimum wage, and the shelf life of games is much shorter than movies and music, meaning you aren't likely to reap an enormous amount of money back from your royalties.

On the other hand, high quality IP can be used to earn royalties for far longer than the existence of a single game product - unfortunately in most cases the IP goes to the publisher, not the developer.

Original post by kSquared

Quote: Original post by Talroth
(Big Rigs, anyone?),

But BigRigs WAS good,... or atleast that video review was.

And it now gives a new basis to judge other games on.
I'm sort of guess that game was something made by a group of devs that decided they weren't getting paid enough and they all quit. The company that forked over the cash to start it decided they needed SOME returns, and published it as is without actually checking if they bothered to finish.

Atleast thats the only way I can think of that they would let something like THAT out of a dev house.

Pay voice actors more? Codswallop!

[halfserious] Game developers should use their cousins, brothers,, sisters, kids,etc for the voices in games, and pay them nothing [halfkidding]

I mean seriously,..we ALL talk. How important are these friggin voice actors (except for those ones where the developers copy their actual motions and not just their voices)
I mean,..need a thug's voice? Go get a thug off the streets,..I'm sure you'll find lots of hoodlums that'll take a fiver to say "gimme your money bit**"

Need a whiny teenager (Tidus, FFX) get one of the programmer's kids.
Seriously,..from my point of view these people are extremely replacable.
Screw em.

Anyway, quality of voice acting hardly even makes it to my list for deciding whether i like a game or not.

Voice Acting 101

Articles about voice acting

If you think voice acting is "easy", try it. Download a cartoon, zero out the sound, record your "easy" voiceover giving a believable personality to one of the characters, and publish it for GDNet denizens to criticize. Voice acting is real acting, and in some cases, voice acting is more difficult than stage and screen acting. Voice acting isn't "just coming in and reading lines". Honestly, if you've never recorded your voice, try voice acting. You'll be surprised to find out how stupid you actually sound. The same goes for musicians. If you think you're a great guitarist, record your playing and enjoy listening to all the mistakes you don't hear when you're not recording yourself.

Additionally, if voice acting is important to a certain game, then the decision to use voice acting will be made by someone internal to a game studio. Simply because you don't consider the quality of voice acting important to whether you purchase and play the game doesn't mean that the quality of voice acting in games that utilize voice actors isn't important.

Also note that filmmaking grunts and peons are paid normal job salaries, one-time fees, etc. The featured actors are paid huge fees and get royalties. If you're going to use the "what makes acting more important than the visual artistry" argument, think of film. The set designers, in most cases, are not paid royalties yet the actors are sometimes given royalties. Use the same argument: what makes the set designer less important than the actors? The argument doesn't work. Why?

Royalties is defined as "payment to the holder of a patent or copyright or resource for the right to use their property". An actor's likeness and voice are property of the actor. A voice actor's voice and derivative character voices are property of the voice actor. (The rights to those voices, however, can be sold.) A set designer's set for a movie, however, is property of the production studio. The same is true in non-entertainment industries. The copyright of visual work produced for a brochure is transferred to a client upon receipt of the final product; although, sometimes a copyright transfer agreement "seals the deal". You won't find many advertising agencies and graphics studios charging their clients royalties because the work produced for a client belongs to the client at the end of the contract.

The same is true for gifts. Legally, in the United States, when you purchase some item for someone and you give them the item as a gift, then the item belongs to that someone upon transfer. You can't later come back and say, "I want the gift I gave you back", because something went awry in the relationship. Law enforcement and the judiciary system will not support your claim.

Unless actors screw up like Colonel Sanders did with KFC who sold the rights to his name and likeness to KFC, actors and voice actors own the rights to their likeness and voice. In this case, because some games (products) use external property (voice) then voice actors are entitled to royalties.