Troy Baker talks about residual cheques in gaming.

[Neilg]

Also, someone earlier in this thread was indicating that a character artist is making 150k/yr with little experience? L-O-fucking L.

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I didn't say character artist - I said artist with experience managing a team of people.
How you went from experience managing a team to 'little' experience is beyond me.

75 in NYC is someone in their late 20's with a few years experience, its not far above entry level. That's what you get paid when you can work unsupervised. 100+ comes when you supervise others and climbs with the size of your team.
I don't know any 3d artists over the age of 35 making less than this guy did for the v/o work.

 

[Feep]

Bot

Both developers and voice actors should be treated better

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The voice actor was paid 100k for what appears to be *not* a full-time job. In addition, the union takes care of health care and other benefits for its members.

Tons of voice actors, my friends among them, struggle, and the voice actor strike a couple years back was not undeserved. But in this case, he did just fine, and the actors are at least fortunate enough to have a union representing their interests.

I didn't say character artist - I said artist with experience managing a team of people.
How you went from experience managing a team to 'little' experience is beyond me.

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You did not, and you edited your post to remove you saying otherwise.

Even then, 150k is a relatively extreme high end, even for "managers". https://www.glassdoor.com/Job/3d-artist-jobs-SRCH_KO0,9.htm

 

[Chance_Boudreaux]

I don't have time to watch the full video, but what are the unfortunate points that get brought up?

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• Troy said (although he understood his position) the actor complaining about residuals was not a good look, as $100K is a lot of money.
• For every Red Dead, GTA, Call of Duty, Apex Legends or Fortnite, there are thousands of games that barely ship/break even, so mandating residuals would only tap into those top-selling games.
• Infamous Second Son was a big wake-up call as it had to sell 3 million units to break even, it sold 2.5 - 3.5 million when the PS4 had 7 million users. Although it was successful, it barely captured 50% of users with zero competition. In other words, people didn't buy it just because (like they do CoD, GTA or Red Dead) and if that game barely broke even what chances do smaller games have?
• A residuals mandate would cause developers to scope their games and hire less actors.
• The legal department would put calls out for non-union actors as a workaround.
• Composers are in the same boat as actors but with none of the leverage, so they had to give up this dream ages ago. Performance Rights Organisations help them receive residuals in TV/movies through "secondary market income", as each showing is considered a public performance. In games, however, developers typically only make money off of the initial sale, therefore there is no secondary market income.
• PROs are exploring the idea of Twitch being comparable to TV networks. Sort of like Spotify, the residuals from Twitch would most likely be far less than what they get through TV networks.

 

[NSESN]

When there are devs that sometimes aren't even paid, voice actors getting "only" 100k isnt a big problem

 

[Neilg]

You did not, and you edited your post to remove you saying as such.

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It never said character artist. It was edited a second after posting to fix a typo. You misread because it has the word little in it.

The scale I outlined is based on a major city like la, Vancouver, NYC, etc. Who gives a shit what people get paid in a small town in Utah, that's not where rockstar are based?

None of that fucking matters anyway. Fact is he got paid less for his work than a lot of people who were more replaceable. If something happened to him half way through production that prevented him from working, how much of a mess would it have created?

I believe you should be paid somewhat in line with how important/potentially disruptive your role is. actors are well outside of the curve. That's my opinion, I don't really understand why so many people want to fight about it and try to pick holes in the statement.

A voice actor and motion capture for the lead who is front and center of the entire game is probably around the same level of contribution/importance as a creative director.

No Salaries for Cgi Senior Creative Director in New York City, NY | Glassdoor

No salaries for Cgi Senior Creative Director in New York City. Try searching for similar jobs, similar companies, or nearby cities.

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[Nome]

A voice actor and motion capture for the lead who is front and center of the entire game is probably around the same level of contribution/importance as a creative director.

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Not. Even. Close.

 

[Neilg]

Not. Even. Close.

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What position do you think the actor who spent 15 months playing and voicing Nico is comparable to?

 

[Nome]

What position do you think the actor who spent 15 months playing and voicing Nico is comparable to?

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This idea of comparable roles is a pointless exercise. They're completely different disciplines that play very different roles. Both are also very replaceable in their own way. But he sure as hell isn't remotely comparable to the person who probably oversaw his performance, among many other things, for the duration of development.

 

[Cabal]

When there are devs that sometimes aren't even paid, voice actors getting "only" 100k isnt a big problem

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What developer at Rockstar isn't getting paid? Other than interns, I imagine everyone from customer service agents to programmers get a paycheck. The devs that don't get paid, don't typically work for mega publishers or billion dollar corporations.

I wouldn't compare working for Rockstar with an indie developer at all as far as money goes.

 

[Feep]

It never said character artist. It was edited a second after posting to fix a typo. You misread because it has the word little in it.

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I didn't misread shit. You miscommunicated. And "3D character artist" is a type of "3D artist". Is it environment? Or rigger, or animator? Or did you mean "art director", which is, in fact, a better paid position due to its importance? These people are not generally referred to as "3D artist".

The scale I outlined is based on a major city like la, Vancouver, NYC, etc. Who gives a shit what people get paid in a small town in Utah, that's not where rockstar are based?

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First of all, cool job belittling any game developer working "not in a big city", second of all, I work in Los Angeles and am very familiar with wages paid here.

None of that fucking matters anyway. Fact is he got paid less for his work than a lot of people who were more replaceable. If something happened to him half way through production that prevented him from working, how much of a mess would it have created?

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Voice actors are recast literally all the time. Members of the art team are not "more replaceable". Ugh. Both are integral to the project.

I believe you should be paid somewhat in line with how important/potentially disruptive your role is. actors are well outside of the curve. That's my opinion, I don't really understand why so many people want to fight about it and try to pick holes in the statement.

A voice actor and motion capture for the lead who is front and center of the entire game is probably around the same level of contribution/importance as a creative director.

No Salaries for Cgi Senior Creative Director in New York City, NY | Glassdoor

No salaries for Cgi Senior Creative Director in New York City. Try searching for similar jobs, similar companies, or nearby cities.

www.glassdoor.com

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My dog, that's a *creative director*, usually the head of the entire project. Them goal posts keep movin'. And holy shit the comparison of creative director to a voice actor is not even fucking CLOSE. You apparently know nothing about game development.

 

[Neilg]

First of all, cool job belittling any game developer working "not in a big city", second of all, I work in Los Angeles and am very familiar with wages paid here.

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You're just picking for things to argue with. This is someone working for rockstar. Their studios are in major cities. Utah is not relevant.
If you're familiar with wages paid in major cities why were you arguing with me trying to make them out to be much lower than they actually are?

You're right that the creative director was not an equal comparison. Are you arguing that a non senior environment artist is comparable to the lead actor?

 

[Feep]

You're just picking for things to argue with. This is someone working for rockstar. Their studios are in major cities. Utah is not relevant.
If you're familiar with wages paid in major cities why were you arguing with me trying to make them out to be much lower than they actually are?

You're right that the creative director was not an equal comparison. Are you arguing that a non senior environment artist is comparable to the lead actor?

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Because even in major cities, "3D artists" do not make that kind of cash. Period. Art directors might, if it's a well established company. Rockstar certainly qualifies.

Also, even though these direct comparisons are generally asinine, generally, yes, though it depends on the size of the team and the importance of the narrative. Artists work longer on the project and cannot seek other work during the process. And we've already established that there were long gaps in the recording schedule and it's likely he wasn't working continuously for fifteen months, so even the "75k/year" figure is not accurate.

 

[Pyro]

Cool to hear him talk about it as I always wondered about the financial realities of royalties for VAs in games ever since the strike.