If you haven't been keeping up on this, don't feel too bad, a frustratingly small amount of people think about this profession at all.
Voice acting is an extremely specialized skill and not just anyone can do it. Then why so little consideration for the men and women who voice Marcus Fenix, Laura Croft, Solid Snake, Fem Shep and the rest of your favorites?
Sometimes the job can be like the whole janitor thing, especially smaller roles; if you do a bad job, everyone notices, if you do a great job, no one notices. I've done some limited voice acting and some directing as well, and let me tell you, this job is harder than it looks.
Not only the physical part, which usually means standing in one spot for hours and hours, trying to pretend you are in a brutal, bloody sword fight without moving too much (the movements can be picked up on the mics and there is nothing worse than finally, finally nailing a take only to have the director tell you that you absent-mindedly scratched your belly so it's unusable). The real tough part about the job is mentally checking your voice every two seconds, making sure you are keeping "the voice" that you've come up with for you character and trying to give the director what he wants, which can be insanely hard, especially with a less than amazing director.
"No, a little less sad. Uh huh...yeah, a little less than that. Uh huh....ok, well, obviously more sad than that. She's your daughter, and she's gone. Well, come on, not THAT sad. She was adopted, after all. Did you even pre-read your scripts?"
It can be infuriating, trust me. So they've been striking and they are looking for a few things: they want better wages, bonus considerations a head's up on which project and what character they will be playing (this info is usually not disclosed, to keep the project's secrecy intact), and actor protection policies put into place, among other things. If you don't think you can get hurt on this job, try walking into a 4 hour session and having the director tell you, "Ok, in this scene, you have been captured. You shriek in horror as they kill your wife. Shriiiiiiiiiek for your wife! Ok, on this next line, you scream for God to save your babies! Screeeeam to your merciful God! Oh, but he didn't hear your plea! Your babies are gone! Wail for your missing children! Now, the monsters decide to torture you and they are bringing out the hot poker!"
So, good news for voice actors. For almost a year they've had a strike going against 11 of the big gaming companies, including EA, Activision, Disney Character Voices and Take-2 Interactive Software and a handful of others.
But after almost a year of striking, it looks like they've got something everyone can live with.
The official statement reads:
“The terms of the tentative agreement, which was reached early Saturday morning, include a new bonus structure that provides an additional payment to performers. The bonus payment, which is due no later than the release date of the game, is based on the number of sessions worked on each game . . . The deal also contains an employer commitment to continue working with SAG-AFTRA on the issue of vocal stress during the term of the agreement.”
This is a good thing. This is good for us, the games and the actors. The video game companies are rich as hell and a lot of times they are using BS strategies to get your money, like heavy micro-transactions and day one DLC (looking at you EA) without properly protecting and compensating their actors.
