Niko wants to get paid

[TheDukeOfBoston]

Too long of a story to copy the whole thing, so I'm only doing the Link (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/arts/television/21gta.html?_r=3&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin)


So basically, the voice actor who played Niko in GTA4 is pissed that he only got paid 100,000 dollars over 20 months to voice a game that's breaking entertainment sales records. Should the voice/motion capture actors be getting some sort of residual on these big games? I'm a bit divided on the article and want to hear some opinion.

[Heretic Monkey]

They get what they signed up for. He should've known that the game was going to be insanely popular long before we even agreed to start the voicework. I definitely agree that the voice of Niko should get more than $100,000, but if he didn't sign a contract to that effect, oh well.

[Icebolt]

No, he shouldn't get anything else. It's business. He should've made smarter decisions.

[KingOfBBQ.]

I have to agree with the other guys on this. He knew what he was getting and he knew how big the game was going to be so there's no point in complaining about it.

He should cherish the fact that he had the privilege to do the voice of the main character of the most popular game in the world. He was talking about how he was a 'nobody' before GTAIV and saying he just took whatever he could get because he was so desperate. Well, now he is a 'somebody' in every sense of the word because of how insanely popular this game is and I think that the money people will pay for his voice after this game will be far greater than any kind of bonus he gets from Rockstar.

[Crazy Jamie]

No, he shouldn't get anything else. It's business. He should've made smarter decisions.
Short, sharp and to the point. It should have been obvious to him that this game would be as popular as it has been doing. I would have more sympathy with him if the game wasn't hyped and ended up being a world beater, but he should have seen this coming and negotiated his contract accordingly.

[Neo Matrix]

I get the feeling if he had, then Rockstar probably would have been more likely to go with someone else...

[Ants!]

I get the feeling if he had, then Rockstar probably would have been more likely to go with someone else...
I was about to post this exact same thing. If he complained about the pay before hand he might not have gotten the job at all.

For a game that huge, 100,000 dollars spread out over more than 3 years of work is kinda cheap.

[Crazy Jamie]

I was about to post this exact same thing. If he complained about the pay before hand he might not have gotten the job at all.

Then once again that is still his problem if he is in an industry (i.e. voice acting) with far more supply than demand.

[Ants!]

I know, but that doesn't change that the pay was cheap. I'm not really arguing that he couldn't have found a better job.

[Crazy Jamie]

I'm not sure that we're in a position to say that the pay was cheap even on its own merits. If he was working 9-5 every week for those three years, then yes it was very cheap. But I highly doubt that that was the case.

[dominatrixdave]

The OP said 20 months, not 40 as I believe you may have misread it as. In that case, that's about $62,500 per year. That's not too shabby, but I don't know anything about the video game voice acting industry standards, so...

[Ants!]

The OP said 20 months, not 40 as I believe you may have misread it as. In that case, that's about $62,500 per year. That's not too shabby, but I don't know anything about the video game voice acting industry standards, so...
For some reason I was thinking of 6 months in a year and 6 goes into 20 at least 3 times. My bad :P

[Neo Matrix]

Another way to quantify it would be to look at how much the other voice actors got paid in relation to their role in the game. I'm talking about the "unknowns" rather than the celebrity cameos because they will almost always cost more.