Video Game Voice actors to get more money.

OK, I’ve been following this a little bit.

Voice Actors Win Bigger Check

Wil Wheaton writes about it as an actor on his site, but as a developer I see things slightly differently.

So basically the actors are asking for more money from a few days work on a project. I do respect Wil and most actors for what they do but you I disagree with Wils statement - “Before some readers freak out that I don’t think $695 for four hours is very good, let me put this into perspective: in those four hours, we usually do several hundred takes, often screaming and yelling. It’s hard work, and we deserve to be compensated for it.”

I agree that they should be compensated and I dont thing 695 is unfair, but being a developer and staring at code for 10 hours a day 7 days a week for months on end trying to make a deadline set by some marketing dude is MUCH harder than a few hours of yelling and screaming.

He also states the actors get roughly 2% of a game total profit. Wait a minute… that seems very disproportionate to me… A voice actor in a game I guarantee does less than a .1% of the work involved in creating the game. Why is it that they deserve 2% of the profit? Halo 2 made $100 Million in the first day of release, the developers that wrote it probably make on average about 60K a year * 2 years = 120K. 25 Developers - That’s 3 Million! 3% of the profit of ONE day and your half a days work is worth 2%? I call bullshit!!

Again I don’t disagree with the fact that, ok you are providing a key point to the game by adding a voice to the digital characters so you deserve a share, but without the developers, the geeky guys in the cubicles who did 99% of the work, this game would not exist at all! I FIRMLY believe the money needs to go to the developers long before it goes to the actors.