news
- Niko Wants His Money!
- Posted 7 months, 2 weeks ago by Coop
You may not know who Michael Hollick is, but if you heard him speak there is a pretty good chance you would recognize his voice as Niko Bellic’s from Grand Theft Auto IV. Hollick leant not only his acting talents to the game, but motion did capture for the protagonist of GTA IV for the game’s many cut scenes. The actor was featured in an article in the NY Times recently, where he detailed his pay and expressed concerns with the current union’s inability to attain residuals for actors doing voices in video games.
“Obviously I’m incredibly thankful to Rockstar for the opportunity to be in this game when I was just a nobody, an unknown quantity… but it’s tough, when you see Grand Theft Auto IV out there as the biggest thing going right now, when they’re making hundreds of millions of dollars, and we don’t see any of it. I don’t blame Rockstar. I blame our union for not having the agreements in place to protect the creative people who drive the sales of these games. Yes, the technology is important, but it’s the human performances within them that people really connect to, and I hope actors will get more respect for the work they do within those technologies.”Hollick pulled in a reported $100,000 for his work on the role, which spanned fifteen months. Compared to the salary of a lowly game journalist that may seem like a lot, but as far as actors’ pay it is definitely disproportionate to what it should be. Even mediocre actors playing a bit part in large movies pull in nearly a million dollars, and their products don’t go on to make $500,000,000 in the first week. Voice actors for video games don’t get the same benefits as actors in film or television because they are in different unions, and Michael Hollick is becoming a spokesman for equal pay for equal work – a rally that usually begins any motion towards equality in the workplace. For as easy as it is to jump up and attack him for asking for more money, he really didn’t get paid the amount of money he deserves for the part. $100k for 15 months of motion capture and nearly a dozen hours of spoken dialogue for a game that is likely to pull in over a billion dollars before the end of the year doesn’t really cut it.
The different characters in Grand Theft Auto IV helped build the environment, and the unique personalities that you meet throughout GTA IV helped make it one of the better games ever made. Much of that was in the voice acting of not just Niko, but many of the different characters throughout the game. My hope is that we will begin to see more respect for voice actors in videogames in the future, and maybe, next time, things will be different.
Related Articles:
Grand Theft Auto IV - Xbox 360
| Share this article: |
|
Comments
i'm pretty sure gta was anticipating a greater outcome than what they estimated to be "fair" for their dear voice actor here. tiffs like this goes to show that the game industry, along with the internet, is a booming industry. hopefully more structure will develop to fairly give a piece of a pie to all of those who deserve it and prevent others from taking advantage.
100,000 ain't bad for a little over a years worth of work. Unless Niko is in the next GTA that comes out this voice actor has no solid ground to stand on. Now if it is going to be the same character he could try and ask for more moola, but I doubt Rockstar will keep Niko around especially after this stunt....
also, whose to say how much these people are worth. no one could have known that gta was going to make so much money. also, there's like a hundred voice actors listed in the manual. are they all supposed to get residuals?
Game developers get away with paying their voice actors less because they aren't members of the SAG. This is good for the devs but bad for the actors. Game writers also are not included in the screen writers guild... but this can be good for writers because right now they can't work Television/Movies without being scabs...
But when it all comes down to it, would incorporating into SAG and Screen Writers Guild help further legitimize the video game industry? Let us ponder these things...
This could incite a Hollywood era for games... but at the same time it could wreck indie developers and risk takers... wierd conundrum.
So you got paid for the work, and now you want more? Who do you think you are, a professional athlete?