As you probably know from the last hundred or so articles about the very big business of video games, they're no longer a niche market. The biggest titles routinely outgross Hollywood movies, and major motion picture studios are beginning to tailor their releases so as not to conflict with the street dates of huge video game titles like Halo and Guitar Hero. More and more, video games are being treated like movies: the scripts get more complex, the special effects get more elaborate, the money gets bigger, and release dates become more important. There's one way in which the two industries aren't exactly the same, though, and that's in the way they pay their actors.
The bigger video games get, the more they begin to attract brand-name Hollywood actors to do voice work. Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto franchise pioneered this, getting big stars like Samuel L. Jackson, Peter Fonda and Ray Liotta to provide the voices of characters in previous installments. This time around, with the critically acclaimed and best-selling Grand Theft Auto IV, they went the opposite direction, hiring a cast of relative unknowns to play Eastern European immigrant Niko Bellic and his rotating cast of friends and enemies. But one thing has held true, as the New York Timesrecently reported: unlike with television, film, and all other media, actors in digital media receive no royalties or residuals for their work. As a result, Michael Hollick (who plays Niko Bellic, and received $100,000 for a little more than a year's work) finds himself starring in the most popular entertainment product in America -- and isn't getting a single dime more than he was originally paid. It's an unusual situation without an easy solution, and Hollick doesn't blame Rockstar -- he blames the Screen Actor's Guild, which hasn't been especially forward-looking in its negotiations over digital media. Indeed, if predictions of an actor's strike this summer come to fruition, it's likely that, just as with the writer's strike earlier this year, digital media royalties and pay rates will be the central issue. Meanwhile, Hollick and thousands of actors like him will have to suffer through getting no royalties for their video game work, regardless of the product's success.
Or will they? Ben Fritz, who writes the "Cut Scene" video game blog for Variety, points out that there is indeed a little-known provision covering video game in the current SAG contract; it just doesn't involve residuals. Protests have been staged, and contract talks have taken place, with the end result of a hike in the day rate -- just no change to the 0% residual rate. And while internet royalties have been a talking point in recent SAG contract discussions, video games have been largely ignored, and this summer's labor dispute will be with the television and movie studios, with game companies not involved. That means the current state of affairs will last until at least 2009, at which the Screen Actors' Guild contract with video game publishers expires. If, by that time, there have been a few more games that generate as much income and publicity as GTAIV -- and a few more actors like Michael Hollick to point out how much money they could have made if the SAG had structured a better contract -- you can bet that the issue will be at the forefront of new contract negotiations.
