Game Gallery Amusements

By Mike Snider, USA TODAY
The actors who supply the voices in video games are calling for more money. And today, more than 1,900 will have their say on whether their unions (the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists) should go on strike against gamemakers over the lack of profit-sharing.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: The popular game features the voices of Samuel L. Jackson, Ice-T and Chris Penn.
Rockstar Games
SAG plans to announce the results of the strike vote today. But it has not set a date to take action on the voting, says Seth Oster, a SAG senior executive and spokesman for both unions.
If a strike is called, replacement non-union voices would be needed, or actors would have to cross picket lines to record voices. But production is done on most games due this year, such as From Russia with Love with Sean Connery and The Godfather, for which Marlon Brando recorded before his death.
Voice actors say they are not sharing in the riches of the $10-billion-a-year industry. But game publishers say voice actors are just part of a increasingly costly and complex development process in which a typical game costs $5 million or more and several times that for blockbusters.
"Everyone should share in the profits and the failures," says actor Michael Ironside, voice of Sam Fisher in Ubisoft's Tom Clancy Splinter Cell games. He says he won't voice games during a strike. "There needs to be a standard for the people who can't protect themselves, the rank-and-file performer."
Negotiations on a new agreement broke off last month. Gamemakers proposed increases of about 35% in minimum rates, plus raises in overtime pay. The unions are asking for additional payments based on sales, which would have cost the industry an extra several million dollars in 2004, Oster says.
"There is simply no question that professional performers make these games come alive and that the video games that they perform in sell the most," he says.
Union actors lent voices to nine of 10 of last year's top video games, Oster says. That includes Halo 2, with Michelle Rodriguez, David Cross and Ron Perlman, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, with Samuel L. Jackson, Ice-T and Chris Penn.
But publishers are prepared to find voice replacements for games in production, says Howard Fabrick, negotiator for the publishers: "If they hit the bricks, I think they are going to stay out, because once alternative ways of voicing the games is achieved, there is going to be no reinventing the wheel."
More than 100 artists, programmers, engineers and producers are involved in a typical big-time video game; few share in profits. Voiceovers amount to roughly one-2400th of the total man-hours spent in creating a typical game, Fabrick says.
Just more than 50 console games of the more than 1,000 released last year sold 500,000 units or more, the Entertainment Software Association says. Overall, about 10% of the games released are "what keep the video game companies afloat," says Mike Goodman, analyst for The Yankee Group.
Gamemakers often leave acquiring voice actors to production companies such as Blindlight, which has Halo 2 and Kiefer Sutherland in the upcoming 24: The Game among its credits, and has participated in labor talks. "If there is a strike, we will continue to produce excellent voice assets using whatever resources are available to us," says general manager Lev Chapelsky. "The union membership risks losing all this work, which could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars over the next 10 years."
If a strike occurs, game players probably won't notice much of a difference, GamePro editor Sid Shuman says. "I think if you asked gamers what is more important, recognizable voices or prices not climbing higher, they are going to opt for lower prices."