New York Times: "A Videogame Star and his Less-Than-Stellar Pay."
 

This article talks about Michael Hollick, the guy who voiced Niko Bellic for GTA4. Videogame voice actors have never received residuals for their work, but with the upcoming Screen Actors Guild negotiations, they'll probably be pushing for it.

Note: his "less than stellar pay" was $100,000.

While I agree that the sum of money is a lot less than what a voice actor is usually paid, in the grand scheme of things (programmers, marketing, etcetera) this payroll is probably a lot more than what he should be credited for, considering people don't play games because of the voice acting (except for maybe those 50 Cent games). Do you believe the industry should comply with the Voice Acting Guild if something about this gets through?

Didn't put this in Gaming because this is about the voice actor and not the game per se.

GTA IV grossed $500,000,000 in one week.

for that kind of money I'd appear naked in the freaking game!

Yeah but the question is how much the voice actors contribute to that?
I would say very little. I would say most of it was due to the programmers and the game they created rather than the efforts of the voice actor.
I mean he has some kind of dispute in that his voice was used all over the place in ads and things but I still think its rather different case.

The sounds, sights and realism of the game are what matters. Voices have little to nothing to do with it, sometimes I just disable voices in my games, seems like they take away from the fun of it, I don't want to listen to people, I want to blow shit up!

Well, voices are a major part of sounds and realism in the games. The voices you're turning off? Yeah, those are likely the ones where someone half-assed the voicework and it came out distracting and annoying, right?

For me, I like getting involved in the story of a game, to be able to become engrossed in the characters and their motivations for the blowing up of shit. A good voice performance in modern games makes a huge difference in this. For instance, I've been playing No More Heroes for the past few days and have been getting a kick out of the intentionally over-the-top performances of its voice cast, as well as having some "hey, cool" moments from cameos by veteran voice actors like Steve Blum and Dee Bradley Baker.

The long and the short of it, though, is that acting in a video game these days really is the same as acting in a movie or TV show and should be covered under union deals just as performances in those other media are.

Nonetheless he did contribute, and he gave a character a personality that goes far beyond simple text. CJ in San Andreas had excellent voice acting and Sam Jackson did Tenpenny very well. In my opinion their voice acting defined the characters and it's kind of heartless to undersell their participation and by extension Michael Hollick's.

I dunno. In commercials and animated features and such, where the voice is one of the main features holding and directing your attention, I can see the clear argument for residuals, but in videogames they're just sorta a spice. If it's great, yay, but if it's shitty you can mute the television and (hopefully) enjoy what you actually spent money on, namely playing the game.

I think residuals work best when they go to the people who are most responsible, those contributions that irrevocably alter the finished product. In the case of video games, while competent voice actors are a great boon, I can guarantee that a vast majority of players buy games because they want to play, rather than listen.
What about the animators who made the character look realistic? What about the programmers who made the character's movement, and the movements of the entire world, realistic? I couldn't find a 'programmer's union' nor any information about the residuals a typical videogame programmer gets, so I might be arguing out my ass (in this case I'd be glad to be proven wrong and find a site where coding grunts talk about the backends of the latest AAA title they worked on) but I don't think the people actually responsible for the game I'm playing are getting dividends on the hot project they helped create.

In a perfect world everyone who contributed would get some sort of residual for their involvement, but we haven't reached that point yet. In the meantime, shouldn't those most responsible for the finished product be given residual priority?

I wanna know how much the guys who did Psychonauts were paid.

That being said, think of how long it takes to do the voice acting for one game - all the cinematic scenes, the grunts and "oof" noises your character makes as they do their various acrobatics. A lot goes into doing the voice over, and I'd go so far as to say that it's as tough as a movie or television actor - they can't even see who they're talking to, they have a tougher time getting into character...

I'd agree that these guys should get paid more, depending on how long their role is/was. If you go in for a day and do a few lines, great - but if you're in there every day for a few months, cut the guys a check.

That's a great argument for why programmers should form a union to advocate for their interests, but it doesn't strike me as much of one for why their not having done so means that actors should stop using the union they do have to advocate for their own.

If programmers aren't getting paid residuals it isn't because voice actors are getting paid residuals (which they aren't, currently, getting paid); it's because game publishers are choosing not to pay them residuals and programmers don't have a mechanism for compelling the studios to do so.