And, as members of the actor's union, they are paid scale. (edit: and royalties.)
I'm struck by the irony that voice actors (who work for a day or two on a video game) are paid royalties for years, while developers (who work crazy overtime for years on a video game) are paid a straight salary, then laid off after it ships as a "cost savings" measure.
So "your throat hurts" after a few days' work? I'm finding it difficult to muster sympathy.
> So "your throat hurts" after a few days' work? I'm finding it difficult to muster sympathy.
It's not their fault that developers aren't using unions to extract their share of the massive wealth that successful video games generate, and instead choose to work for free.
Here in Sweden where collective bargaining is widespread I haven't found that it's somehow in conflict with individual bargaining. Collective bargaining results in minimums, like this is the worst deal we can give you based on collective agreement. You can still bargain individually to get a better deal than that.
It can perhaps be an issue if you feel that you can be more attractive on the market by undercutting the competition, but I'd guess that the majority of game developers are not in that position.
In the US, in particular at least one NYC government agency, unionized "system analyst" jobs are common. They get a defined salary based on experience and level, an assigned eight hour shift with half-hour lunch break, and a clock that must be punched into on time. Another has kind and caring help desk people who nevertheless carefully watch the clock.
>Organizing means losing the right to individual bargaining when signing a new contract.
That's not accurate - Actors, for example, conduct individual bargaining all the time. They just get a guild minimum that protects them from being taken advantage of. It's not a cap on earnings.
And programmers in particular are taken with the notion that they are exceptional. They are, or aim to be, "10x programmers" who deserve multiples of their coworkers. They're already paid multiples of workers with comparable skills and comparable working hours -- though they do like to reinforce the myth of their superiority by working long hours.
They're not the usual temporarily embarrassed millionaires. They're temporarily comfortable billionaires.
> Edit: I'm not against this, but American Individualism makes people think they can get a better deal by negotiating alone.
One would think individualism should encourage a healthy level of skepticism towards corporate FUD, rather than unreflecting acceptance of trivial falsehoods as true.
Which is interesting because a voice actor could be replaced in a day with minimal impact, but if all the tech workers in a game shop went on strike, the shop would be shut down. It's worse than that, because even if the shop could replace them all the next day, it would take months to regain momentum, if at all, using new labor.
Just because another profession is worse off doesn't mean it does not deserve sympathy imo. Why not hope for both professions' working conditions to improve ?
On a side note, unionization is gaining traction amongst game devs, which will hopefully bring some (very needed) changes within the profession.
That has to do with consistency of employment. Most developers have reliable income; at any given time, approximately two percent of the actors guild is employed. Most actors, voice and otherwise, have day jobs; fifteen percent of actor's guild members make over sixteen thousand dollars from acting.
What do you mean with So "your throat hurts" after a few days' work? I'm finding it difficult to muster sympathy.? Why should anyone hurt anything after work? Where is the health and safety service for these people? And for you I guess... Is this some kind of sentiment I am to Dutch to understand?
I don't think it's a Dutch vs USA thing. More a white-collar vs blue-collar dichotomy. Some people don't seem to understand or appreciate how good they have it, and their complaints ring hollow to me. It's a matter of perspective.
>"Why should someone hurt after any work?"
Because some work is just HARD. It involves dangerous things (chemicals, biologicals, heavy things, powerful equipment, sharp edges, heights, etc.). The world is built by people willing to take on these tough tasks and not all of it can be accomplished by a digital assistant, or through pushing a button.
The bit about the actor bursting into tears from the idea of being paid to read a second day shows a serious lack of self-awareness and perspective.
Ask a stone mason how his shoulders and knees feel after a few days of stacking block. Or the oilfield worker, after a few hours of stacking straws on a derrick. Same goes for the guy in the steel mill working hour 10 of a 12-hour shift, the office janitor tidying up at night, the line cook at the restaurant on the corner, or the long haul truck driver clocking mile 600 with 200 more to go. Some work is just hard.
For the actors, watching a season or two of Mike Rowe's "Dirty Jobs" would be a suitable counterbalance.
> I'm struck by the irony that voice actors (who work for a day or two on a video game) are paid royalties for years, while developers (who work crazy overtime for years on a video game) are paid a straight salary, then laid off after it ships as a "cost savings" measure.
Not really. Developers have a monthly salary and a kind of work insurance paid by the company and/or the state in many parts of the world while most actors work in a risky business with sporadic work.
Also, if developers start getting royalties voice actors will receive less royalties or the company income will be reduced and all this could rebalance to, for example, more expensive games or lower developer salaries that at the end could be the same total.
Not saying it is not fair to paid developers royalties, just saying that sometimes there is a state of economic balance and changing it doesn't make it fairer at the end.
It's really depressing when people see that group A is doing reasonably well while group B is treated poorly, and conclude not that we should treat B better but that A needs to shut up about their problems.
Maybe not in the most literal sense, but I can't see how to read "So your throat hurts after a few days' work? I'm finding it difficult to muster sympathy" as anything but dismissive.
Shouldn't your contempt be saved for the devs who are dumb enough to work without royalties or a union contract? It seems like the voice actors are the ones who have it figured out and we are the dumb ones.
> And, as members of the actor's union, they are paid scale. (edit: and royalties.)
I do not think it's necessarily the case that they're paid royalties. I've considered getting audiobooks made for my books and Findaway Voices[1] and ACX both provide options where you just pay per finished hour.
A good narrator can cost $200 or more per finished hour, so it's not bad money and they're not assuming any risk. There are also options where the upfront payment is less and the narrator gets royalties.
And, as members of the actor's union, they are paid scale. (edit: and royalties.)
I'm struck by the irony that voice actors (who work for a day or two on a video game) are paid royalties for years, while developers (who work crazy overtime for years on a video game) are paid a straight salary, then laid off after it ships as a "cost savings" measure.
So "your throat hurts" after a few days' work? I'm finding it difficult to muster sympathy.