Niko, Cry Me a River

May 22nd, 2008 · 9 Comments

At first I was full of righteous indignation about Michael Hollick’s story in the NY Times the other day about his “less than stellar pay.” I mean, come on, you poor baby, you didn’t get royalties? Get in line, dude. You got a hundred thousand dollars for part time work over 15 months. I’d love to make that kind of coin.

But then I realized, waitaminute, he’s got a point. He does deserve royalties. We all do. Every last one of us who works on a videogame does. Nevermind that I’ve worked in the industry for ten years and have only received one royalty check to date. If the game makes money, good business practices state that sharing a bit of that with the folks who helped you make that money will ensure they stick around and help you make s’more.

But then I read still further into the article, and realized he got paid a “day rate” for acting. The day rate isn’t any kind of a normal, hourly rate. Nor is it comparable to any payrate you or I would expect to see for an honest 8 hours worth of work. Hell, sometimes you don’t even have to be there all 8 hours to earn it. It’s also trumped up to ludicrous scale levels, in order to cover the actor’s personal medical costs, travel costs, agency costs, etc. And it wasn’t just the Actor’s Guild’s normal $730/day day-rate. Oh no, Rockstar went even further and offered up $1,050/day.

Extrapolating that number out, Mr. Hollick was payed $1,050 for enough time for him to make roughly $100,000. That means if he worked full time (and this is normal “9-to-5″ full time, not game industry “10-to-ass’o'clock” full time) 5 days/week, he would have only had to work for just a day or two over three months to make that money, with weekends off. If he worked “full time” for the duration of those 15 months, he would have been paid around $472,500. Let that number sink in for a minute.

So let’s recap: The NY Times, Kotaku, etc., think Mr. Hollick here should get more money. He made roughly six times the amount of money as an average video-game employee made in 2007, and he and probably half of games journalism thinks he deserves even more?

Excuse me, but screw you, Mr. Hollick, NY Times, et all. If anyone deserves more money, it’s the people who busted their asses and strained their personal relationships for years to make that game. I guarantee you every guy on that game team wishes they made the money Hollick made. I doubt even the team lead makes that kind of bank. That’s VP/Executive/CEO salary levels Hollick was making.

Good lord, man, cry me a river.

Bookmark and Share

Close Bookmark and Share This Page

Save to Browser Favorites / Bookmarks

Email This to a Friend

Copy HTML:

If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.

Tags: business

9 responses so far ↓

1 Tim // May 22, 2008 at 10:49 pm

Right on!

I like that your reaction was to get righteously indignant and then stop to think about it, do the math and then REALLY get righteously indignant.
2 Ben // May 23, 2008 at 2:04 am

Pay isn’t decided by how hard you work, it’s decided by the amount of value you add for your employer.

I haven’t played GTA4, but I suspect that if the main character’s voice artist was terrible it would be much more noticeable than (for example) a few poorly-optimised shaders.
3 Jamo // May 23, 2008 at 7:14 am

[rant]
true enough but, i believe that you should be payed by how hard you work, so movie stars and people who hardly do any real work should get payed squat shit but people like construction workers should get payed shit tons.

He got payed to talk, payed more that the coders who actually have to know shit to so there job.
[/rant]
4 Tenyu // May 23, 2008 at 7:39 am

A great post indeed, however I cannot agree all your opinions. It seems that you’re seeing this issue from a game producer’s aspect, not from a voice actor’s. If an animation movie meets an unexpected success, it’s not a nonsense request for a voice actor to ask for more pay. As for a game’s voice actor it is still the case. However when the two sides make contract, th.e problem of standards difference poped up. Then comes the conflict.
5 Ben // May 23, 2008 at 8:07 am

@Jamo

You can believe that all you want, but you can’t run a capitalist economy that way. Apart from anything else, it’s more unfair.
6 Roc // May 23, 2008 at 9:20 am

Sure, Michael Hollick got paid more than most people who worked on GTA IV and is probably one of the last who deserve royalties/residuals based on who the suits are really putting the screws to.

However — that shouldn’t be the primary discussion point. That’s what the publishers would like you to focus on - so that you inadvertently line up on their side of the ‘Royalties are not an option’ argument.

It’s poisonous for the game industry.

SAG/AFTRA/WGA/etc have been a net positive to the entire film industry, due in no small part to their ending the studio system and securing residuals/royalties for creatives so that they can actually make a sane career out of the business with some semblance of quality-of-life.

What game developers need to start thinking about - is how you guys can start the ball rolling in the same direction. Maybe it helps to let SAG/AFTRA/WGA/et al do the heavy lifting with their expensive lawyers and experienced negotiators, to get -real- royalties onto the table and open things up for pattern bargaining.

Do they -deserve- to be first or get more? No. I don’t think they are any more important. However, I also don’t think that negates the fact that you -all- deserve royalties/residuals nor the good that they can do in getting the ball rolling.
7 Fun Link Friday » Games News and Reviews » Binary Joy // May 23, 2008 at 10:20 am

[...] they should be paid scaling amounts based upon how well the game does. Personally I disagree, and this post on Game-ism explains my feelings better than I [...]
8 Dastardly Josh // May 23, 2008 at 5:52 pm

He decided to work in a different industry. Games doesn’t work like the rest of the entertainment industry (though games could learn a few things as far as production goes, but that’s an altogether different issue).
It’s like if a Chef who wasn’t working in a major restaurant decided to move into fast food and complained that his pay was “less than stellar.” It’s a bad comparison but I think you see the point. Just because you choose to do a “lesser” job doesn’t mean you should get the royal treatment. It’s not like he’s a top shelf actor either. He’s had a couple episode in Law and Order. That’s all.
Honestly, he made a killing in the game industry. He should be happy he wasn’t paid at the entry level, which is where he is.
9 Andrew // Jun 8, 2008 at 9:48 pm

This is the wrong issue. So what if Hollick made $100K over 15 months? Shouldn’t DEVELOPERS as well as actors get a cut of the back-end if a game is wildly successful? I think developers should unionize, but that’s just my opinion. Who’s making the money? The producers. Who’s getting screwed? The people who made the game what it is. Think about it.