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Thursday, October 27, 2016

LA Weekly Has Some Sort Of Issue With Voice Actors

In what seems to be a very biased piece of journalism LA Weekly's Dennis Romero wrote the headline, "Video Game Voice Actors Make $800 a Day, but They Want More."

The headline alone seems against voice actors. It's a rather funny piece where Dennis seems to hate voice actors, but gives no reason of personal dispute. Which is odd because he really seems to hate them for no good reason and I want to know now after reading this silly piece.

Oddly, it seems a piece more for Liz Ohanesian who constantly covers the more geeky side of things for LA Weekly.

Basically, what's happening now is the voice actors for video games want to be paid residuals and the the game companies say that it's hard to do unlike TV's and movies because of how games sales work.

Now Dennis does actually have facts in his article that seem to very much point out that voice actors should be paid residuals, but adds strange interjections like:

"So, of course, voice actors are on strike against video game companies, largely based here, over their measly pay — about $825 for a four-hour session of work. You could barely eat — first at Whole Foods, then at Mozza and finally at Providence — for that kind of cash."

and

"I have friends who have had to have surgery because of the vocal stress they incurred in the session, and they've been out of work for months." (Yelling out "Oranges for sale" at the side of a freeway all day is not half as unhealthful.)"

What Dennis could have done a better job at was explaining that even though voice actors might get paid a large amount. It might be months before getting another job if not longer. And as video games from major publishers are on par with studios, spending millions over dollars and on making video games they should have to treat those who work on their games with respect to fiances. 

If you're a freelance voice actor I'm not sure if you have any sort of medical insurance in place or anything resembling something to save for your retirement, so like many other industries there's nothing wrong with having residuals for those whose voice you hear in the game.

What really annoyed me was that this biased report didn't come from a small blog, but LA Weekly of all places.

Oh, man. He even managed to piss off Vegeta! Yes, the voice of Dragonball's Vegeta, Christopher Sabat, got into a Twitter Fight with him, priceless.