This just gets more complicated... In this case, quality sure doesn't equal quantity.

Hmm... I would think that members of the team's staff would care more about the quality of the voice work than just some random voice actor who may not even care about video games...

id love to be a voice actor. i can change my voice up pretty good.

Very interesting news. I like to support my video game voice actors and actresses out there. They a job well done without too much money to earn, but they are passionate enough for there video game to be know and heard, and to be known and heard well. They staff needs to encourage better voice acting, even if it means to sacrifice some money to do it. It's at least better than having a bland game with horrible voice acting. The actors and actresses make the character come to life and then need to be more appreciated.

Thanks for the news.

If a certain voice actor is good at what they do.. I mean if they go in with every intention to give their best performance and do just that, then they deserve better pay. If the voice actor just goes into the studio and talks without any real effort, then they'll take what they can get.

you don't have to be a voice actor to be in video games,i think the development team's voice's do just fine.

SAG actors need to check themselves or risk being frozen out of the gaming industry altogether. Anyone who  demands residuals when the rest of the industry gets paid as salary or contractors is either idiotic or insane.  

It's true - while voice acting in video games may be getting better, and there's more of it, most of it is still not on par with the worst movies out there.  If actors want more money they better step up their acting chops.  It's the same thing with movie actors - the better they are the more money they get.  Not everyone who's acted in a video game should get the big bucks, but Nolan North on the other hand (who, arguably, is the video game actor equivalent of Harrison Ford or Robert DeNiro) would rightly deserve it.  Whatever the outcome, I never had a problem with a team's staff providing the voices - sometimes even they can be better than some so-called "working" actors (believe me - I'm an independent filmmaker and I'll be hard pressed to find anybody who can act their way out of a paperbag).  'Nuff said.

"the impression that developers don't think actors are providing an irreplaceable service" is going to change in an almighty hurry when the Speilbergs and Camerons come knocking looking to cash in on the burgeoning video game market. Not necessarily for movie to game ports either. For a design studio to forego the employment of solid voice talent is like George Lucas foregoing the inclusion of the Force in a Star Wars episode.

I'm sorry, but if video game developers want ANY sort of compensation for their toils, they are going to have to come to the self-drawn conclusion that only by utilizing the very best in ingredients are we, the consumer going to be persuaded to lay down our hard-earned dollars for it. There can be no 'cheaping out' on any of the elements as we, the consumer become more and more media savvy as the days move on. You're talking about a generation of consumers here that are fully versed what the sum of the parts equates to given that the human/machine interface has transcended simply being 'utilitarian' to now being visually and ergonomically stimulating.

If the manufacturers of self-checkout screen software understand the importance of the minute (but sub-consciously evident nonetheless) nuances of human/machine interaction, and lay down good money to make the experience more attractive and appealing to us, you'd hope to God video game developers would also.

Activision made over US$3 billion on the Call of Duty franchise thus far. Do you honestly believe that $3 billion would have found it's way into their coffers if they hadn't spent a large measure of that money ensuring that every little death cry, every character we invest in and each little plea of urgency the in-game avatars make to us wasn't the most amazing we'd ever heard. Apply that to almost EVERY game you have ever played and been fully absorbed into so much that you couldn't help but tell a friend who also went out and purchased it because of your shining and passionate testament.

From a review standpoint again, we are so much more exacting when we dissect the body of a game into it's base elements. Each review focuses on Graphics, Playability, Re-Playability, Storyline and Sound. That Sound element includes voice acting as surely as it includes the popcorn staccato of your SMG or the supernatural whoosh of that dragon taking flight. Without stellar voice actors performing stellar voice acting, one of those elements fails and therefore, diminishes the end result, thereby giving us less than we as exacting consumers deserve. Reserve a bit role for your employee for a job well done or maybe a birtday present, but don't populate the entire game with voices from the accounting department. Listen very carefully developers: We know the difference and we're the ones with the money.

If you're going to make cherries jubilee, you'd best be using fresh cherries or don't make it at all.

This is a really interesting topic because of how you have two different worlds as far as contracts are handled. The gaming world follows the corporate model - you get paid hourly, get compensations, bonuses, etc. But that gaming world uses talents from the performing artist world, who are used to get residuals. Makes me wonder how much the initial payment is for big name voice actors like Keith David if he's working on a video game everyone knows will sell millions of copies.

Personally, I don't like seeing Bobby Kotick getting million dollar bonuses while the artists and developers don't get anything, but that's just the corporate world for ya.

Quality > All else man

They should get paid more if the quality of their acting improves.

Uncharted 2 deserves a whole lot more than... well, a lot of other games, let me just say that.

I think the quality of their acting should get better before they start demnding more money.

As long as this doesn't turn into a Game drought, like the Writer's Guild Strike. That ruined a whole season of TV across the board. I'm only worried that this might mean more Triple-A games are gonna get delayed or pushed back because some jerk-off actor wants more money.

i would make a kick ass voice actor.  and i work on the cheap.

oh well...

There are few titles that have really quality voice-acting. And these idiots want more money. They do almost nothing. They have absolutely no significance in the development of the game.

@Bishop - eloquently, and I completely agree.  As we, the gaming community, mature, so do our tastes and expectations.  We also fully understand our buying power, as you mentioned.  Let's hope developers turn this conflict into something that benefits the medium.  

Of course, I meant "eloquently stated."

I definitely don't think every game has award-winning quality of voicework, but certainly some shine above others. I don't think including celebrities does any favors to the game except hamper the budget. But anime has its collection of excellent voice actors for English dubbing and such; I don't see why video games can't have a similar collective.

Oh, and hiring foreign people to speak foreign languages would be good. While I didn't notice anything wrong with the Italian in Assassin's Creed II, my Roman boyfriend was throwing up with nearly every word.