Topic: Bayonetta 3

@Matt_Barber
I mean, that's true for any skilled profession. Doctors have to spend time and money going to school for many years to earn the right to their high wages.

The reason they're offered $250/hr instead of $10/hr like some other job is specifically because of their skillset.

I guarantee no VA is spending years preparing for a specific role. VAs prepare for a lifetime of roles. Each gig is like a week, maybe 2 if it's a dialog heavy game. Maybe just 1 day if it's got grunts and stuff.

Point being, the fact it's a 4 day gig shouldn't come as a surprise. She's been doing this long enough to know that's how long it took last time, and that's how long it'll take this time too.

That basic rate that every other VA is OK with, and which she was OK with the last 2 times... Suddenly this time she's not?

I mean, she's free to be disgruntled if she wants to be, but acting like she's been "wronged" by a studio offering $250/hr for a gig on the side... does not compute.

If she wanted VA to be a full time job she'd be doing it more than once per year. But you can't just drop in a few days each year for some cash on the side and go berserk because the company "only" offers the standard, going rate of $250/hr

It also doesn't surprise me that she wasn't offered more as she has so, so few credits on IMDb, and I can only assume that voice acting isn't her day job.

While I too would probably be peeved if I was involved in a successful video game franchise and wasn't offered a bundle to return, I think I would still be committed to the character (assuming that I cared enough about it), if nothing else.

@Silly_G That’s kinda what I wondered, because just like you said I would also be committed to a role of such a loved character, even if the pay is not really fitting my taste 100% which it’s fine for her to decline of course. How much did she care about her character? Enough to apparently want to boycott the games and any spin-off the replacement actress would have, she is more then willing to sink the whole ship.

Does that mean she doesn’t va anything else other this bayo? I didn’t see, but if that’s the case, like come on, you don’t voice act for years and then just pop in for a quick pay day.

@Snatcher
I believe it was mentioned she hasn't done anything in nearly a decade.

@JaxonH She really has some nerve to boycott, acting like she was being underpaid for years, this is a joke.

@JaxonH That's the problem though. She got way more invested in the role than it's worth and this whole spat is the result of that disconnect.

Had she just treated being Bayonetta's VA as something that'd only land her a few days work every few years, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

@Matt_Barber
True enough.

@Matt_Barber True, I agree.

@Ryu_Niiyama Thank you for your thoughtful response. I won't presume to address the specifics of the particular issue with Bayo 3, as I am familiar with neither the general pay structure of voice actors nor the amount of work that goes into the profession (even though I think comparisons to hourly positions are misguided). I still have a bean in my craw about the we-owe-them perspective. If I get a little sarcastic, please don't take that as directed toward you, but rather toward the prevalent attitude that I originally addressed with my first post. I tend to get a little worked up when I see the sanctioned and abetted abuse of people. I fully acknowledge that you aren't defending abusive actions on anyone's part. Just a jumping-off point for a rant.

A business offers a good or service for money. If I decide to purchase that product, I have made a decision to spend my earned money on a particular thing. When the transaction is complete, I no longer owe that company jack-s***. What chaps my britches is this implanted notion that corporations somehow materialize in some Randian supply-side fairyland and descend from the clouds to bestow their wares upon the Great Unwashed. I don't know why, but it seems pretty strong with many of the commenters here at NL, and it's quite tiresome. "If you don't like it, get another job." Like the company can do whatever they d*** well please, and there's a smorgasbord of jobs for people to choose from, like some kind of employment buffet. There is not. "If the company abuses you, it's your fault for not quitting." Too many excuses for companies whose people-populated senior management structure takes gross advantage of their employees. See all the excuses for Ubisoft and Activision provided by gamers - "I don't care what they do, just give me a good Assassin's Creed game."

And god, we certainly don't owe our existence to corporations. Quite the contrary - without the customer base, a company rightly dies. This of course assumes the absence of corporate welfare, preposterous government-created tax breaks (how many American mega-companies pay zero in income or other taxes?), and tacit monopolization subsumed by political kickbacks and sweetheart deals. The attitude that we owe them a d*** thing only feeds this imbalance and fosters cultures of abuse. I work at a company which is not abusive (yet), but I've watched firsthand as it grew from a relatively small one and gradually adopted corporate mentality and assembly-line attitudes toward its employees. And I have zero hope that it will do anything but worsen as it continues to grow, because the bigger a company gets, the more revenue is at play for the few who have the power take advantage of it.

I say again, we owe them nothing. Yes, they make things we use for the enrichment of our lives, but they are not made in a vacuum and with no thought of profit.

Thanks again for the convo.

@Nancyboy Howdy, based on your closing it seems like you may not have wanted a response so I will keep this short.

So anything with zealotry still falls into letting emotions rule which I am immediately dismissive of. People are often pretty horrible to each other in general so it shows in our macro and micro interactions. However it seems like you are slightly conflating the practical necessity of the contract/barter nature that makes up our current society vs tribal obsession with one particular company/corporations and I feel it undermines your argument a bit. So I will break my rebuttal into a few short points.

A) our society is built on bartering and from cradle to grave we can’t escape that. Everything you “own/pay taxes to lease” (if you stopped paying property taxes you can be thrown off of land so you don’t even own where you live) comes from contracts that are serviced by companies. Like those roads you drive on? Well the DOT had to get the supplies from somewhere. No one is totally self sufficient. Unless they find an uninhabited island that has not been claimed by a government and makes their own tools/clothing and lives off the land. Consumer control over a company thriving or not doesn’t change that, just the face of the company you interact with. You still need companies to survive in our current society.

B) no one owes a company anything beyond payment for services rendered (this includes employment contracts) and this goes both ways. This doesn’t condone abuse tactics,from either party mind you as breaking NDA, not doing your job is the same as being shortchanged financially as you are shorting the company from your end. That is literally why we have employment contracts and the labor board. Yes I know companies find loop holes, but so do people. And you still have the option to quit/renegotiate/litigation.

C) there are countless options for people. Now while it is not as simple as toss middle finger to job a and walk into job b with better pay, people are responsible for seeking work and remaining competitive. The average adult changes careers 7 times before they die. Can’t find work doing your dream job? You still gotta eat unless you wanna suck up government resources. You may have to move or reskill (I have done both) but jobs are out there. Nobody is entitled to their dream job, you gotta go earn it like the rest of us. And that may mean doing a lot of stuff you don’t like until you get there. The good thing is if people do that companies have to respond to remain competitive. Companies don’t actually want employee turnover or controversies. That costs money… a lot of it. That’s why companies have benefits and salaries in the first place. Not to mention HR departments (which if they do their job are neutral to advocate for benefit of both sides) Nobody works for free unless they are already wealthy (obviously people volunteer but not full time or they do so off the good will of others/companies).

D) the morality of a company goes back to its root component. People. Yeah companies dodge taxes or try to maximize profit. People also embezzle/steal/don’t produce. And it’s usually a person that makes the decision for a company to tax dodge or whatnot. Not like the janitor condones that. Like I said that is a symptom of people being involved. Doesn’t mean companies are inherently evil or individuals are inherently good. All we can do is use the law/contract agreement when we need to fight or exercise our freedom to work at will. Or our right to vote and vote with our wallets to keep companies in check.

Does any of that mean companies should do whatever they want? Nope. Doesn’t mean individuals get free reign either. You have to prove your worth just as companies do or just like how you mentioned people can vote with their wallets; companies can too. The social interaction is the same. In fact people have more freedom as they can reskill/move at will (again not saying it’s easy but if you want something bad enough you will go after it). No one is owed anything beyond the contracts they enter into. The issue is on both sides many don’t honor their word or renegotiate when they should. Which actually means the root cause is human decency (lack of) and greed (and arrogance). And that people tell others what they ought to do/what they deserve, usually with no understanding or context.

Ok I am done. Have a good one! This was short for me. Sorry!

@Ryu_Niiyama Good points but something you're missing on is how the capitalism method of growing/sustaining society has taken it's ultimate form of trickle down economics has meant within living memory it has gone from the traditional family unit being able to support themselves, buy a house, send multiple kids to university etc all on a one working parent's modest wages to now that's something only the rich can do which coincides with there's now millions of millionaires, thousands of billionaires and even in trillionaires in the world building an ever mounting divide which becomes more and more impossible to close the gap favouring the rich.

I think the point @Nancyboy (is that a Placebo reference?) is trying to make is less business bad and more that you can't simply favour businesses in the hope it spreads wealth and helps people which whilst is a worldwide belief but is even more common in America rather the rest of world. Historically governments which puts in place policies to create more wealth for the wealthy and austerity results in less economic stability whilst creating wealth all round generally improves health of the economy as poor people generally spend more money as percentage of their wealth whilst the rich traditionally hordes money taking it out of circulation from everyone else.

TL;DR

Hellena Taylor breaking NDA and whining about the lowball offer doesn't negate my interest in Bayo 3.

I hope she's lawyer'd up, because Nintendo will be knocking on her door momentarily.

@jump Not missing that point, merely stating that due to abuses on both sides has led to that state (to your wider point of the state of capitalism). Otherwise we would have to also get into macroeconomics and global trade and supply chains AND politics (and possibly religion), which is beyond the scope of the conversation.

I never argued at all for favoring business. I rebutted the notion that we don’t need companies. We do because of how our social contract system works. I also argued that companies themselves aren’t the issue but people are. If you could hypothetically build a company full of fair hard working people then the system would work more equally. It is not as if when people could live in a one income household (and all the single parents prove that is still possible) that companies were perfectly benevolent or that people were always hardworking and honest. My point is you can’t treat a company like a faceless boogyman while putting an individual on a pedestal. We also as people fund that wealth disparity. Don’t like mega corp a? Then stop giving them your money and support domestic and local businesses or learn a trade to give yourself access to goods and services (start a garden, learn how to fix your car) but people won’t do that usually out of greed. You can’t want what someone else has while doing the bare minimum.

Because since both companies and individuals involve people, both have the potential for dishonesty. And no one is owed anything outside of the contracts they enter into. So if someone says, well you can quit if you don’t like it, that is true. You have that freedom of recourse. But as nancyboy stated you don’t have to attack someone to remind them of their options. That part I agree with entirely and feel that is a lack of compassion but that goes right back to my human decency argument.

My issue is that people refuse to exercise their actual options but instead blame the system/companies unless they are in a situation where actual abuse and sabotage is happening (which I acknowledged happens) and that recourse should, in a just society (or semijust like the one I live in) , be a legal one. So I don’t think I missed his point I simply think that it comes from a more emotional standpoint and that it ignores the options people have or that decency is not just the onus of a company but the individual as well. Especially for the issue we are discussing with Bayonetta 3 (as we don’t want to lose the focus of the convo). Also again I argue that a person (and company) is obligated to put in the work to determine their worth. Nobody is handing out fortunes. But you have the ability to earn it. Even with all the mega millionaires out there. Jeff Bezzos being rich has nothing to do with me. If i keep myself competitive and mange my money, I may not be a mega millionaire (because I don’t want to build such a large revenue stream as a business) but I will live well nonetheless. You don’t have to be a mega millionaire to have a good standard of living. And while there is wage disparity you can reskill or you can live within your means. Wage disparity does not remove the onus of the individual to develop themselves/wealth.

@Ryu_Niiyama You are right about it not being Bayonetta focussed, to be honest I read the article and moved on pretty quickly however the huge attention it's getting is more interesting than the topic itself now. lol

Yep however I don't see as the everyman's fault of not working as possibly hard as they should to be equal to the big business by a long shot myself so I can easily agree with the anti-corporation stance since that is needed to change more to make practical changes. It's not as simple as you don't like the mega corporation just don't go there since we are living in a construction of society of needing companies (which itself is another discussion) like medicine which has seen a trend of companies taking over pharmaceuticals just to jack up the price to impossible amounts to pay resulting in death or legal action being another system which is something that favours those with more resources as a very common tactic as seen numerous times by big companies is to basically delay any court hearings whilst overthrowing work on the civilian side until the poor can no longer afford their legal fees and give up.

Of course, that has little to do with Platinum who I don't even think they can be considered a corporation(?).

@jump fair enough.

Please note I am not implying that alternative solutions are simple and I tried to express that a few times. But to use your medical example there are often OTC or non big pharma versions of medicine or even alternative medical treatment or going without (I need a new prosthetic eye, but can’t afford one currently so I look like a pirate right now). So again options and of course this is if you have an issue with the company supplying the original solution. Or again going back to trades, as local pharmacies used to make medicines in house. I’m not certain of the legal or financial entanglements of that currently however.

I suspect we wont see eye to eye (haha) but I disagree that the every-person should be equal to a company. A person’s worth should be based on value add. Obviously the janitor doesn’t deserve CEO pay (I know it’s cool to hate the csuite but the good ones actually bring in investors and build company contracts, thus not only providing a service of management but brining in more revenue) and while I feel that western CEOs are extravagantly paid, I daresay the ones that actually do their job are worth that value. The question of is it unseemly to pocket that much money is an entirely different conversation (which I would say no they shouldn’t, but that I don’t have the right to tell someone what to do with their money). Like when Iwata-dono cut his pay. He earned his paycheck but because of the type of person he was he used that to help his employees. But that goes right back to my human decency point.

Humans are gluttons and want the most advantage for the least amount of work. There is no way around it. The majority of folks if they could get that kind of money that CEOs have would do the same. If perhaps we didn’t glorify that extravagance then people would do it less, but since many people argue from a point of envy (why do you have so much when I have so little…but my question is what are you doing with what you do have) it’s baked into our relationships with jobs. I do still say that people have the freedom to reskill, quit, and renegotiate which imo gives them more potential for growth than a collective company. It’s just really fricken hard. As for the unbalanced system, that is the crux of humanity isn’t it? People mistreated because they don’t have money or the color of their skin or their sex, but that again boils down to people (and not as a society rejecting such things via our votes, money and social disdain). People in a democratic society have more power than they use. And more resilience. If my ancestors could pull themselves from being property and denied every aspect of opportunity such as education or legal protection then surely people that have those things can make a livable comfortable life even with companies and individuals cheating each other. So I think our differences is perspective. I’m not blaming the everyperson for what they don’t have. I’m saying that the onus is to utilize what you do have and to collectively as a society condone fairness (which I argue that by human nature we don’t) with the understanding that the number of people involved (corp vs person) does not determine morality. Since we have shifted off of the original point the Bayonetta convo. I will stop here because this is well beyond the scope of this conversation.

Edit: Dang y’all I haven engaged this much in years on this site. So thank you for the fun convos.

@Ryu_Niiyama Oh yeah, I get that. I think the difference is coming from (which I don't think I explained well enough) is I don't think people should be dirt poor but rather be reasonably poor if there is no ambition to do something deemed bigger which is no longer possible with fair wages as there isn't an infinite amount of money in the world so when there's more rich there are more poor to balance it out hence the understandable stance on being anti-big business which is fuelling he intensity (seriously the comment section has not been this mad since Brie Larsson or Dexit) of the rather silly topic of a voice actor I don't know the name of.

@jump oh, ok. Then I agree with that and would argue that is the case.(Edit:removed personal info) While technically anecdotal I did have access to a great deal of information about employment that I feel ok saying that the vast majority of people that are dirt poor vs reasonably poor (or better) are due to their own choices and not due to exploitation from companies (I do feel most people that work hard are underpaid though). Again that can spiral out to another convo, but barring severe disabilities most people can if they so choose have a decent standard of living without being wealthy. If they make good choices but there is a lot that goes into that and beyond the scope of this thread.

Semi On Topic: I know it makes no sense but my brain keeps insisting that Viola is Bayonetta and Jeanne’s witch baby either from the future or another universe. Especially considering Bayo 1 was about Jeanne saving Bayonetta and 2 was about Bayonetta saving Jeanne as the character motivations I ship the heck out of them.

At the very least she could be Bayonetta’s sister given her father’s appearance (Bayonetta’s) and the use of cheshire which used to be associated with Bayonetta.

Sifting through some of the outrage on this. Honestly? On the one hand capitalism be brutal. You are only worth as much as someone else is willing to be paid for the same. However, if you choose to be an artist as a career you choose to be part of the boom-bust gig economy nature of that type of job. I don't have that much sympathy for someone who gets a contract offer, refuses it and then goes on social media to complain about it. We're all playing the same game here

And in any case, $250US/hr? I mean that ain't bad. More or less works out to be 1 month of the median salary in Australia for a days work. Obviously you'd want to be landing more gigs than that to make a living but, well, that's what that sort of profession demands. This was a two day gig, a handful of gigs like that a year and you're doing alright

And let's not forget the last couple of years. How many people in the arts haven't even had luxury of being able to work over the last couple of years? Voice artists are probably one of the few artists who weren't impacted by COVID. So yeah, not much sympathy from me

@RubyCarbuncle #29 on Amazon now, haha. I mean, more people were always going to buy in as it gets closer to launch, but sales have improved noticeably since this broke.

Anyway, yeah, I imagine a ton of the people boosting this story don't like Nintendo and never planned to buy the game in the first place. It'll lose some sales from canceled preorders, sure, but that seems to be entirely counteracted by the surge of new incoming preorders.