Topic: Bayonetta 3

@JaxonH I'm not so sure about Helena being offered union wages. I think it was @Rambler (if you care to please post the link again as I'm too lazy to find it) who posted the UK voice acting (as remember she's British) in video games union wages and it's meant to be £300/$340 an hour which doesn't leave much time to record if it was a flat rate of $4k for the gig.

Alot of this lacks too much context as I don't know if she was part of the union or not, if it was to be recorded in the US or UK, if that technically makes Hale a scab or not so I don't overly feel comfortable weighing on the specifics too much.

@jump I think it'll at least be interesting to see how many lines of dialogue Bayonetta actually has in the new game. In the past they haven't exactly been text heavy games, so if the amount of dialogue amounts to a few days of recording sessions it might not be too bad. So I've also been hesitant to chime in since we really don't know if it was a fair offer or not.

But regardless, I still feel like Hellena shot herself in the foot a bit. She could have respectfully declined the offer and left it at that, but now she's likely to get sued over a movement that's probably not going to amount to much.

If she doesn't have much else work and was hoping this gig could pay her living expenses for a while, I think it would have been smart to make lemonade out of lemons by earning money through the community. Things like sell signed prints or stream herself playing through the games. A lot of VAs do this do earn some extra money on the side when they aren't busy with their roles.

Wow, I missed the controversy .... But, yeah, voice actors usually do lots of different roles & so it's a bit misleading complaining about pay for one gig, that might be 2 or 3 days work How about the devs who've been working full time on the game for years, then? How much would each of them have to be paid at those rates? They have to study coding/ programming or whatever else is involved for years, as well

@jump
It was me. And it actually exceeded her union wages.

Union wage chart shows $902 for a 4 hr session. By her own admission she recorded Bayo2 in 4 days of 4-hr sessions. So union rate would be $3,608. Her final offer was about 10% higher than that.

@JaxonH Nah it wasn't that as it was the British one, which is below.

Doing some maths on 4 days for 4 hours it would be a total of £6k/$6791.61 at the union rate if it's a big game of over a £5m production value.

"Minimum fees are set according to the budget of the production, with a minimum of £300 per hour paid to voice artists when recording for a 'Standard' game (budget of over £5m), £200 per hour for an 'Indie' game (£0.5m to £5m), and £175 per hour for a 'Micro' game (under £0.5m).

In addition, the first hour on any game will be paid at twice the hourly rate. For a standard game this would be £600, for an indie it would be £400, and for a micro £350.
Overtime to be paid at 30 minute pro rata increments.
The studio will pay the artist within 30 days from receipt of invoice. If the fee is late, the studio will pay a penalty payment of £10 per day.
Integration rights are the inclusion of material in one or more interactive programs for which the artist has not been specifically employed to render services. The studio can purchase integration rights and the artist will receive a payment of one two-hour session.
Rates within the agreement will be re-examined 2 years form the date of the signing of the agreement and any increase in the minimum fees will be measured by inflation.
Within 6 months of the signing of the agreement the parties will endeavour to create a clause, which expressly deals with the recording of promotional material not contained within the game itself with accompanying compensation paid to the artist."​

https://www.equity.org.uk/news/2021/december/uks-first-ever-a...

Also damn that @Rambler for making me find it myself!

@jump
That agreement was from 2021.

She was approached over 5 years ago.

@jump
Furthermore, as I understand it she's SAG-AFTRA which is where my posted rates are cited from.

From NintendoGo:

The most interesting tweet liked by Hale is one from voice actor Benjamin Diskin. Diskin took to Twitter to comment on the typical pay structure for voice actors, and you can read it in full below.

“If anybody out there is curious what typical SAG-AFTRA VG rates are for actors, it’s approximately $1000 for a session that can last up to 4 hours. The NON-union rate is $250/hr with a 2hr minimum guarantee. There are no royalties based on game sales or anything else.”

So union rates only seem to differ in terms of payment by session rather than by hour, but a 4 hour session would equate to the same $250/hr rate

@JaxonH Well why did you post the 2020 union wages if it has that time specific? Even if these were at the time she was offered them I wouldn't consider them the going rate as there's difference between the minimum wage (which is what union rates really are) and the going rate as you'd expect the lead of the game to get more than the person playing Henchmen #4 who lines are "get them", "argghh", "ouch, that hurt".

Like I said there's not enough context for us too be properly weigh in on besides the basics and our feelings on the topic.

@Rambler I think the £ symbol confused everyone so they ignored it.

@jump
Because they should be the same, if not less.

There was no "agreement" or "wage changes" during that time span.

If anything the rates were even lower in 2017 which just makes her offer even better by comparison.

We might not know everything, but we know enough to get a clear indication she WAS offered a fair, union-approved wage. Maybe she felt she deserved more, but there's a difference between underpaying/lowballing to the extent it warrants a boycott, and simply having your pride hurt because an offer didn't drastically exceed standard union wages everyone else agrees to.

We also know, for a fact, she was a union member, so we know for a fact she was offered union member wages, and not less. Undercutting her union wages would be illegal, and by her own admission, nothing illegal occured.

I do not care to wade into the murky waters of what she "deserved". Because that's completely subjective. All I care about is, "was she offered fair going rate, or was she truly lowballed to the extent it's insulting and warrants killing off a franchise over". And in that respect, it's clear she was offered a fair rate of the standard, agreed upon wages her union negotiated. Beyond that, whether she deserved more... not really for me to say. That's between her and her employer to negotiate. She felt she was, they felt she wasn't, so no agreement was made. Maybe Platinum felt like heck, if we're gonna pay a 50% premium on negotiated union wages, we'd rather get more bang for our buck with someone like Jennifer Hale who handles herself professionally and has a much better track record.

@JaxonH The thing is we clearly both don't actually know the facts or the context behind those facts because we are throwing around internet titbits. However I'm saying it's defiantly not clean cut as it's too hard to make conclusions on the specifics of the situations whilst you seem very set on them.

However from earlier in the thread you posted a tweet on the importance about non-bias thinking which included with things like don't draw conclusions from partial facts, get all the facts etc so maybe take a step back and be open to the idea there is more nuance to this which we non-showbizzness people don't get. That's not to say you have to be on her side or agree with the boycott, just maybe there's more to it.

@jump
There might be more to it. And we don't have all the facts. But we do have enough facts to be reasonably confident the offer wasn't outlandish, and we can be 100% confident she was offered standard, negotiated union wages at the minimum.

As far as I'm concerned, that's all I need to know, as it's enough to completely rule out foul play deserving of a boycott.

There we are. I knew more would come out about this. She wasn't low-balled at all.

Wow

@Ralizah
That's absolutely crazy if true. And it seems to be the case as more than one insider familiar with the deal confirms and documentation of the deal was provided.

I mean, even $4k for the whole thing would have been standard pay. But she turned down $4,000 per session for a guaranteed 5 sessions? That's $20,000 for one week's work!!!

Can't pay rent my keaster...

@JaxonH The funny thing is that it looks like a large portion of the Twitter mob is so sunk into this battle that they're trying to downplay this reporting, lmao. Better to double down than to admit fault or even just back off their own hardline positions on the matter, I guess.

Taylor asked for $100,000+ and residuals?

Well...at least she swung for the fence, she tried.

@Ralizah
DreamcastGuy made a post saying, "Let's wait for more facts" after cosigning the boycott initially, making a video proclaiming his solidarity, flaunting his canceled Trinity Masquerade Edition and encouraging others to do the same.

But NOW he wants to "wait for the full story"

Get out of here with that. What a 🤡 🤡 🤡

It is such a funny state of affairs. To peasants like me, 4k for the gig sounded just dandy to begin with. Now knowing the real figure was actually probably to closer to 20k with all of the sessions combined, meaning they would be getting paid close to like a grand an hour, my basically next to zero existing sympathy is now in the minus.

@JaxonH

Seems like he's calling her out now.

@Ralizah Yeah I saw Jon Cartwright do just this. Saying we should believe the people who come out and say this stuff before, you know, waiting to see if more facts come out about it. But he’s one of the bigger people who jumped on the immediate attack and still says he’s effectively boycotting the game after cancelling his order.