Reactions to story from The New York Times
A Video Game Star and His Less-Than-Stellar Pay
http://www.nytimes.com/ 2008/ 05/ 21/ arts/ television/ 21gta.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=...Reactions / posts that link to this article
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GTA 4's Niko Bellic Voice Actor Wants More Money
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/52800GTA 4's Niko Bellic Voice Actor Wants More Money by Aaron Linde May 21, 2008 10:00pm CST tags: Grand Theft Auto 4, Rockstar Games, Hollywood Actor Michael Hollick, who voiced Grand Theft Auto IV protagonist Niko Bellic, revealed to the New York Times
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GTA 4's Niko Bellic Voice Actor Wants More Money
http://hardocp.com/news.html?news=MzI1NDQsLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdC...GTA 4's Niko Bellic Voice Actor Wants More Money Shacknews is reporting that the voice actor that played Niko Bellic in GTA IV wants more money. He was paid over $100,000 for his work but wants more after seeing how well the game has done. What do you
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GTA IV Earns $600m to Voice Actor's $100k: Time for a Street Fight?
http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/007000.htmlGrand Theft Auto IV is continuing to make headlines as some of the game's voice actors have brought up concerns over the pay received. In a story with The New York Times, Michael Hollick, the voice behind GTA4's main...
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GTA IV Actor Complains About His Salary After Game's Success; So Why Did He Take The Job?
http://techdirt.com/articles/20080521/2330071199.shtmlGTA IV Actor Complains About His Salary After Game's Success; So Why Did He Take The Job? from the jealousy-isn't-a-business-model dept We've already written about the rather ridiculous campaign by actors to make sure they get a cut of every time their
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Level Up's Top Seven Gaming Tidbits for May 22nd, 2008
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/2008/05/22/to...EGO...trip: See our Twitter feed in the right-column, below the fold or here... $$$...for pithy observations from today's Wedbush conference, and more TOP...20 Women In Games: come for the honors, stay for the comments? HMM...lost in translation, or did
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Grand Theft Auto IVs Niko Moans About Earnings [Michael Niko Hollick Cites Lack of Respect for 'Tough' Deal]
http://nexus404.com/Blog/2008/05/22/grand-theft-auto-iv-niko...It seems that the real world actors behind the key characters in Rockstars blockbuster, Grand Theft Auto IV, are less than happy with their earnings, with Michael Hollick, the actor behind the voice and motion-capture of GTAs main character, Niko,
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GTA IV Not Big Money Maker For Star Actors
http://www.yourgameblog.com/pc-games/gta-iv-not-big-money-ma...From pc-games The New York Times has an interesting article about Michael Hollick, an aspiring actor who received his big break acting in a video game. That video game is the blockbuster Grand Theft Auto IV. Hollick plays Niko Bellic in the video game. Hollick has also appeared in a few Law and Order’s according to the actors IMDB listing. Despite generating hundreds of millions in sales Hollick received only a tiny piece of the GTA IV pie. Hollick’s take was just $100,000 according to the Times article. Had this been a television program, a film, an album, a radio show or virtually any other sort of traditional recorded performance, Mr. Hollick and the other actors in the game would have made millions by now. As it stands, they get nothing beyond the standard Screen Actors Guild day rate they were originally paid. That is because the contracts between the actors’ union and the entertainment industry make little or no provision for electronic media like video games and the Internet. It is a discrepancy that is expected to dominate negotiations between Hollywood and the guild this summer, with many predicting an actors’ strike to parallel the writers’ strike last year, which revolved around similar issues. “Obviously I’m incredibly thankful to Rockstar for the opportunity to be in this game when I was just a nobody, an unknown quantity,” Mr. Hollick, 35, said last week over dinner in Willamsburg, Brooklyn, shortly after performing in the aerial theater show “Fuerzabruta” in Union Square. “But it’s tough, when you see Grand Theft Auto IV out there as the biggest thing going right now, when they’re making hundreds of millions of dollars, and we don’t see any of it. I don’t blame Rockstar. I blame our union for not having the agreements in place to protect the creative people who drive the sales of these games. Yes, the technology is important, but it’s the human performances within them that people really connect to, and I hope actors will get more respect for the work they do within those technologies.? It does sound like the actors’ union has a lot of work to do when it comes to video game contracts. Michael Hollick’s official website can be found here. Permalink | Recent Headlines | RSS Feeds
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GTA IV Not Big Money Maker For Star Actors
http://www.gamersgame.com/cgi-bin/ggblog.pl?ggblog=915081The New York Times has an interesting article about Michael Hollick, an aspiring actor who received his big break acting in a video game. That video game is the blockbuster Grand Theft Auto IV. Hollick plays Niko Bellic in the video game. Hollick has also appeared in a few Law and Order's according to the actors IMDB listing. Despite generating hundreds of millions in sales Hollick received only a tiny piece of the GTA IV pie. Hollick's take was just $100,000 according to the Times article. Had this been a television program, a film, an album, a radio show or virtually any other sort of traditional recorded performance, Mr. Hollick and the other actors in the game would have made millions by now. As it stands, they get nothing beyond the standard Screen Actors Guild day rate they were originally paid. That is because the contracts between the actors' union and the entertainment industry make little or no provision for electronic media like video games and the Internet. It is a discrepancy that is expected to dominate negotiations between Hollywood and the guild this summer, with many predicting an actors' strike to parallel the writers' strike last year, which revolved around similar issues. "Obviously I'm incredibly thankful to Rockstar for the opportunity to be in this game when I was just a nobody, an unknown quantity," Mr. Hollick, 35, said last week over dinner in Willamsburg, Brooklyn, shortly after performing in the aerial theater show "Fuerzabruta" in Union Square. "But it's tough, when you see Grand Theft Auto IV out there as the biggest thing going right now, when they're making hundreds of millions of dollars, and we don't see any of it. I don't blame Rockstar. I blame our union for not having the agreements in place to protect the creative people who drive the sales of these games. Yes, the technology is important, but it's the human performances within them that people really connect to, and I hope actors will get more respect for the work they do within those technologies.? It does sound like the actors' union has a lot of work to do when it comes to video game contracts. Michael Hollick's official website can be found here. Permalink | Recent Headlines | RSS Feeds
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First Wall Rebate Episode 004
http://2minutemouth.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/first-wall-reba...The dust has settled on the personal interferences, vacation plans, and marathon sessions of Grand Theft Auto and Metal Gear Solid that have blocked our podcast progress for the last few weeks. We invite you to explore FWR Episode 004, in which Shane and Trevor: Record in a tiny closet during the Writer’s Edge conference in Portland, Oregon, and forget to introduce ourselves. Discuss the portrayals of war in games in reference to the Call of Duty and Metal Gear Solid franchises. Think about the labor issues involved with the recent controversy regarding voice actors in Grand Theft Auto IV. Look for our GTA Blowout episode soon, and thanks for listening.
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GTA4 Actor Decries Voiceover Equity
http://hiphper.gxblogs.com/2008/08/02/gta4-actor-decries-voi...GTA4 Actor Decries Voiceover Equity August 2nd, 2008 by hiphper The man behind the voice of Grand Theft Auto 4’s Niko Bellic believes the gaming industry ought to take a page from Hollywood when it comes to compensating voiceover work, especially as it grows into an increasingly important part of blockbuster titles. Under the current, most common arrangement, videogame voice actors earn a set fee for their work in a particular title; Michael Hollick earned about $100,000 for his work as the protagonist of GTA4. Unfortunately, this rate doesn’t scale as a title becomes more successful. “Had [GTA4] been a television program, a film, an album, a radio show or virtually any other sort of traditional recorded performance, Mr. Hollick and the other actors in the game would have made millions by now. As it stands, they get nothing beyond the standard Screen Actors Guild day rate they were originally paid,” reports the New York Times. Why would anyone have agreed to such a glaringly obvious oversight? It seems that this particularly unfortunate discrepancy is a remainder from a time before electronic media dominated the popular consciousness. “Contracts between the actors’ union and the entertainment industry make little or no provision for electronic media like video games and the Internet. It is a discrepancy that is expected to dominate negotiations between Hollywood and the guild this summer, with many predicting an actors’ strike to parallel the writers’ strike last year, which revolved around similar issues,” according to the New York Times. Additionally, these archaic contracts offer no reimbursement for the use of a character’s voice in promotional materials. Mr. Hollick’s voice appears in a number of trailers and ads for Grand Theft Auto 4, yet under the current rules he sees absolutely no money as a result. “The first GTA 4 trailer generated something like 40 million hits online, and that’s my voice all over it, and I get nothing. If that were a radio spot, I would have. Same thing for the TV ads. I recorded those lines for the game, but now they’re all over television. It’s another gray area,” he said. Obviously it isn’t as simple as asking gaming executives to share their hard-earned cash, either. “Among their executives, one real fear is that if they start paying royalties to a handful of actors, they will soon face similar demands from the legions of artists, designers, audio producers, musicians, programmers and other people who work for years to make a top-end game.” Sadly, this situation seems almost intractable and just thinking about the numbers behind it is giving me a headache. I don’t think anyone wants to see another entertainment industry strike — particularly in a form of entertainment that, unlike television, isn’t completely creatively bankrupt — but I have absolutely no idea how the powers that be could possibly resolve this one. Ideas? A Video Game Star and His Less-Than-Stellar Pay [New York Times] Image courtesy Rockstar Games See Also: Uwe Boll: ‘The Right Guy’ To Direct Grand Theft Auto Film The Dangers of Driving After GTA SCEE Boss: PS3 Will ‘Probably’ Get Extra GTA IV Content
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