Interesting posts concerning game law
Here is a very insightful article Gamasutra ran about Game Actors…
Great article about contracts (from another law firm)
Great law review article; The End of the Virtual World: cite as Fairfield, Joshua, The End of the (Virtual) World. West Virginia Law Review, Vol. 112, No. 1, p. 53, 2009; Washington & Lee Legal Studies Paper No. 2010-7. Available at SSRN: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1611672
That’s all I have for now. Just wanted my readers to know I’m working for them and should have something big to post soon. (You can call off the search party.)
Jay Moffitt is a Tennessee attorney. This blog is for entertainment and educational purposes only and does not consitute legal advice or create an attorney/client relationship. Jay Moffitt is not certified as a specialist in this area by Tennessee and Tennessee does not certify specialists in this practice area. All comments will be answered promptly and courteously as long as they are germane to the discussion and do not contain specific game names or incidents.
The Gamasutra article seemed rather slanted, the comments thread was better than the article. Statements like “[actors] give better performances than even the most passionate amateur” is preposterous. There must be good amateurs in the world and bad professionals just as in any industry. I believe the original Warcraft games were done by the developers simply putting on funny voices, Diablo 2′s cow level was certainly done by the devs as there are accounts of them all mooing while collapsing with laughter. (In a recent post on my blog I argue that theatrical acting, often considered bad acting by film makers, is more suited to game than a natural acting style).
It was interesting though to see his statements on how actors get paid. I was very surprised to see no one (according to him) simply gets a one-off fee. He may be right but it strikes me as unlikely. Certainly in the music industry many session musicians simply get a fee and no royalties. I’m sure a low budget game would rather have someone come in for a day and accept £500 and say goodbye rather than have to calculate 0.03% of the gross and post an annual cheque to them every year for the next 150 years.
I think what most people in the discussion miss is that the laws of economics apply. Sid Meier and Patrick Stewart are approximately equally prestigious to gamers but if one costs 5 times as much as the other sensible companies will go for the cheap one (planning their game around their star). Similarly if a relatively unknown actor costs 5 times as much as a programmer a game producer would benefit from more coding and less voice acting in the game design. (I have no idea whether those figures bear any relation to actual remuneration).
We do know that SWTOR is costing approximately $200m to make, much more than just about any other game and also uses more voice acting than any previous games. The future of actors in video games is riding heavily on that title.
Good article on contracts. The last link didn’t work for me, could you check it please Jay?
jaymoffitt Reply:
June 25th, 2010 at 7:46 pm
Link repaired. I know better than to trust SSRN links; it’s authorititative but any site that requires a log-in is a total dog to link to. (Maybe intentional).
I agree with you in part about the Gamasutra article. Remember, as a lawyer if I make a mistake I get sued; if a free-lance writer makes a mistake he gets flamed (and sometimes famous). Some of these Gamasutra writers are trying to be over-the-top in order to get responses, thus more page hits, thus more likely for Gamasutra to “feature” them. At least that’s my impression from a daily read of them for a couple of years now.
The logistics you spoke about seem logical to me. If you’ve a couple dozen actors on a project, are you keeping up with them for years to send a percentage residual check? If that’s the system, it seems a little clunky; being from near Nashville myself, I would (if asked) favor the one-off method, like with session musicians, for that reason alone; plus even though it’s more expensive now you’ve no downside if a game should “take off”.
And most importantly; thanks for reading and the picking up of the missed link.
Attorney disclaimer: Of course any comments are solely the opinion of the author and do not constitue legal advice or create attorney/client relationship.