Forum - View topicNEWS: Bayonetta Voice Actress Calls For Boycott of Bayonetta 3; Cites Poor Pay From Platinum Games
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Jeff Bauersfeld
Posts: 109 |
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That median income can be functional poverty in many places in the US, so that might not be a great metric to use for your argument even if you're making a different point. |
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Iron Maw
Posts: 492 |
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People in the US still make more than other people in most countries even if the gap here between rich and poor is atrocious. However the point is that Taylor wasn't getting payed poorly, in fact the deal she got was above union rate and was pretty reasonable for the amount time she was putting in. But Taylor demanded 6 figures+residue for a series that barely sold 3 million and is only alive at this point thanks to Nintendo. Worse she not only lied to fans about the actual amount she was offered, but how much the series was worth, attacked a fellow union actress and then at finally response to new information just was told everyone to just move on after whipping a frenzy to bring people on here side to boycott the game. She clearly didn't do this to advance workers, she did it out of salt for having her offer rejected. Plenty of people believed here in good faith and she took advantage of that via emotional manipulation, that is the reality we have to deal with. The point that VAs in this industry are underpayed is still true and we already have better advocates improvement there such as Jennifer Hale who is the current Bayo actress. We don't need to movement tainted by people only looking out for themselves. But in the end nobody really won here and several people end being harassed over nothing, ugh. |
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FiendHunter
Posts: 152 |
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The fact that she said she just "wanted to put this franchise behind and move on" comes off extremely bad for her. Lady, you started this, and now that people are pointing at you for lying you want to run away? Hmmm....
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 2959 Location: Email for assistance only |
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TERF isn't a slur. End of discussion.
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Connor Dino
Posts: 307 |
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Seems like things are going off the rails here...
Let's see if I understand this situation correctly: According to multiple news sources, Platinum offered Taylor a rate at $4k for 4 hr sessions for at least 5 sessions. She declined it and wanted 6-figures + residuals. Platinum declined and looked for other VAs to take the job. Allegedly Taylor then came back later, but Platinum had already hired a VA to replace her, but offered her to star in a cameo. The work would be for 1 session at the rate mentioned above. Which MIGHT be where the $4k came in as the “final” offer. Since it would be 1 session for just a cameo, it would be $4k for “everything”. Multiple news sources have confirmed that at least the rate at $4k for 5 sessions is likely accurate; however, those sources are unnamed. Therefore, the ball is mostly in Taylor's court now to show evidence that these news sites don't have their facts straight (which she seems loath to do, which I don't understand). Obviously there is a wider conversation over VA pay and what is a fair rate, etc. But that is seperate from the original story/accusation. I just wanted to see if I understood the situation here. Did I miss something? |
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Ruhrpottpatriot
Posts: 65 |
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Oh they pretty much have. Just look over to the creator owned comic market. It's a hellish job and many don't make it. People more often than not only see successes like Jennifer Hale or Steve Blum. But for every one of these there's hundreds if not thousands that didn't make it or are just scraping by. It's really nothing like a 925 job with a regular income and as you have said: you pay for most of it out of your own pocket. I have a product demonstration in the next month, which required me to travel from Cologne to Zurich, but since I'm currently regularly employed my employer pays for gas, hotel and other work related expenses (even the dinner with the customer). That's about 800€ shouldered not by me. There's also another business trip that costs about the same just a few weeks later I have to do and cannot be done remotely via Zoom, Teams, etc. That's about 1.6k in the span of a month for most of the time on the road and about two days of talking and presenting; I know people who make that in 30 days of hard labour. A freelancer has to pay for all of that upfront, and hope the pay they receive covers everything so they have something left to buy food. I also have the benefit of my employer shouldering about half my health insurance pay (as required per law in Germany),a benefit freelancers don't have. And there's more...
Yep, that's pretty much it. Although, I can really see that at some point there has been a breakdown in communication people involved got the wrong idea (not pointing out anybody here, since I don't know the details). 4k for 16 hours, if it had been true, is an absolutely abysmal payment, and any shitstorm would have been justified. Right now, it seems it was 20k for 5 sessions at 4 hours. That's not much, but certainly more than others make. People keep in mind: Ockham's and Hanlon's razor always apply. |
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flamemasterelan
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It's important to note that she was purposefully misleading and a lot of people were left to fill in the blanks on their own here. She stated that she was given a "frankly insulting" sum of money, and then contacted Hideki Kamiya and was offered 4k for the work. We now know that that 4k offer was for a cameo role after she rejected their offer, but the way she worded it implied that the first offer was actually worse than the 4k. That led people to look at her experience in the first two games and come to the belief that she would be doing at least four voice sessions - just like in the first Bayonetta - for that sum. When you add in reports of other voice actors earning abysmal paychecks recently (the Jujutsu Kaisen 0 movie comes to mind, with two of their cast members reportedly earning only $150), it actually doesn't seem that unusual. And then you consider the other factors, like Hellena's bold claims for how much Platinum Games have made on the Bayonetta series, her playing the mental health and living wage cards, whether or not she was a member of a voice acting union, etc. It's honestly no wonder things turned out this way. |
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Dr. Wily
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That's the real shame of it all. Since Taylor says PG's lying, until some sort of physical contract surfaces the story ends up just being a he said/she said. And whether you take PG's word or Taylor's regarding the offer, in the end now that the whole thing has been thrown into doubt, it's just gonna serve to undermine future attempts to raise pay/standards for voice actors. 
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Covnam
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That would depend on the terms, but I would guess the amounts offered were covered by it.
No, that seems to be a good summary of it. The only thing I'd probably add is that the sources, though unnamed (for obvious reasons), did apparently show paperwork to back up what they were saying. |
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kotomikun
Posts: 1205 |
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Well, there is one winner here: the game itself, which is getting free advertising from this scandal, and by extension the companies selling it. Not many people are likely to boycott the game over this, because nothing is substantively wrong with it, it just has a different lead voice actor for hard-to-determine reasons. But a whole lot of people are hearing about the game solely because of this mess, and many of them will probably buy it. The house always wins...
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DKL
 Posts: 1956 Location: California, USA |
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Actually, Nintendo wins. Not a dev studio that, on its face, appears to be attempting to do right by the artists by having a union project (we can always discuss that the union mandates are inadequate, but Platinum appears to at least be attempting to answer the call here... maybe they'll do better next time based on discourse that takes place... it's impossible to turn back time right now since the project was happening over the course of a bunch of years). Not the voice actors trying to hold a discussion on fair pay now that the discussion has been tainted by what appears to be a selfish person riding the current wave of very important voice acting issues (Ben Diskin said that the union contracts are currently in negotiation... I'm scared at how this situation might potentially affect discussion, but hopefully I'm just being paranoid). In the internet's misguided fury and various outlets' awful handling of the story (Jason Schreier waited... what is everyone else's excuse?), the suits have now actually won: Nintendo now gets to see a decent payday on a series with historically mediocre performance and likely low ROI that was probably just kept around in order to diversify their portfolio, while everyone else gets to hold that big fat delicious L. The irony of it all is just killing me. People seem to not realize that maybe Platinum is a friendly in all this and they've been caught in the crossfire. But no, let's just go attack Hideki Kamiya, who, despite being VP or higher up or whatever at Platinum, is also a game dev with boots on the ground and likely doing a bunch of unpaid overtime along with the rest of his team in order to deliver a product to an audience that isn't willing to wait a few days before acting on their worst impulses. He is far from what I would call a suit. (yes, I bought Sol Cresta at full price day one and it's a game that has a lot of passion put into it... a far cry from some soulless production churned out by some big company... but people wouldn't know this since they don't actually play Platinum Games' output and only showed up to harvest clout from a bunch of premature hot takes) I would have absolutely sided with people against Nintendo in favor of Platinum and the voice actors, but people seem to keep interchanging things as if Platinum is holding all the money in this situation when Bayonetta is just not the money-making franchise that people are making it out to be. To the very least, it's definitely not worth $450,000,000, but no one even bothered to question it when this number came out of someone's mouth. Remember: it's Nintendo that has ongoing labor disputes, not Platinum (yet... I don't know, Japanese work culture is bad, so who knows what will happen in several years when more stories come out). People can't even be bothered to discuss a feasible way forward for residuals for actors because they haven't even attempted to learn of how all the damn revenue and expense streams work. My understanding isn't great and is unsophisticated at best, but I'm at least trying and am open to ideas. There are too many drive-by actors in the discussion surrounding this topic whose only investment is pursuing outrage at the next big thing. Also, think about the implications of what the "he said/she said" interpretation of the situation means. You are saying that the person who broke the Platinum side of the story who has written stories like this: https://kotaku.com/inside-rockstar-games-culture-of-crunch-1829936466 ... has gotten it wrong in this situation, despite years of experience exposing shady company practices and being a clear friend to the struggling class. You are saying that Jennifer Hale, a strong advocate for voice acting rights, is bad at doing due diligence: https://twitter.com/blumspew/status/1582080706091528194?s=20&t=d3HdM9ynSbNKyErAvIjuSg Or at worst, a scab. Now, I'm not saying these scenarios are IMPOSSIBLE, I'm just saying that this is what it means if we assume that Jason Schreier and his corroborating sources (all named people, mind you): https://twitter.com/stephentotilo/status/1582442927653294082?s=20&t=hGspTS8qQjJZJuNxS-xnIw https://twitter.com/AndyPlaytonic/status/1582450001141108737?s=20&t=ygDA84R_JBlr0FxNuioLYA ... are off the mark. If this is the case, we have to go with the scenarios I just highlighted. It's not great, but I would be willing to accept it should more developments surface. But I would own up to being wrong, which a lot of people seem hesitant to do for some reason, even though they're not like TMZ or whatever that has a financial interest in intentionally not updating the direction of the story. I just don't understand why people are like this. We cannot have a productive discussion that moves us forward if we aren't willing to accept that maybe we were premature in certain situations. There are people on the fence that could go either way because they don't know what's going on and we lose them by acting like this. |
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Casperian
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Krijg kanker.
Last edited by Casperian on Sat Oct 29, 2022 2:29 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Ryuji-Dono
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Casperian's initial rant was wholly unnecessary. The paragraph about wages should be enough.
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Ruhrpottpatriot
Posts: 65 |
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And another person who has no idea how freelancing actually works... Do you like it when you get your sweet, sweet, 15k for 4 days and then nothing for months, while you still have to pay for everything out of your own pocket. Freelancers don't have an employer to pay work related travel expenses, social security, part of the retirement fund or other stuff (let's leave out the US, because apparently cocial Darwinism is accepted culture there).
Amen to that. Platinum Games, before making NIER:Automata, almost went bankrupt because their games were so massively nice. Automata literally saved the company And it's not like they have had wild success after that. with Babylon's Fall is slated to shut down early next year and Granblue Fantasy moved to Cygames itself. They NEED Bayonetta 3 to be a success, they have nothing else left in the tank except Project G.G., which we might see on next years E3 and then a release for late 2023 (which I highly doubt) or mid 2024. Where is the money to operate the studio coming from? Bayonetta. And let's be honest here: Hale is a far stronger advertisement factor than Taylor. People know her and when she advertises the game, people will at least look do a quick google search on what this "new game with a prolific voice actress is all about". It's the same with Hideo Kojima, Steven Spielberg or Hayao Miyazaki. All of them just need to make some slight remarks about maybe a future project and people are talking. The actual results could be really, really shitty (unlikely but possible, all of them had their misses), and people still would at least inform themselves about it. |
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MiloTheFirst
Posts: 429 |
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I think you are the one that doesn't understand what the life of freelancer normally is. the pay from a couple of gigs is not meant to make up for our inactive time, it is up to ourselves to find business to keep us productive the rest of the month. if we can not find work in our field then it is our own responsibility to find another kind of gig to keep us busy in the meanwhile. of course anyone would prefer to work the least amount of time for the maximum possible ptofit, but no one in their right mind would tell you they feel entitled to have a couple gigs set them up for the entire month because "finding work is so hard and they deserve this to make it balanced". in case you wonder I have been a freelance audiovisual technician for 5 years after being a permanent employee in the same field for another 6. in this time I have met and worked alongside numerous freelance entertainers who most of the time shared a similar view, from musicians to comedians , etc |
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