With the Screen Actors Guild poised to go on strike, the gaming industry is about to pay the price for it's constant bragging that it's bigger than Hollywood.  In some ways, I can't help but sit back and laugh, if it were funny.  OK, I'm laughing anyway.  But I shouldn't be.

First, I think it's ridiculous that Voice Actors would be getting royalties from games when Artists, Programmers, and just about everyone else in the industry does not.  In my mind, here is the big problem if the industry gives in:  It's not the Publishers that will end up paying these royalties, it's the already underpaid and over-screwed Developers.

It is very common for the Developer of a game to get royalties, but most Developers are small companies, and unless the game is a mega-hit, most of the money goes back into running the development company and paying the salaries of the people working there.  This is one place that the game industry and Hollywood differ.  In Hollywood "points" usually go to people, in the games industry, they go to small development companies who have to make payroll and keep running in-between work.

And, the royalties paid to developers must be recouped from the cost of making the game.  This is not to say that the Developer won't make money until the game is profitable, it's far worse than that.  The Developer won't make royalties until they've paid back what they spent, but they are getting a much smaller cut than the Publisher is.  It is very common for the Publisher to break-even on a game, and the Developer is nowhere near recouping the advance on the royalties.

What does this have to do with paying Actors royalties?  That depends on who's cut the extra royalties come from.  If the Developers have to pay these royalties out of the development budget, then the Publisher gets away close to scott-free, while the Developer takes it in the...

If the industry gives into this, you can count on the Publisher trying to shift that money to someone else.

Of course, the larger question that everyone is bring up is:  Isn't this good because it might force Publishers to pay royalties to Artists and Programmers?  Yeah, that would be great, but where is that money going to come from?  The right place would be from the Publisher, but in the end, that will make games even more expensive and Publishers are already scared to spend money on anything that is not a god-guaranteed hit, so this will only serve to drive the industry more towards hit driven games.

It is also very unlikely that Artists and Programmers will suddenly start getting royalties because they have no power to negotiate them.  Artist and Programmers are not part of a Union, so a "strike" would largely be ignored by people not wanting to get fired.  Unionizing is an option, but that brings up a whole ?nother scary set of complications to the industry better left to another early-morning-I-haven't-had-my-mocha-yet rant.

It would be very interesting to see where the money that this industry makes actually goes.  It's not going to the "talent".  Is it going to the CEO's and VP's of the Publishers?  I doubt it is, anymore than any other big company does.  My guess is that the economics of this business are such that the revenues are high, but the profit is not (deal-making with the devil EA aside).

In the end, I think this is an issue of the Actors just fundamentally not understanding how this business works.  But, the games industry has always had this sick envy of Hollywood and has always proudly proclaimed how similar to Hollywood it was getting.  Careful what you wish for.  Mr Greed, Mr Ego, we're ready for your close-ups now.