Re: "Voice actors not paid?"

[Aurelia]

Hi all. It's come to our attention that there's information going around that we are not paying our voice actors. I'd like to shed a little light on this, as I feel that some misunderstandings and/or cases of our errors have begun digging a grave for us that we are doing our best to avoid.

During the time we've been developing MTAP and been working with voice actors, we have sent out countless payments, and have listened and adjusted our methods and systems several times when we discovered that something didn't work. Did we make errors? Yes, we did, and we are not proud of them. But did we ignore them and leave people out in the cold? Absolutely not. We have attempted to address every case that was brought to our attention, and have always been ready to fix any errors on our part.

So, what went wrong? Obviously something isn't right.
Past. Disconnection and difficulty in communication, and lack of clarity and explanation. We are still an inexperienced and ambitious studio, and did not have a solid structure in place to maintain adequate links to our actors and maintanance thereof, and this caused several issues. It started from volunteer work, to paid work, then to contracted work. From 11 voice actors to 60+. Why didn't this work?
With our initial casting, we outlined an initial pay, along with additional pay once the game was completed. Everyone who auditioned at that time agreed to this, or they should not have auditioned. Those who auditioned and were accepted, recieved that pay, and would recieve the final pay on completion of the game.
Three months ago, a third party individual posted a thread on these boards declaring the statement that actors were being mistreated, and were not being paid, and that we were making excuses of "not enough funds". That thread remains on this board with no instances of bans, or post deletions, because frankly, we have a habit of blaming ourselves. So, we spent the next 3 months establishing direct contact with our actors, attempting to fix line of communication, feeling that was where the issue was. We communicated with what actors were willing to come forward and share their feelings, and in turn, we concluded that periodic payment would be a better course of action than what we had plotted prior. Communication increased, payments were made, but it still wasn't enough. The swift urgency of change brought some inconsistencies and conflictions with our structure, slowing things down, and timelineness not being handled appropriately.. Ontop of that, was the initial pay that lingered as an intent to be a part of the full pay. This led some actors to submit a few lines, not meet the "credit", and then in turn, we asked them for more lines without them having recieved any pay.

Over this last weekend, we have been addressing this as best as we can. We sent out payments to all actors whether we had implimented their lines or not, but this still left some people not recieving pay, due to that "credit". After interacting with a few of those in question, it was made clear that this just wasn't fair. We removed that credit/deduction, and are currently in the process of getting out the payments as due.

And..?
Right now, our top priority is making sure everyone is met with what they were expecting, rather than what we had in mind. We have grown attached to these voice actors, and are disheartened that we seem to be doing everything wrong. We wanted to include voice actors because we know how important they are for bringing something to life, and we wished to be as fair as possible to them, and show them how important they were. We are just simply an inexperienced studio that did not understand how to manage this best. In the future, we will be signing on a professional vo company to handle these things for us. It just didn't work for anyone.

We appreciate all the voice actors that have supported and helped better our system, and My Time at Portia. They have given us patience, advice, suggestions, tips, and encouragement, when they were obligated to do none of those, and we will continue to return that appreciation the best we can.
We are still working to get all VO's in the game, and I apologize to those who feel the game incomplete without them, along with any voice actors who feel we've not been fair.

[Lauren_Team17]

Originally posted by Illegal Dreadlocks:

Originally posted by PersonalC0ffee:

Yes I have

I'm just calling you out for doing it.

Isn't that a bit ironic though? :tgrin:

Hi Illegal Dreadlocks and PersonalC0ffee,

Let's please keep the forums a friendly place for everyone, and try to keep on topic.

Thank you!

[Paintbrush Poltergeist]

Originally posted by Lauren_Team17:

Originally posted by Illegal Dreadlocks:

Isn't that a bit ironic though?

Hi Illegal Dreadlocks and PersonalC0ffee,

Let's please keep the forums a friendly place for everyone, and try to keep on topic.

Thank you!

You're right.
I'll refrain from any discussion that isn't directly on topic.

[Raven]

Originally posted by indie.author.extraordinaire:

I remember someone posting about this subject and the way they came off was like "sour grapes". I am glad to hear the other side of the story and appreciate your coming forward. I always feel better hearing BOTH sides of the story.

HEAR hear i always feel there are two sides to the story and its best to hear both then make a descision, so i agree to this post and i wish the devs at my time at portia get past this and move onto the fun stuff of the game moreso the micro management of payments etc.
Its sad to think there are naysayers out there that all they want to do is destroy small game developers. i beleive encouragement is more rewarding than destruction.
thankyou devs for making this clarification and for making an great game even more awesome.

[Brokenseal]

lol, voices suck, wouldn't pay.

[hazecloud ( ☞♥◞ ♥)]

Originally posted by Illegal Dreadlocks:

Originally posted by hazecloud (╭☞♥◞ ♥)╭:

ugly buffons contaminating thread aside, I hope it will all go well for ya. I'd support workers over a company.

Personal attacks aren't very nice. :hmm:

I'm sorry, I kinda get carried away after reading the rockpapershotgun article that asked me to remove ad block.

[Akio]

The voice acting in this game is quite terrible anyway. I would just get the ones for the event scenes and go on the rest without it.

In the end I do hope things work out with the two party.

[HumbleLinux]

Originally posted by Brokenseal:

lol, voices suck, wouldn't pay.

This. The devs got scammed having to pay for *this* lol
And now the SJW media are calling the devs out and making them look bad anwyay! lol

[Rampant Rabbit]

Ah, the joys of business. Paperwork!

So important thing is (was) to have a contract between you and the VA's specifying exactly what the requirements are, and the rates offered. SAG has this for their members and agreed rates.

If you go outside of SAG, then same still applies. VAs will be paid X per hour/day either as full & final payment, or specify the payment schedule, ie X upfront, then Y on release. Where it gets trickier is if there's any performance/royalty agreed, but that's where the SAG agreement would help.. As well as keeping SAG and their members happy.

Without a contract, then it gets a lot harder for VAs to demand payment, or Pathea to defend claims,especially if anyone's trying to change any 'agreement' retrospectively. IANAL, but having been in business a long time, I understand the importance of contracts & why lawyers are a necessary evil :p

[rincewind]

Moral of the story, do games without voices.

You can write whatever you want, add, change without having to worry about voices!

[Bob Saget]

Originally posted by rincewind:

Moral of the story, do games without voices.

You can write whatever you want, add, change without having to worry about voices!

No.

[nirth]

Given how these voice actors have acted in this entire thing... I'm with the idea of no voice actors.

I've read up on the story, read the "complaints," read the original postings for voice acting, followed the subsequent discussion, and checked out the complaining voice actor social media accounts.

My take away - the voice actors who didn't understand the original terms should simply have asked then and there. The original terms were right there.

The idea that the voice actors for this particular game would get paid $600 USD / hour is... laughable. The quality of the voice acting isn't up to that level nor was the professionalism of the voice actors. They signed up for a specificied and clear pay level. They got paid that.

It was only after that a couple seem to have realized that this game might become popular and suddenly they wanted more. That's not cool.

Overall, my take away - the voice actors who complained have been unprofessional and seem like small children whining. The company has acted with more clarity and transparency than needed. Kudos for them for dealing with some entitled entities who feel that they should get paid far more than their talent warrants.

I'm happy when games don't have voice acting. I prefer ambient sounds and great music.

[computerchy]

well i like to get an idea whats the characters voice , but not need to make the character speaks whole dialogue , its just enough to add some basic words as , hello , hi , bye , what , yes , yay , oh no , what , aha , right , NOO . . . etc , but to make the character speaks whole game's paragraph is tough , and even some of big games from big companies as like nintendo didn't do that ( legend of zelda . . . ftw ) , they just make us know the character's voice

[Antiga]

I like the addition of voice acting when it's there. It does give atmosphere to the game as a whole. Obviously in the current state it's just detrimental to the value of the game, never knowing what will be voiced. Like Ack won't be voiced initially, but once he's out and about he's suddenly voiced. Gale is voiced a whole lot, while some characters don't have a voice at all.
People's voice is one of the criteria for spouse, now that voices are in. Before voices it was no consideration. But Petra for example, has a bit too deep of a voice, and so does Lucy. Alice and Emily have rather cute voices, and Ginger's voice fits really well. Sam I don't hear often enough to really be able to make up my mind, however, and the same counts for plenty others.

All in all voices are better than no voices. But considering the voice actors, I'd say cut your losses and just throw em all out. As right now, the VA's are having their cake, and eating it too. By throwing out their work you're sending a strong message, and these kinds of shenanigans are much less likely to repeat themselfes.

It'll never happen, I realize that. I just wish it would. I'd rather play a fully unvoiced game, than having this mixed bag, or even a fully voiced game - knowing what I know now about the voice talent. I'd rather not give them the satisfaction, as at this point I see them as little more than scum. That's too bad for most of them who had nothing to do with this situation, they get thrown into the same smelly bag for me.

Make them finish their work. Punish any missed deadlines, bad voice work or anything else wrong as you normally would've when working with professionals. (We realize these people aren't professionals, just children with a mic.) Then don't put any of their work in. It doesn't get much more wasteful than this, which is part of the strength of the message.

[Atech66]

Problem was handled.. the end.
Glad it was resolved.
Great game btw

[Frey]

Originally posted by computerchy:

well i like to get an idea whats the characters voice , but not need to make the character speaks whole dialogue , its just enough to add some basic words as , hello , hi , bye , what , yes , yay , oh no , what , aha , right , NOO . . . etc , but to make the character speaks whole game's paragraph is tough , and even some of big games from big companies as like nintendo didn't do that ( legend of zelda . . . ftw ) , they just make us know the character's voice

I personally am in favour with such style. It would be easier to add more dialogues and lines, and between the option of few lines with voice or tons of lines un-voiced, i choose the latter. I love it when i talk to the character they have new lines about themselves even if they just wanted to comment the weather.