Posted by Bill Haenel on 03-Jun-05

This ain't Hollywood

I haven't said much (at least not publicly) about the RIAA and MPAA and SAG and etc and their insatiable appetite for residual income.

Let's think this over....residual income...residue...left-over scum on the surface of whatever you've just cleaned or dirtied...

Residue. Scum. Residual income. Scum-sucking.

Now that's out of the way, so let's talk about the RIAA, MPAA, SAG, ASCAP, BMI, etc again. I understand the need for a union to protect artists' interests. In the case of SAG, ASCAP and BMI, they certainly have a legitimate role in this regard. The RIAA, MPAA, well, maybe not so much. Protecting corporate greed?

You get my meaning, and I'm sure you've heard it all before. So I'll cut right to the chase scene, making sure that all of the folks who deserve to make money forever and ever on that chase scene are being paid fairly, of course.

Wired ran an article recently discussing the SAG and their beef with the game industry. It seems that as the games become more of a money-maker, the SAG wants to make sure that all of the agreements that were made regarding payment to actors for services rendered (voice-overs) are hereby nullified. Granted, that's not exactly what they've said, but in a sense that's what it comes down to.

I understand that the SAG is only looking to write new agreements for future work, based on the fact that there is more value in games now. What I don't understand is how they can't see that the gaming industry is a different world than the movie biz. the characters that are created aren't human, and they aren't products of one person's artistic talent. They are the obvious artwork of many people, coming together to build a software product that looks like a character and sounds like a character, but is really just a bunch of code and sounds and images that makes up a character.

Bottom line, if the actors deserve royalties for their input in creating this piece of media, shouldn't the other artists get some as well? It's all a matter of sharing profits, right? So now that we're discussing it, shouldn't I get a little extra something when the ice cream shop does well, since I am creating ice cream cones and handing them out ever so gracefully while standing on my tippy toes?

What I hope doesn't happen is for all of this to end in a big NO for everyone. NO royalties for the actors, because NO royalties for game artists. What would be truly excellent is, YES royalties for actors because YES royalties for programmers and designers and geeks all around.

I guess that's the point of the article. So you should probably stop wasting time here and just go read it.

• Soapbox
• Software
• Business