Progress Update Thread (formerly known as quest for glory 2)

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#351 Post by **Erpy** » Sat May 10, 2008 9:55 pm

There's not going to be a voice pack as far as I'm concerned. Way too many lines and it'd be a lot more difficult to cast people to fill the roles.

#352 Post by **Anonymous Game Creator 2** » Sun May 11, 2008 12:39 am

Well, that, and the fact that to use union actors (SAG and AFTRA) in any productions you have to have bucketloads of money. The unions won't permit their members to work voluntarily or unpaid, even if the actors want to.

SAG in particular, are bastards to deal with as they will not cater to low budget or non-profit productions under any circumstances. They also require non-union actors to be paid at their minimum wage of $765 USD per hour.

Given the amount of lines in QFG2VGA, having professional voices would be extremely costly, and just isn't feasible since we won't see any of that money return. I also feel that our games have progressed enough in all other departments to justify the use of at least some professional voice actors to bring that level of quality across the board. But without a multi-million dollar cash injection, I don't see it happening, unfortunately.

And then there's lip-syncing all of those lines... :eek

gogogoff · #353 Post by **gogogoff** » Sun May 11, 2008 5:17 am

Anonymous Game Creator 2 wrote:Well, that, and the fact that to use union actors (SAG and AFTRA) in any productions you have to have bucketloads of money. The unions won't permit their members to work voluntarily or unpaid, even if the actors want to.

SAG in particular, are bastards to deal with as they will not cater to low budget or non-profit productions under any circumstances. They also require non-union actors to be paid at their minimum wage of $765 USD per hour.

Given the amount of lines in QFG2VGA, having professional voices would be extremely costly, and just isn't feasible since we won't see any of that money return. I also feel that our games have progressed enough in all other departments to justify the use of at least some professional voice actors to bring that level of quality across the board. But without a multi-million dollar cash injection, I don't see it happening, unfortunately.

And then there's lip-syncing all of those lines... :eek

765$ an hour! I think I know what I want to be when I grow up

Weaver1497 · #354 Post by **Weaver1497** » Tue May 13, 2008 1:21 am

Mainly just lurk around here from time to time and its been awhile since I posted anything but wanted to throw my two cents in on the recent post:

As a working member of SAG I WISH we got paid $765 an hour, that is actually our day rate, which is usually accompanied by a standard 10% to cover an agents take. The union is actually completely their to protect us and I have had nothing but extremely positive experiences dealing with them thus far.

For the most part the SAG doesn't want any actors working for anything less than the minimum's because it is an in demand profession, and there are tens-of thousands of kids in my region alone ready to work for pennies just to get a break. Bottom line the union has to protect the "shop" and the "workers" that depend on the shop for income. I've been very fortunate this past year with some recognizable steady work, but who knows what the next year will bring, or the next. Hence the Union has to protect my "job".

You CAN actually work with SAG and get an "ultra low" budget rate for actor's on a project. You hear about this sometimes in the papers when big names take pay cuts for passion projects.

I also completely agree with AGD2's comments on some A+++ voice talent would be needed for the scale of this game, which I am greatly looking forward to btw. I'm waiting for its release to buy a new PC Notebook for it as its a good enough reason to do so!

#355 Post by **Anonymous Game Creator 2** » Tue May 13, 2008 2:44 am

Well, the thing is that SAG's "low budget" and "ultra low budget" thing only applies to Indie films. Under SAG's (and AFTRA's) Internet and Video Games contracts, they have no room for no budget projects and all actors working under a union contract (both union and non-union) have to be paid at the full rates.

For voice recordings it's $365 per hour if the actor plays one character. Or $765 if the actor plays multiple characters (an unlimited amount of characters are allowed). SAG also make it that all non-union actors have to lodge a membership for application into the union within 30 days of doing the voice recordings (Taft-Hartley).

The whole thing is quite ridiculous because it either forces actors to go Financial Core if they wish to do a so-called "Passion Project" or simply not be able to do said work. Plus SAG's "ultra low budget" contract for Indie films is like 800 pages long! And it's riddled with hidden clauses about additional payments that must be paid to actors if, for example, the project is released onto DVD or other mediums. It's far easier for Indie film makers to just create their films with non-union talent given all the hoops SAG makes them jump through.

These actors unions are far too inflexible and a lot of people know that they are notorious for being difficult to deal with. In the end, they are not concerned if an actor likes the material or feels challenged by a role on a passion project if that project has a low (or no) budget. The bottom line to SAG is money, not the actor's craft and opportunities for expansion and growth. Just look at how SAG treated John Voight when he wanted to do a passion project:

http://www.pirromount.com/voight.html

gogogoff · #356 Post by **gogogoff** » Tue May 13, 2008 3:05 am

Anonymous Game Creator 2 wrote:Well, the thing is that SAG's "low budget" and "ultra low budget" thing only applies to Indie films. Under SAG's (and AFTRA's) Internet and Video Games contracts, they have no room for no budget projects and all actors working under a union contract (both union and non-union) have to be paid at the full rates.

For voice recordings it's $365 per hour if the actor plays one character. Or $765 per hour if the actor plays multiple characters (an unlimited amount of characters are allowed). SAG also make it that all non-union actors have to lodge a membership for application into the union within 30 days of doing the voice recordings (Taft-Hartley).

The whole thing is quite ridiculous because it either forces actors to go Financial Core if they wish to do a so-called "Passion Project" or simply not be able to do said work. Plus SAG's "ultra low budget" contract for Indie films is like 800 pages long! And it's riddled with hidden clauses about additional payments that must be paid to actors if, for example, the project is released onto DVD or other mediums. It's far easier for Indie film makers to just create their films with non-union talent given all the hoops SAG makes them jump through.

These actors unions are far too inflexible and a lot of people know that they are notorious for being difficult to deal with. In the end, they are not concerned if an actor likes the material or feels challenged by a role on a passion project if that project has a low (or no) budget. The bottom line to SAG is money, not the actor's craft and opportunities for expansion and growth. Just look at how SAG treated John Voight when he wanted to do a passion project:

http://www.pirromount.com/voight.html

wow

#357 Post by **Anonymous Game Creator 2** » Tue May 13, 2008 3:18 am

Plus, I have it on good authority that the hourly rate for Voice Over actors in 1995 was merely $52 USD per hour.

This means it was far more profitable in the 90's for Sierra (a multi-million dollar company making big profits, no less) to make a game with union voice talent back then, than today where even low/no budget projects are required to pay SAG's current high rates.

Thing is that SAG now realizes games are a big cash cow. They look at super successful titles like the GTA games, and see that they're starting to compete with (and even outgross) feature films. Therefore, they want their actors to receive 'fair' rates for working on such profitable projects. The problem is that they have obviously never considered that anyone would create a non-profit or low budget game project, so they don't currently have any contracts to cover them, nor will they allow a waiver of Global Rule One for such a project. Their policy is absolutely ridiculous!

Gronagor · #358 Post by **Gronagor** » Tue May 13, 2008 6:39 am

Ok... so if Bill Gates decides to make a donation....?

That seems to be out. Oh well!! Can't wait to see the new graphics!

Damisha · #359 Post by **Damisha** » Tue May 13, 2008 9:13 am

I've been a member of SAG for almost as long as I've been watching this forum. I will have to agree with AGC2 regarding the issues with the organization. What I normally have to say about SAG is borderline blasphemy and the reason why is because I have spent a lot of my time in the industry "behind the camera" on the production side. I have seen projects get locked away due to SAG and their demands even on these so called "ultra low budget" indie films. Being more than just an "actor" has given me some insight as to the trials and tribulations that low budget or no budget productions must face.

In my opinion, SAG doesn't do any good for the low budget actor nor the low budget film maker. They try to force film makers into these ridiculous contracts by holding the threats and guilt involved with the "global rule one" idea over the heads of their members. People eventually learn to just not deal with SAG altogether and work on their projects "Non-Union" which ultimately prevents young SAG actors from working altogether. If you are going to try to prevent members of a union from taking work unsuitable to union rules, then you should at least help them to find work which would be suitable.

All in all, I'll get off of my soap box now, and if it were my place I would recommend most everyone to stay away from SAG. I have found plenty of good actors who are not affiliated that can do just as good a job (if not better) than some of the crack pots that make their way into that infamous union. And if you look hard enough, you'll even find SAG actors who will ignore the "global rule one" and take jobs just for the sheer enjoyment of acting.

Calvert666 · #360 Post by **Calvert666** » Wed May 14, 2008 3:40 am

I would be proud and more than happy to do alot of, if not most of the voice acting for you guys. I work at a video company in NJ, and we have mics, tools, anything but a real sound booth. My friends and colleagues all say that I'm an ACE when it comes to voice acting, I took a course on how to get into the biz, and can't afford to create a real demo since I'm pretty broke, but I would be so willing to do voices for this game. Give me a shot! I may not be SAG or AFTRA, but if you let me work for you, and let me use this as a credit on my resume to get some real voice acting gigs, I will be so very greatful. I know I've been waiting 2 - 3 years for this game since I heard of it, but I will wait longer if I can be a part of it. Just send me some lines and how you want them read, and I'll give you an MP3 in return. Let me know!!

#361 Post by **Erpy** » Wed May 14, 2008 4:32 am

I think all of this was theoretical discussion, since we've already stated QFG2 won't have a voice pack.

#362 Post by **Anonymous Game Creator 2** » Wed May 14, 2008 6:10 am

Damisha wrote:They try to force film makers into these ridiculous contracts by holding the threats and guilt involved with the "global rule one" idea over the heads of their members. People eventually learn to just not deal with SAG altogether and work on their projects "Non-Union" which ultimately prevents young SAG actors from working altogether.

That's why, by law, Financial Core exists, allowing union actors to leave the guild while still paying the portion of their dues that go towards negotiating union wages. But SAG are so petty that they even refuse to acknowledge Fi-Core actors as "dues paying non-members" and instead call them "fee-paying non-members" (as if the money that Fi-Core actors put towards the negotiation of union wages is somehow different than the money paid by full guild members!) If that's not some form of discrimination, then I don't know what is! SAG are very much into the name-and-shame game. Furthermore, they tend to group every actor who goes Fi-Core into a generalized category, regardless of the actor's individual circumstances. Then they'll use their highly-paid, high-status members to use a mob mentality against the Fi-Core members, claiming that they're weakening the union! Seems to me like SAG's doing a good enough job of that all by itself.

Stigma surrounds the fact that Fi-Core actors can legally go back to work during a union strike and earn money, while their fellow actors are "doing it tough" boycotting work for better wages. SAG advocates will claim that Fi-Core members will then happily benefit from the increased wages of a union strike, even though the Fi-Core actors didn't strike themselves and continued to work during the strike. But what about Fi-Core members who instigate a self-imposed strike, in support of their union colleagues? What if the reason they take non-union jobs is NOT financial, but political (some members go Fi-Core because they don't want their union fees going to a political party they don't support) or to do passion projects? Fi-Core is some actors' only means of working on passion projects. There are too many shades of gray in any given individual's circumstances, and SAG's narrow-minded approach that everyone who goes Fi-Core MUST be be ripping them and other actors off, is costing them members. Guilt tactics will only get them so far before people get tired of the nonsense and realize that, despite SAG's claims, highly paid actors benefit most from guild, yet ironically, are so well-established that they do not even need the guild to get them jobs.

I would seriously urge any SAG actors who have trouble dealing with SAG to go Financial Core. You can then work both union and non-union projects and your Health and Pension funds are totally untouchable. They are safe and will continue to be paid at the same rate. SAG like to use scare tactics that going Fi-Core is tantamount to completely severing your ties with the guild and therefore kissing goodbye to your acting career. The truth is that SAG are scared that many of their members will elect Fi-Core status, so they've had to launch a 'psy-ops' campaign of sorts to try and scare actors into staying with the guild.

It would be so simple for SAG to make a few changes to their contracts and make working with them much more producer-friendly for a broad range of projects, but they enjoy their elitist status too much. So I have no pity for SAG. They reap what they sow, and maybe when enough union actors go Fi-Core, Sag will then get the message that they should be supporting the people who can create future work for their members and not driving them away.

And if you look hard enough, you'll even find SAG actors who will ignore the "global rule one" and take jobs just for the sheer enjoyment of acting.

True, but at what cost if they get caught by SAG?

Erpy wrote: I think all of this was theoretical discussion, since we've already stated QFG2 won't have a voice pack.

Well, I wouldn't rule it out completely. There's an interesting discussion on the AGS forums now about coming up with an automated program to lipsync files. If this tool came to fruition, then the most time consuming part of producing a voice pack would become a breeze. But that's not to say that recording, splitting and cleaning THOUSANDS of voices is any easy or quick feat. Such a task would take many months, even with non-union talent for a game the size of QFG2. The chances are extremely slim, though as we want to move onto other commercial things. There's only so much the adventure genre can be aided by churning out non-profit games. As illustrated above, people expect you to have money to pay people for such services as voice actors and such, and getting by on charitable contributions alone can be more of a headache than it's worth.

Allergic to Katta · #363 Post by **Allergic to Katta** » Wed May 14, 2008 1:25 pm

IF a voice pack is an option the team agrees to work towards, I also would be willing to donate voice talent and help with working with the audio files. I've been working with editing audio for 6 years or so and have professional equipment.

I'm not a seasoned voice-actor or anything, but I'm sure I could pull off at least a character or two up to AGD's standards. I'd really like to show my support of this project if there's a means to do so. If not, that's fine.

keronian · #364 Post by **keronian** » Wed May 14, 2008 7:04 pm

I'd also be willing to volunteer my vocal skills... Not a seasoned voice actor, either, though I have done some acting in my day, and I've been told I could do voice work.

Would be very willing to audition so you could determine if my voice talents were up to snuff... and determine what voices I'd be good for, if any.

The Infamous Mecha Sonic · #365 Post by **The Infamous Mecha Sonic** » Wed May 14, 2008 9:48 pm

I think the good people at AGDI have done more than enough for us already. This project has already taken years of their time and creative energies. There's no reason they should be saddled with the additional burden of a voice pack, nor should we hold them to such a standard. Rather, we should thank them for what they've done and encourage them to go forward from here with a clear vision in mind—a vision to perfect their art and apply it in the making of many more great games, which will hopefully bring them the profit they rightly deserve.

My best regards go out to the team and all the beta testers (well... the beta testers who actually did something). Your dedication has been nothing short of stupendous. I look forward to seeing a release soon.

keronian · #366 Post by **keronian** » Wed May 14, 2008 10:50 pm

Obviously we're not looking to "saddle" them with this. If the automatic lip-sync program doesn't happen, I wouldn't expect a voice-pack to happen. Nor, honestly, do I see it happening without a large amount of public support in the form of not only voice talent, but cleaning and editing.

I was simply offering that support, should the kind folks here decide it really bugged them that QFG2, the masterpiece of their lovingly re-created games, were without a voice pack.

Regardless of the outcome, I greatly look forward to seeing the results of so many years of work.

RogerWanko · #367 Post by **RogerWanko** » Thu May 15, 2008 1:24 am

weird...i would say that lip syncing would add nearly nothing to the voice pack gamingexperience....lipsyncing is just fluff...eyecandy.
a voice pack WOULD however add to the gaming experience provided the voices are good of course.
i think it's ridiculous to blow off a voice pack for the reason that it HAS to be lip synced
.
in short, i would be happy with non moving mouths and good voice acting.
i do think no voices would be better than bad voices though.
imho...

Calvert666 · #368 Post by **Calvert666** » Thu May 15, 2008 2:35 am

First, Erpy....I know you probly told us this a long time ago, where did you get your avatar character, and who is it?

I totally love the fact that the new game is SOOOO CLOSE to completion, and I do appreciate all the hard work AGD has put into this (Naysayers be damned).

I have a few ideas about how the voice pack thing would work in a newer version of the game. Get as many VOLUNTEERS as you can on here to try out for a part by reading a designated line or 2 for the role they're trying out for, and send it in as a clean MP3. They would time the lines by watching the mouths of the characters in Version 1 of the new game, match that speech pattern, if possible, and record based on that. No real 'lip-syncing software' necessary. Just EFFORT and PRACTICE!

If there are enough people trying out for the parts, there's bound to be someone worthy of each role. Some worthy of multiple roles...The hardest one however would be the Narrator...I know we can't get someone like John Rhys Davies, but there has to be an older narrator type out there worthy of this role. I don't think its a lost cause. The people just have to want it bad enough, and want to contribute bad enough. It might just work!!

#369 Post by **Anonymous Game Creator 2** » Thu May 15, 2008 3:45 am

Well, getting talented voice actors isn't really the issue, as we have plenty of good contacts now in that department.

And lipsynching the lines is also not the main concern, as someone at the AGS forum managed to throw together a (working) sample version of the program just yesterday and has plans to further develop it. It looks very promising.

However, lipsycning would be a given on any future project. I'm sure many people would be satisfied without it, but personally, I wouldn't want "bubble-gum chewing" style dialogue portraits to represent our capabilities. Not when the game could look so much better and the ability exists to do that. And now with this auto-lipsynching tool, there would be no reason not to go the extra mile.

The main problems with a voice pack are: the actors, particularly the narrator, have literally thousands of lines. For QFG2VGA, I wouldn't be surprised if it's in excess of 10,000 narrator lines. Whereas our standard games have far less, but still take forever to record. I'd say Al Emmo had about 4,000 narrator lines.

I'm not sure if people realize exactly how big a job it is to record all of these. For example, the narrator lines for Al Emmo took about 3 months to record, and that was with the actor working very reliably and sending us batches of lines nearly every day over a 2-3 month period. It's a lot to ask from a professional to do such an enormous task unpaid. And that's not even factoring in the other actors, many of whom can be slightly unreliable (or too busy) with getting "free" lines sent in by a due date. You spend a lot of time chasing people up which is a headache. It's far more convenient to get every actor into a recording studio and get all the lines taken care of over a day or three. Plus any actors involved would all have to sign contracts with Vivendi too.

Secondly, splitting that amount of lines is not fun. I know people on here have volunteered for that with enthusiasm, but people showed the same enthusiasm for beta testing and I'd say only 40-50% of our beta testers actually did anything worthwhile. Some did nothing more than post an introduction thread. People who promise things and then don't pull through become a burden because then you end up relying on your own time and resources to finish something which was promised to you by someone else. What people say they'll do, and what they actually WILL do are two different things. So I'd never consider a voicepack unless I knew I had the capability to pull it off entirely by myself if worst came to worst.

Besides, if a voice pack ever was produced, it would likely be a project that would occur several years down the track, not straight away. Unfortunately, we can't really afford the time it would take to put a voice pack together at the moment. We'd need to get a lot of stability underneath us first.

#370 Post by **Erpy** » Thu May 15, 2008 4:35 am

First, Erpy....I know you probly told us this a long time ago, where did you get your avatar character, and who is it?

I'm a Lunar fan. My tag character is from Nash from Lunar:Silver Star Story Complete.

CrazyStalker · #371 Post by **CrazyStalker** » Thu May 15, 2008 6:15 pm

Weren't there lines in QFG2 that directly refer to the (player-chosen) name of the main character? That makes a voice pack very unlikely.

#372 Post by **Anonymous Game Creator 2** » Thu May 15, 2008 7:00 pm

Yes, but in that case you'd either have the speech skip over the name (as QFG4 did at one point) or rewrite the text to omit the character's name altogether.

keronian · #373 Post by **keronian** » Thu May 15, 2008 9:20 pm

Just call him "Hero". Problem solved.

#374 Post by **Erpy** » Thu May 15, 2008 9:21 pm

Those and any line that uses a variable word or number in it, like the lines that deal with bargaining, arm wrestling betting and getting money off corpses.

MusicallyInspired · #375 Post by **MusicallyInspired** » Thu May 15, 2008 9:34 pm

keronian wrote:Just call him "Hero". Problem solved.

I've got a better idea. Don't make a voice pack at all. Problem already solved.

Progress Update Thread (formerly known as quest for glory 2)

Voice Acting

Few Things