Hello to all,

Ice-Nova here and I'm a new comer. I'm 22, law student, always loved games writing came pretty naturally to me so I invested in it, English is not my first language, in fact it's the third one I learnt of the four I speak but that is exactly why I was interested by this union. Improving my English and my writing in one blow. Sounds like a good deal to me :) plus it wold give me a nice space to expose my stories to some criticism, honest constructive criticism is hard to come by, usually it shifts from "You suck and should be shot into the sun from a cannon" to "You are a god have my babies" and neither really helps :P

Anyway, my greeting to all, I hope to have something ready soon.

Theoretical values of work versus amount of effort put into are valid, but the problem is that we're discussing this once the game is known to have made a hit. The problem here is that a renegotiation of remuneration is being called for after the game is out and most importantly long after any contracts were signed.

Very early on in development when no voice had been recorded yet a bunch of actors were evaluated and chosen to be the various voices of the game, at that time, I'm sure, there were at least three possibly five finalists for each and every voice in the game. The producers as well as a team of grey dressed smile-less lawyers approached the people in those lists of finalists offering a set amount of money for their work. Fully aware that they were not the only ones and fully aware that they could, at that time, be easily replaced they accepted what, in the case of Nico's voice actor, is a very good fee for their work.

In this case the fee was set and he is now complaining that he should receive more because the game made more than he personally expected, the only possible scenario where this would happen is if his contract had a percentage based remuneration instead of a fixed one, by signing the contract he did to be hired in the first place he automatically resigned any percentage based remuneration in favour of a fixed amount, he did that most likely for two reasons: 1) at the time he was easily replaceable an he wanted the job. And 2) Parentage based remuneration carries the inherited risk that if the game flops you get nil.

The whole argument is that in other mediums there would be some additional remuneration for his voice being seen on television well that depends on the contract he signed and the laws that govern it. I believe his contract was very specific that his voice would be used for commercials as well as for the game because if it wasn't we would be seeing a lawsuit from the voice actor against Rockstar which, unless I'm really out of the loop, does not exist.

The whole issue has any weight whatsoever now because only now his voice is recognized, only now we all think of Nico with his voice and only now has GTAIV sold millions of copies but now is too late, the contract is signed, the deal is done. I don't know if he had the option to negotiate for percentage based remuneration, if he did then he dug his own grave if not then he should be happy he got 100.000 dollars because that is a lot of money and he could have been easily replaced when price was being originally negotiated.