The Buzz: Show the Money!
This week, The Bee takes a look at industry salaries
Last week The Bee learned GTA IV anti-hero Niko Bellic is less in common than he thought. He is not psychotic out of war-torn Europe. He is America actor Mr Michael Hollick! I cannot believe it!
The Bee learned this because Mr Hollick is into the blog o' sphere recent complaining to not have enough money. In interview with The New York Times he said to make only $100,000 for 18 months' work.
It would normally be enough but he is spend-a-Hollick!
Oh lord. Maybe it is GTA curse. Mr Young Maylay who talked CJ in San Andreas is now poor DJ without fame and money, although he has MySpace. Even much worse, both Mr Ray Liotta (Tommy in Vice City) and Mr Samuel L Jackson (officer Tenpenny in San Andreas) have become television advertisement actors!
And what about the actor talking Claude in GTA III? You can never guess what he is doing now…
Do you give up? It is a joke… Claude did not speak in GTA!
Apologies for absolute crazy today.
Of course, $100,000 is not curse for unknown actor. It is lucrative payday bonanza… boom!
On the alternative hand, GTA IV has already raked in much more than $600 million. If Mr Hollick had residue payment like acting in screen and radio, he would not have to eject an angry man from a Banshee sports car, he could buy one with his money! He deserves being rich.
Or maybe he does not. All he has done is speaking to a microphone and he is not famous to sell games. He is small fried fish. His union cannot argue to make him more rich. No way!
But he is a big part of why the game is good, with his fantastic talking and moving. His union has let him down. Make him rich!
It is confusing issue. That is why this week The Bee will take a look at the games industry and make argument for who should be rich or not rich. To spice it, I will make pretend as somebody else! Say good-bye to The Bee and say hello to…
The programmers (average making £42,252)
Hello, we deserve to have more money because we are the workers. A game is made with our toil and bleeding for 90 hours every week and we have to do what people tell us every day and without being loved.
Devil Advocate
What are you, communists? I can replace you all with baboons. Your wife has divorced you? Boo-hoo! Get back to work or you are dismissed!
The designers (average making £32,253)
Hello, we deserve to have more money because we have a vision and it is made into a game. There are geniuses as Will Wright, Shigeru Miyamoto, Hideo Kojima, Peter Molyneux, and many other people who are designers and they make video games the giant success. Shigeru Miyamoto is even the American Time Magazine most influential man in the world!
Devil Advocate
Do you think this impresses me?
Artists (average making £33,752)
Hello, we deserve to be more rich because we have unique talent. Games are visual medium, and gamers' quality of experience is in colour and design. The beauty of some games makes them art. Think about Okami and Shadow of the Colossus. BioShock is also a special dystopia thanks to artistic vision.
Devil Advocate
Artists? Frankly, an infant could make most game art with a book about B-movie special effects, scissors, and glue. How about this: why not give your savings to the graphic novelists and movie costume and special effects designers who came up with your ideas in the first place, or the programmers who make the idiot-proof art programmes? Okami? Nice try, but copying somebody else's work is not art. Shadow of the Colossus? Study in Brown and Grey with Outsize Dr Who Monsters, more like. BioShock?
Okay, BioShock. But the rest of you third-rate fantasists can whistle!
Writers (average making £25,000)
We deserve to be more rich because we give the video game its drama. When every character speaks and there is a story that the player enjoys these are the fruits of our creating.
Devil Advocate
Are you saying that all video game stories aren't written as a project by children who are too stupid to participate in normal schoolwork? Because this is what I had assumed.
Producers (average making £39,880)
We deserve to be more rich because we coordinate everybody together and sometimes we even make suggestions about how things in the game should be. We often overrule technical and artistic choices (sometimes made by much more qualified people) and give the impression to everybody that we are responsible for the whole game, even though we are not very skilled. Except at producing. That is our heavy burden.
Devil Advocate
Excuse me for a moment. I am having a daydream about a world without producers and I don't want to wake up.
QA (average making £19,792)
We deserve to be more rich because we work very hard playing games to make sure they have no bugs and they are more fun.
Devil Advocate
You are pathetic.
Actors (average earning £369 a day)
We deserve to be more rich because actors in Hollywood are rich. The star of a block-busting film makes millions and millions of dollars and the star of a block-busting game makes much less than one million. It is not fair!
Devil Advocate
What are you, a capitalist? Nobody knows who you are and your job is easy. The game is somebody else's work. All you've done is played make-believe into a microphone, and you want a bigger piece of the action? There are people starving, for god's sake. Get out of my sight.
Video game journalist (average making – thanks to loophole – minimum wage for migrant worker in Bangladesh minus expenses and holidays)
We deserve more money because we are critics of video games and we amuse ourselves making fun of them. We sometimes have to stay up late and play games to review them, even if it means we cannot concentrate very well on television programmes in the background!
Devil Advocate
I agree with you! Suggested salary £562,300 every year.
Wow, The Bee did not expect Devil Advocate to say that.
*WINKING!*
The Bee is an industry insider who has fed on the nectar of over three decades' worth of gaming. All opinions expressed are the author's own.