It's no secret that voice actors are, more often than not, underpaid by the people who hired them. It has been an issue for years that has initiated pushback like the SAG-AFTRA strike. One particular voice actor, Jennifer Hale, revealed in an interview an instance where she was grossly underpaid.
Jennifer Hale in MGS
The voice actor can be identified as a veteran in the industry as she has already done several projects for video games like Mass Effect and countless animated shows. One of her roles was Naomi Hunter in Metal Gear Solid, where she took on the role of a geneticist who worked on nanotechnology.
In other interviews, Hale had already been speaking out about the unfair compensation she has gotten from a game that made $176 million but she never directly named the video game that employed her. It was during an interview with host Simon Parkin that she did.
It was made known that she was talking about the game franchise Metal Gear Solid. She stated that they paid her an hourly wage that was way less than what she wanted it to be, as reported by Kotaku, calling it a "grotesque disparity" with the
To add to that, she also expressed that it is "it's indicative of what's happening in modern culture," and that for every dollar a workaday person makes, which includes voice actors, an executive makes $399.
Despite the evident low pay, Hale says that she still loves the game, saying that it was a "crazy departure" from anything that she's done before. She then praised the game for being brilliant, unique, dark, mysterious, and intense.
Hale is still fighting for the pay that voice actors deserve which she refers to as an "existential fight to make sure that they hang on to the rights to their own voices, their own images," due to those factors being what they make their living with.
She aims for wages that will align with the inflation rate so that they can keep doing voice acting as professionals in the space economically. Sadly, the fight will soon be harder as AI starts to threaten their jobs as well.
Generative AI vs. Voice Actors
A lot of generative AI tools have been emerging since the boom of artificial intelligence. Aside from AI image tools, the technology is also able to generate dialogue now as well. Other than the dangers of misuse and misinformation, it can be used to replace humans.
Even if veteran voice actors refuse to have their voices replicated, people who aren't even in the industry will likely accept the payment so that their voices can be used when generating dialogue. After all, it's just the voice that the tool needs, not the years of experience in voice acting.
Still, AI is not advanced enough to convey emotion the way actors would. As mentioned in Wired, Word-Voices Organization President Dan Lenard said that AI tends to make dialogue sound "as boring as possible," and so the generated outcome might come off as robotic.
