The ever-popular ($600 million popular) Grand Theft Auto IV, as we know, features a fellow by the name of Niko Bellic. Niko kind of starts off in the game as a nobody in America, much like the actor who voices him, Michael Hollick. Hollick also was the 'motion actor' for Bellic. To most, this would be the opportunity of a lifetime. While Hollick says he's grateful, he's also pretty t'd off about the pay - "only" about $100,000 over roughly 15 months:

“Obviously I’m incredibly thankful to Rockstar for the opportunity to be in this game when I was just a nobody, an unknown quantity,” Mr. Hollick, 35, said last week over dinner in Willamsburg, Brooklyn, shortly after performing in the aerial theater show “Fuerzabruta” in Union Square. “But it’s tough, when you see Grand Theft Auto IV out there as the biggest thing going right now, when they’re making hundreds of millions of dollars, and we don’t see any of it. I don’t blame Rockstar. I blame our union for not having the agreements in place to protect the creative people who drive the sales of these games. Yes, the technology is important, but it’s the human performances within them that people really connect to, and I hope actors will get more respect for the work they do within those technologies.”

Another part of the reason he's upset is because of royalties: redistribution of his voice in works sees him nothing. This I agree with (that he should receive some kind of compensation).

But let's do some basic math: 150 developers worked on the project (just developers alone), $5000 was paid per track in the game, think of all the other voice actors, technicians, etc. The game cost about $100 mil to make over three and a half years. So, $500 mil among, I don't know, 250 people? Well, that's about $2 million each. Naturally I'm sure a good chunk of this goes straight into Rockstar/Take Two operations, so take off a nice bit there. Before cutting anything, that's $500,000 per year, per employee, on average. This guy is a voice actor. Yeah, he's the voice of the main character, but it's voice acting. I'm not saying it doesn't take any skill or talent, but try developing a freaking game like GTA IV before you whine about your petty 100 grand a year. The dude was working in bagel and perfume shops before this! Also keep in mind, the President of the United States makes $400,000 per year. Voice acting...running the country. Hm.

But you know, I think celebrities of any kind are all overpaid these days anyway, so I'm biased just like the people who don't care are biased. With that in mind, the reason he's upset, specifically, is because he, and voice actors in general, are paid much less than actors, as the contracts between the actor's union and entertainment industry make little room for media like video games. Apparently this is all expected to blow up this summer with an actor's strike much in the vein of the writer's strike we saw recently. Personally, while I'm all for people getting paid what they're worth, I think maybe these people have it a lot better than they remember; there are millions of people in the world in much worse situations, and a reminder of that to these actors I think would do a lot of good.

Of course, with all that said, if it means less money for traditional celebrities, I couldn't not support it, but there's got to be a better system than that.