I just read a very interesting article on the NY Times about Michael Hollick, a relatively unknown actor who did the voice and motion-capture work for Niko Bellic, the main character in Grand Theft Auto IV. The basis of the article is that actors who perform work for video game publishers are not given royalties on the sales and distribution of those games. In other words, why are actors being paid differently for video game work as opposed to TV shows or movies or radio? In those traditional mediums actors are paid royalties every time their TV shows or radio commercials air. Rockstar Games has spent millions marketing their latest creation on TV and radio, almost all of which contain the voice work of Mr. Hollick, yet he doesn't see a dime from all those commercials.
Oh, he was certainly paid decently enough for his work, about $100,000 over the course of 15 months, but that's nothing compared to the cast of Friends in their last season when they were each paid $1,000,000 per episode and of course continue to roll in the royalty money from syndication. I admit it's an extreme comparison, but still.
The article goes on to point out that the real fear with the video game studios is that by paying royalties to actors, does that then open the door for all the artists, designers, and programmers who develop the game to also collect royalties? Like I said, it's a very interesting article.
So that got me thinking about the rest of us developers who don't work on video games. Should we be paid royalties for our work? Think about that line of business app you wrote for a client that helped increase sales. Should you get a piece of each new sale?
What about the call center app you wrote a bunch of code for? The one that saves the company tons of money every time they bring new users into the system. Why shouldn't you get paid for continuing to save the company money?
Or what about the cool online community that you were instrumental in launching? You know, the one that's adding thousands of new users a month, thus greatly increasing the advertising revenue for the site. Shouldn't you get a slice of that advertising revenue for each new user?
I realize this is a bit out there, but I don't think it's as far-fetched as it seems. I mean, think about why actors are paid royalties: because they can continue to entertain people over an extended period of time, and because the TV and movie studios profit from that, so should they. So how is that any different from what we do? As software developers we provide value to our customers that last for extended periods of time, and the companies for whom we performed the work either profit from that work, save money from that work, or both.
I understand trying to track such things would be quite the undertaking, and I offer nothing other than my thoughts, but obviously it works in other places. So I ask you, should developers be paid royalties?
