Board 8 > Bayonetta voice actress Hellena Taylor calls for a boycott of Bayonetta 3

(+) Yeah! (+)

PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

Big oof

https://twitter.com/hellenataylor/status/1584415390171480066?t=UMmojiRyt1bCxdszJYJyfg&s=19

ooof

the secondhand cringe i feel for this

" I explained that their first offer was too low. That offer was 10,000 dollars total. "

yeah you did not really explain that in the video no

lmao the first actual tweet admitting she mislead with the $4000 figure, and still hammering the blatantly false half billion dollar franchise line. fabulous start

I also like how she comments on the 6-figures claim by changing it to 250k to call it absurd, so in this way she gets to skip past the actual claim by creating an ever crazier number nobody was saying. While still obscuring what her actual ask was with just the phrase "living wage", which VAs simply do not get from singular roles once every 8 years.

also she completely jumbles things around in order to confuse the 15k deal........ and she actually just confirms it? She says she was initially offered 10k and they came back adding 5k......... that totals the 15k commonly referenced in the 4-5 sessions deal.... except she then dismisses that was even a thing? what? or is she saying that the claim she was offered 4k for the entire bit is the "total fabrication"?... but that's where her video mislead people into believing by hiding the context of the 4k offer for a cameo

she's literally just confirming everything said except with an accusatory tone somehow

https://twitter.com/hellenataylor/status/1584417333178531840

also tweeting about "powerful journalists" trying to squash her story.... that she literally just confirmed herself....

the fuck

I feel weirdly vindicated

im beginning to think she may just be a weirdo

plus she openly admits she's had tough times. and it doesn't seem she's had any other voice acting work. may have felt desperate.

the thread actually splits off in two parts near the end so you might miss some of it, she says she donated 100% of money she got for signing autographs at cons to charity. i wonder if that's true. can't exactly trust her now.

(oh i guess it's preceded by "i only ever did one game conference" so it wasn't exactly a trend either way)

I've heard of people torpedoing their own career for stuff like weird behavior at conventions, cancel culture just being annoying and not leaving you alone, or completely being an asshole. I do not remember a time where someone made a stink to draw up this much sympathy, just to own goal themselves a week later.

The spirit of the argument still holds true. Video game and anime voice acting is not a profitable "business." I remember Tony Oliver saying he makes a six figure income, but that's due to acting, conventions, script writing, ADR work, etc. He and the Bakers, Baileys, etc are the luckier ones. But just being a complete doofus doesn't make the industry look better. It just makes Taylor look desperate and weird.

Video games in general arent a great field unless you are truly passionate on the project, I dont think its just voice acting. Thing with programmers and designers is at least you have contingency plans in case it doesnt work out

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1584479145274527744?t=J_zKq5jM2yCR6cEEI3a_-Q&s=19

Got her

Yeah I think the lesson is just to wait for confirmation on viral claims designed to generate strong emotional responses. It sucks that she lied about this when getting people fairly compensated in gaming a real issue.

honestly i'm just a really naive person and "but why would they lie???" is my default response

...and i still don't get it. like congrats you broke NDA and ended your career over an easily provable lie...? like did you not think they had any records of the 10k/15k offer?????????

this is why in mafia games i'm always like "no the person being blatantly suspicious and lying all over the place isn't mafia, why would they do that"

...and usually i'm right but when i'm wrong i look very stupid

Dels posted...

honestly i'm just a really naive person and "but why would they lie???" is my default response

...and i still don't get it. like congrats you broke NDA and ended your career over an easily provable lie...? like did you not think they had any records of the 10k/15k offer?????????

Bayonetta was her only role of note in the last decade. Its possible with this failure to negotiate her career was just done regardless

I was just gonna pick up the game on release day but now I think I'll pre-order.

Big oof

Underleveled posted...

I was just gonna pick up the game on release day but now I think I'll pre-order.

Lmao

LiquidOshawott posted...

Bayonetta was her only role of note in the last decade. Its possible with this failure to negotiate her career was just done regardless

At this point there may be a negative impact on her other work. This isn't just pissing off people in the one industry. It's becoming a public spectacle and looking like a liability in any setting. I hope it doesn't ruin her ability to find work if she was actually starving already, but I'd understand if someone in theater didn't want to work with her.

I dont think it would affect her role in theater if she does that, the news cycle is very large and its very possible her contemporaries and coworkers wouldnt even know shes done this.

Its also just possible she just simply overestimated Bayonettas value. Its not a 450 million dollar franchise and its not even the biggest Nintendo game released this month, or maybe not even top ten this year.

Bayonetta is obvscum

Like these games are probably gonna sell more lifetime than Bayonetta 3

Pokemon Legends Arceus
Kirby and the Forgotten Land
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet
Xenoblade 3
Splatoon 3
Mario and Rabbids Sparks of Hope
Nintendo Switch Sports
Fire Emblem Warriors
Mario Strikers

so it would be tenth. It wouldnt surprise me if I forgot a game or a indie/third party outsells it too

no wonder Link and Mario still dont talk

LiquidOshawott posted...

Its also just possible she just simply overestimated Bayonettas value. Its not a 450 million dollar franchise and its not even the biggest Nintendo game released this month, or maybe not even top ten this year.

she absolutely just tallied up every single number on vgchartz and multiplied it by 60 lol. that's the only way that number makes any sort of sense

RikkuAlmighty posted...

no wonder Link and Mario still dont talk

Mario doesnt talk?

Jakyl25 posted...

Mario doesnt talk?

yeah show chris pratt some respect

Jakyl25 posted...

Mario doesnt talk?

Only since Chris Pratt graced us with a voice for him.

Darn beaten to the low hanging fruit

yeah her claims stunk from the very beginning. I thought she was probably exaggerating, but I did not expect that she actually had a really good deal at the beginning and turned it down for reasons.

Lopen posted...

I, based on nothing but speculation on the info surrounding this, would guess that she wasn't given an absurd lowball but rather came in with the agenda to want residuals and that just wasn't going to happen.

Realistically, I don't necessarily agree voice actors deserve residuals. Actors get them because it's literally their likeness being used.

Why is the voice of Bayonetta deserving residuals more than the artist who designed her, the programmer that modeled her movements, etc etc. It's just not the exact same kind of work as acting despite being similar in regards, and I don't feel the standard should be residuals just competitive pay.

My take, before I got drawn into a discussion on voice AI, was probably the right one tbh.

Could absolutely see this incident coming from Hellena Taylor thinking she deserves residuals due to some smart actor friend telling her she should get them, not getting them as something being not negotiable, and her flipping out over it.

Worth noting that Jennifer Hale spearheaded the game voice actor strike 5-6 years ago trying to get residuals.

So to be clear I'm not necessarily completely against residuals for VA, just against the idea that not getting them is some sort of heinous unfairness in the industry.

I think the problem with them getting them is you open the flood gates to a ton of other people wanting them-- people arguably more deserving than the VA itself, and that just makes something complicated when it doesn't necessarily need to be.

With actors it makes more sense due to being a combination of the fact that you're using their likeness directly, and that you're giving them the residuals generally based on TV Ads and TV broadcasts which get paid more directly from the broadcaster or advertiser.

I do not believe for example it's typical that Brad Pitt would get a percentage of the box office or dvd sales for Bullet Train. He would however get residuals for Bullet Train (or any random ad he's in) being shown on the USA network, because USA network would pay the film studio some small amount of money to be able to show the film. Some particularly big name actors like Scarlet Johanson do get residuals from box office, but I do not believe it is standard practice from what I've been told from the few people I know who work in the industry. Correct me if I'm wrong.

As video games don't use this avenue for profit it makes a lot less sense for them to apply it wholesale. I would say that perhaps maybe Bayonetta's VA deserves some residual if say the monthly XBL type services pay any portion to the titles included in the game pass which they probably, but so do a ton of other people.

I dunno where to draw the line, but really iconic voices absolutely deserve residuals. I dunno if Charles Martinet gets any but that guy IS Mario. Maybe time-limited (5 years?) residuals for protagonists of huge releases? Publishers definitely don't want to open that door though, yeah.

So a character like Mario I could absolutely see having a better case for residuals. It wouldn't be some sort of percentage of sales, just some sort of flat fee per use.

Like I doubt they're calling in Martinet for every release to re-record every "woo!" "ha!" "wee hee!" "let's a go!" and so he's theoretically not getting paid for contributing when he should. (But if they are paying him to re-record, then no, doesn't matter, should be covered by the pay they give him.)

It's very different than a heavy dialogue voice character like Bayonetta where they can't just reuse her snippets for stuff. Like if they used her voice in Smash without re-recording anything though, yeah, she'd deserve something for that.

Martinet is a weird one because it's not like Mario has much lines or even complete sentences in his entire 40 year history but...... he is *the* video game character, he is Mario so I gotta imagine he's making a good coin.

Must help though just the absolute volume of releases he gets though, like looking at his IMDB it's such a massive wall of mario mario mario mario mario multiple times a year (not knowing what he actually gets for any of it though)

although hey he's in Dragon Ball Super Hero? neat

I posed a question to friends the other day of "Who do you think has earned more money in their lifetime playing Mario: Charles Martinet or Chris Pratt?" and we all agreed it's probably pratt lol

Lopen posted...

Like I doubt they're calling in Martinet for every release to re-record every "woo!" "ha!" "wee hee!" "let's a go!"

Especially since they admitted in a Direct that Smash 1-5 all use Captain Falcon's voice clips from the same session back in 1998.

Underleveled posted...

Especially since they admitted in a Direct that Smash 1-5 all use Captain Falcon's voice clips from the same session back in 1998.

This is extremely common. The Mario Kart and Mario Party games have been re-using sound clips for forever, and I'm sure the other Mario sports games are the same.

This topic aged poorly.

Paratroopa1 posted...

I posed a question to friends the other day of "Who do you think has earned more money in their lifetime playing Mario: Charles Martinet or Chris Pratt?" and we all agreed it's probably pratt lol

to be fair Martinet is also probably making a pretty penny for whatever roles he has in the film

There's been a lot of stuff in the past few years - and especially recently - about voice actors getting screwed over. Like two weeks ago there was the Mob Psycho 100 thing. I don't feel dumb about my decision to believe Helena at the start, because it's happened plenty of times before, and it would be stupid for someone to put their reputation in jeopardy like this over disprovable lies.

It's a real shame that the one VA incident that hit mainstream news is turning out to be manipulated by the VA, because it might muddy the waters of a legitimate discussion.

Lopen posted...

It's very different than a heavy dialogue voice character like Bayonetta where they can't just reuse her snippets for stuff. Like if they used her voice in Smash without re-recording anything though, yeah, she'd deserve something for that.

They definitely re-used her Smash 4 voicelines for Ultimate. I have no idea if/how much she gets paid for that sort of thing.

I don't think there's anything wrong with believing her initial claims, although there were definitely questionable parts to it right from the jump (helloooo 450 millies)

It's people who have completely set themselves into taking it all as complete fact and attacking anyone for pointing out the questionable parts and suggesting to wait for the full story that people should be embarrassed about. That and y'know, the harassment campaigns and folks cheering on other prominent figures for joining in harassing Kamiya in google-translated Japanese (who to this day hasn't made a single follow-up to the developing updates).

When I saw the Kamiya tweet I just thought "oh if he says her claims are lies then I guess there's more for the story to unfold" and I stayed out of it... the tweet itself didn't actually seem as bad as everyone was making it out to be.

Although for the first part I say they should be embarrassed but that's not a bad thing, people make mistakes and owning up to your embarrassing mislead takes shows maturity. Unfortunately too many people refuse to be humbled.

Humble_Novice posted...

This topic aged poorly.

And this is why I never jump to conclusions just because of "sympathy with the victim"
Treat every story like a court case
Hear both sides
Then form your own opinion
But hear the whole story first

tbh its fine to form an opinion before everything comes to light, you just can't go around harassing people over incomplete information and you can't get stuck with your preconceptions after more information comes out

nothing said on gamefaqs is ever gonna reach or matter to hale or kamiya

It's fine to guess what happened, just be humble about it acknowledging you are speculating, and don't jump to attacking people who disagree with you.

It's not hard.

agesboy posted...

you just can't go around harassing people over incomplete information

Lopen posted...

nd don't jump to attacking people who disagree with you.

Those are obvious!

This....is an extremely frustrating and regrettable outcome. It doesn't change my approach of believing those who are abused by companies/others, just really fuckin sucks that it's seemingly turned out twisted in this scenario. But also

Nanis23 posted...

And this is why I never jump to conclusions just because of "sympathy with the victim"
Treat every story like a court case
Hear both sides
Then form your own opinion
But hear the whole story first

Shut the fuck up Nanis

imo siding with a person over a corporation ends up right 95% of the time, and it can be difficult to be cautious for the sake of that 5% because it gives bootlickers a lot of wiggle room to argue against legitimate grievances

Not sure if it matters, but it might be worth noting that Platinum isn't a corporation.

Actual issues on worker's rights are going to be set back not only thanks to Helena, but thanks to everyone that immediately jumped on her bandwagon with ZERO EVIDENCE. When will social media learn to stop assuming Twitter rants by themselves are evidence?

I hate that as soon as new info comes to light in cases like these, everybody immediately wants to retcon the conversation and act like it was so obvious what was really going on and everyone else was so stupid for having any belief or sympathy. When the story broke, it was just as likely that Platinum - notoriously on the verge of bankruptcy at all times - was pinching pennies to try and stretch their budget, and had to scramble for a replacement when Taylor played hardball. It's okay to assess available data and form a conclusion from it, we're not a jury.