UNIONS ARE SOUNDING OFF ON THEIR CONCERNS ACTORS WANT MORE FOR VIDEO GAME VOICES.

Byline: Greg Hernandez Staff Writer

The late Marlon Brando provided the voice of Don Vito Corleone for an upcoming video game version of ``The Godfather,'' while Sean Connery is revisiting his James Bond role for a ``From Russia With Love'' game.

But the question facing the $10 billion-a-year video game industry is this: How important is vocal talent to the commercial success of a title?

More than 1,900 members of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, who are seeking a portion of game profits, completed voting Tuesday to decide whether to go on strike against video game companies.

The results of the vote were expected to be announced either late Tuesday or early today. In order for a work stoppage to be considered by union leadership, 75 percent of the approximately 1,000 SAG voters must vote to strike, in addition to 66.6 percent of the 900 or so AFTRA members.

If those thresholds are met, SAG's National Executive Committee and AFTRA's Administrative Committee will meet to consider formally authorizing a strike.

``The video game publishers believe that they put an excellent offer on the table that includes a 35 percent (wage) increase over the life of the agreement for voice actors,'' said Bob Finlayson, spokesman for the interactive publishing bargaining group. ``They feel it's very equitable and are hoping that the unions will agree to it.''

But union leaders strongly disagree with that assessment of the offer.

In a recent statement, SAG President Melissa Gilbert called the position of producers ``completely unreasonable and lacking any appreciation of the contributions made by actors to the enormous profits made by this industry.''

The unions point out that nine of the top 10 best-selling video games in 2004 were produced under union contracts. In negotiations, the actors are seeking what they call a ``modest'' profit-sharing proposal applying only to games that sell more than 400,000 units. Last year, only 30 titles sold at least that amount.

AFTRA National President John Connolly stated: ``To deny working-class performers their fair share of the tremendous profits their labor helps to generate is illogical, unreasonable and unjust. It is simply short-sighted to believe that consumers don't care about the artistic quality of characters.''

But the producers insist that this is precisely the case.

``People don't buy video games for the voices; they buy it for the game play,'' Finlayson said. ``While actors play an essential role in movies and television shows and even commercials, their role in video games in quite minimal. There's no question that the publishers are all confident they can go out and get replacement voices, but they prefer to work with professional voices.''

John Rosenberg, president of g-NET Media, a Culver City-based television production company focusing on video games, said Tuesday that there might not really be a clear-cut answer favoring either side.

``You have to look at it on an individual, case-by-case basis,'' Rosenberg said. ``Rarely do you see them marketing the voice of a character on a game. But having Brando's voice is huge. It's really cool to hear the actual voice of an iconic character.''

The previous contract covering interactive games expired last December, and negotiations for a new three-year pact between the unions and producers began on Feb. 15.

The two sides had repeated bargaining sessions, but, after two extensions, talks broke off on May 13 over the issue of profit sharing, commonly known as residuals in other areas of the entertainment industry.

Greg Hernandez, [phone]

greg.hernandez(at)dailynews.com