gaming
"That's Some Real Coward S***" - Hideki Kamiya Discusses The Fallout From The Bayonetta 3 Voiceover Controversy
Discussion
What I found interesting about this whole thing is how fast we tend to believe the perceived smaller person in situations like this. She was believed pretty much right away, and it was assumed Hideki Kamiya and people like him were in the wrong. I was no different.
I'm sure it didn't help that Hideki Kamiya was already kinda known to be quite grumpy you could say, lol.
People love an underdog. Even when it bites.
People love a good comeback story. Kim Kardashian.
Not enough parks and rec fans here I see
Maybe they're suffering from Network Connectivity issues
Literally this. I call it the Brandi Glanville theory, because this same thing happened in my other Fandom. The underdog can be absolutely vicious and nasty and they'll still get the benefit of the doubt....until they don't.
I am immensely amused by Brandi Glanville coming up here. You're right, though.
Kamiya's kind of an asshole, but he's not a liar lol.
His tweet when the allegations came out DID NOT FUCKING HELP
It was something along the lines of "There are consequences when you break my rules"
Like the hell was he thinking!?
He was talking about blocking people who interact with him on social media in English. I don't particularly know why he does that but it's a boundary he's done for a long while 🤷♂️
He used to tolerate people talking to him in English but then you had the crazy people who sent slurs and hostile anti-Japanese messages to him and he ended up putting up those rules in response because he was blasted with those messages from people who were very unhinged about his past.
And since then, he's just kind of taken it very lightly that if he gets someone who casually breaks his rules he just cuts things off there and makes a show of it because he doesn't really take it to heart too seriously.
Figured it was something like that. People fuckin suck man
he doesn’t tolerate people tweeting him in english, it’s a pretty clear boundary he’s set on his personal social media account that he actively enforces, and makes it know that he does so
you can call it a stupid boundary, but it is what it is, he’s doesn’t put up any pretenses, and it’s because of moments of harassment precisely like this bayonetta one that he instated it to begin with
Ohhhh that's the rule he was talking about.
I see.
yeah, to outsiders i can understand a random out of context tweet can seem really bad, but he says it and makes it pretty clear in his pinned tweet lol
Is there somewhere public someone who doesn’t know would be able to easily find this out before violating it?
his pinned tweet goes pretty in depth, but i’ll lay it out here too
search before asking a question, he’s most likely already answered it, and he’s “not a question-answering machine, so i’ll basically block all questions… please understand”
he reads non-japanese messages using google translate, and blocks anything that doesn’t make sense to him, even if due to a mistranslation, says it’s wiser to avoid sending messages altogether
he’ll block people who tag him in random conversations or send him random images, he doesn’t want to mess up his timeline
he’ll block people who tell him to ignore trolls or to post differently, he’s not looking for advice on how to post
he advises people to also check his youtube channel for any potential questions
he’ll block people who beg him for things like a new dmc or new bayonetta because he has no ownership of those ip and thus no control, requesting that people ask the proper rights holders instead
and finally, that he’ll block people who butt in to a conversation and try to speak to speak for him with things like “oh i think he means this or that”
it might seem like overkill, but in his view, he feels like he’s had (and continues to have) enough bad interactions, particularly with english speakers, that he feels this type of boundary setting is warranted. if you wanna tweet at him, at MINIMUM do it in japanese
Honestly props to him for taking control of his account. Been far too long that social media platforms insidiously put algorithms and mess up your usage of the platform for their means I.E. engagement. Nothing starves the algorithm more than disengaging. Blocks and the "not interested" is there for a reason. Just keep using it.
like the MOST i could give him grief for is that it’s “””unprofessional””” to act that way on an account that is a de facto “business” account as well
but honestly fuck standards of professionalism anyway so good for him regardless
Honestly props to him for that as well. I hate corpo masking. Let people be people. If their shenanigans or morals are not in line with yours that's just the free market doing its thing and losing the customers.
That's always been on my mind ever since it happened, there's few situations where the public is like "Hold on a sec, let's hear more before judging". It happens a lot outside the gaming sphere, too, but that's a different conversation.
It's also fucked that the VA threw Jennifer Hale under the bus for that while she was under NDA, so Hale was getting hate and couldn't make a meaningful comment about the situation.
You are right but just wanted to add that musicians and voice actors have a sad history of being mistreated by the game studios. So, it sorta does make sense why people automatically agreed with her.
The same thing happened with Mihoyo and the SAG-AFTRA VAs. The VAs said their "strike" was for AI protections and the fans were completely supportive of them, but then it came out later that it was more about flipping Mihoyo Union and putting hundreds, if not thousands, of people out of jobs so that SAG could basically have a monopoly on that work.
It's a weird phenomenon.
Waiting for context is extremely hard for the average redditor
I never jump on clickbait bullshit because I know it's just one skewed side of a story. Context matters a lot.
It was never something I "jumped on" as it were, but it was something I heard about and believed her, and thought that sucked, but I never really said anything about it. I guess that would be most people actually, since most people on the Internet are more passive, they just watch and read but don't interact.
It's par for the course of society.
Primed to doom scroll, hate react click links.
Some of these people vote with their feelings.
These same people skirt jury duty where you are trying to find the truth (ironic) before you judge. And I know for a fact from past experiences most can absolutely do service and not lose wages over it.
I remember getting into argument with a guy I know over this. He called me a corporate bootlicker over siding with the company because I did more research.
Then he apologized and said I was right because Moist Critical made a video WHERE HE SAID EXACT SAME SHIT I SAID.
Voice actors have this nasty habit of trying to weaponize fans against to companies when they are negotiating contracts, or upset a contract fell through. It's gross. The Simpsons voice actors started doing it in the 90s and the Voice Actor for Bender tried to do it a few years ago too.
Pretty what happened with Genshin vs the EN VAs/SAG issue. People were basically dogpiling on Hoyo. Turns out, whoop de do, SAG were lying through their teeth.
The funny thing is, people weren't really dogpiling on Hoyo. They were just supportive of the VAs, Hoyo was basically saying... nothing really through the entire strike.
It was only when Jacob Takanashi started "scabbing" (which he wasn't) and all the VAs lost their minds that they lost all support.
Not all, but a decent amount of vocal ones. One even went as far as to dig through his tweets and saying that his wife was the breadwinner. One said that since he was ''scabbing'', this is the only role he's going to get; basically alluding to the SAG blacklist(which turns out to be true and illegal). Basically the paid actors basically ruined everything by just being assholes.
the SAG blacklist(which turns out to be true and illegal)
Honestly, anyone who was surprised that a union had a blacklist knows nothing about unions.
In american laws, it's basically illegal to have a blacklist against hiring. SAG is breaking the law of their own country.
And they use this blacklist to basically scare the VAs from voicing out agaisnt them.
I think it was more the SAG members than anything. From what I heard Hoyo wasn't one of the companies SAG was targeting.
Correct:
The one that was actually affected was Formosa Studios. So Hoyo changed to Side Global which is a SAG approved studio with AI protections. Yet the wildcat strike agaisnt Hoyo continued.
Turns out, SAG basically wanted to force Hoyo to flip union so SAG can monopolise the EN VOs for all Hoyo games.
And now Hoyo has shown signs that they are moving EN voice over jobs to Europe to avoid SAG shenanigans from now on. Their new characters are being voiced by VAs from the UK studios that does voice overs for WuWa.
Yep.
And I wish for more non-american accents in games. Being not from america, hearing an american accent in basically every single game is so damned tiring.
Yeah from an American who is in a union, this is well deserve. I actually think they moving only future jobs to Europe is already a mild move. Personally would have replaced any with ties to SAG from the current cast also since if SAG do some shit again those VAs will once again fall over in line with SAG but I guess that would ruffle feathers with those VAs fans.
Yep, SAG has proven that their VA have been compromised. I'd take it as Hoyo's mercy and the fans' attachment to the voices that they haven't been outright replaced.
Correct since 1. Hoyo is Chinese 2. Hoyo actually bent over backwards changing the English voice talent studio they used because the first one wasent paying actors and 3. They as a Chinese company allready have anti AI laws regulating them
They as a Chinese company allready have anti AI laws regulating them
Also anti-union(ish) laws so they literally could not accept SAGs demands without needing to fire their entire Chinese VA team.
It was a real interesting situation to end up siding with the company over the union.
Yep, they had ALL the support at first, like almost everyone was deceived. Then came the bullying and later on the incoherent stories and defensive statements
More or less I haven't seen such a terrible representation of union followers trying to gain support. They had all the support initially, and it all was thrown out the window when a small handful of them decided to publicly harass another person who doesn't even work in the said country.
And when people asked for the full truth of the situation, everyone kept beating around the bush until the cat got out of the bag (private messages, discord harassment groups and such).
To this day, there's even wars on wikipedia trying to sweep this event under the rug.
And while I'm generally pro Union. If you want a project to flip union, tell the people that. No one likes being manipulated, and if you have to manipulate the populace to get what you want, that will never be a good look on the organization. Sure announcing that would have gotten some backfire and would be a cause for discussion for the time, but no one initially supporting the movement would have felt cheated.
Yep. Just be straightforward. But nope, gotta do some deception first. Also tell the VAs to tell people that the agreement has ZERO downsides when in fact, it has ALL of the downsides
That situation was not nearly as clear cut as this and it's annoying how Genshin fans keep acting like it is
Lmao, it's clear cut from the get-go. SAG wants to force Hoyo to become union for ''ai protections'' which is absurd since Hoyo doesn't do in-house VO, they hire another studio. Hoyo went out of their way to change their studio to Side Global which is a SAG-approved studio with AI protections.
"Always trust the victim" crowd at it again.
I don't want to toot my own horn but my IMMEDIATE thought was "I'm not making any judgements until we have more info" because I could swear it came right after another big "scandal" that turned out to have been completely fake, though I can't remember the which one
It was the original ghenshin vo issues where Corina kept saying hoyo wasent paying her and others but it turns out hoyo was paying but the studio who contracts the talents wasent paying. So hoyo compensated the actors and got a new studio to manage em actors.
Then the Bayonetta thing happened then the sag strike stuff (also Corinna doing bullshit)
What's the context?
Reddit loves to do this. I've still not seen a single redditor admit they were wrong for calling that woman that had her rental bike stolen a racist Karen after she posted the receipt of her payment online and proved the bike was stolen.
This is not a reddit thing. Human beings, no matter the culture or era, LOVE a good hate mob. And no one will ever admit fault, even if someone loses their life over it.
Reddit has a stigma for being filled with know it all social justice warrior professionals who in their own myopic view try to "fix" situations but in the end make them much worse.
there is also a complete lack of nuance. People on reddit often go to the extreme answers. In the "am i the asshole" subreddit "you should divorce" has become a meme.
3 things you should never ask for advice for on the internet.
Relationship,legal and medical.
Break up, sue, you are dying.
Dump them, lawyer up, hit the gym.
It's a stigma earned, but it's still nothing really new. It has become more prevalent and easily mobilized due to the nature of the internet and with just how prolific it's become. But, 4Chan was pretty much the same 20 years ago, especially /b/.
It's a stigma that reddit enforces. Don't downplay it.
This is also the case with assassin’s creed shadows and Japanese reception. If you actually dig into it you’ll see how wrong Reddit was.
Its not just a reddit thing its the terminally online that a majority reside on reddit.
Attributing this to being online a lot undermines just how integrated this sort of behaviour is within human nature.
Reddit is full of chronically online social media addicts who love nothing more than to be righteously outraged.
They don't look too deep and they don't care to. As long as it fits what they believe the narrative to be, they back it 100%.
"NINTENDO BRICKS YOUR CONSOLE!" And because of the current Nintendo hate train for their out of touch comments, they didn't even check the article which was IGN taking a snippet that said "if you cheat or modify games, you can lose access to them" which is something all companies have for legal reasons, IGN said "WE READ THIS AS IF NINTENDO RESERVES THE RIGHT TO BRICK YOUR CONSOLE.
"Ubisoft wants Gamers to Destroy Games" was another one that got traction because they insinuated that this was a push back against the Stop Killing Games Analysis when their terms of service hadn't changed since 2023.
There are so many more. I'm very left leaning but some of the outrageous stuff from clickbait sites that the political subreddits latch onto is probably one of the reasons right wingers believe that everything is fake news. It's really hard to watch so much bad faith.
So many people take advantage/emotionally manipulate angry people and give them something to lash out at for clicks. And we feed on it like ravenous pirrahnas.
"We did it Reddit" moment
Damn it's rough to see I upvoted the post you linked. I remember believing the story at the time but in retrospect it's lame that I signal boosted it.
The post they linked is the true story, not what the VA was claiming.
A couple of years ago, the voice actress for the first two Bayonetta games, Hellena Taylor, made big news calling for a boycott of Bayonetta 3, saying they wouldn't rehire her because she turned down an offer for a ridiculously small amount, and that they were trying to stiff her and perhaps other voice actors. It went viral, with tons of other voice actors openly supporting her because there's absolutely a big problem with voice actors not being paid enough. Kamiya and other people involved got a lot of hate sent their way for their alleged treatment of Taylor.
Later, they announced that Jennifer Hale would be the new actor, who is huge on VA unionizing, so logically she wouldn't accept a role for a small amount of money, so that started to bring some doubt on the Taylor's story. It soon came to light that Taylor was essentially lying about the whole story, that she was actually offered $15,000 instead of the $4000 she claimed, and that she was making absurd claims that she owns the character of Bayonetta because she acted as her for two games. It was a massive disaster not just because Kamiya received poor treatment on false pretenses, but because her lie essentially made a joke out of the very real issue of voice actor treatment.
small correction, she claimed she was offered 4k total, but the actual offer was 4k per recording session. which potentially could come out to much much more.
Aw man that reminds me she tried to nickname all her supporters the Bayo-Nutters, this was right before Jennifer Hale was announced
Honestly none of this matters regarding the hate Jennifer Hale got. She took a job, at a rate that she's comfortable with. How is it her problem with the previous employment dispute between the previous VA and the game studio? Even if the previous VA was indeed short-changed those comments hurled at Hale were still hateful.
The voice actress for Bayonetta was recast for the third game. When it happened the previous VA claimed PlatinumGames was trying to stiff her essentially, got mad at the new VA and said she had no right to sign merch for the character, and called for a boycott of the game.
Later turned out that when she said she was offered 4 grand for the role, it turned out the offer was actually four grand per recording session, for a much higher total, but before that there were a ton of people sending to Hideki Kamiya (the head of PlatinumGames at the time), and Jennifer Hale the new VA for being a "scab".
Yeah the article has no context. IIRC, and someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
The voice actress for Bayonetta was replaced after she didn't respond to offers after more than a year. She kind of lied by omission and mischaracterized the entire situation by saying she was only offered $4000 for the job. In fact, her original offer was much higher, and even more was added on after she wrote to the game director. But she didn't reply to that for nearly a year. So when they reached back out one last time the offer was significantly less. She only ever told the general public about that significantly lesser amount and left out all the other details. People got mad on her behalf, a lot of that was directed at Kamiya.
Now, say what you want about VA pay. Whether around $15k for the few weeks of work is too little or not. This voice actress kept talking about how its a "$450 million dollar franchise" and I'm guessing she believes that she deserved a bigger cut of that. You can argue for or against that, but the current reality is that voice actors do not make millions like a lot of film actors.
I figured it was a crock of shit when I found out Jennifer Hale was the new VA
i always thought the story was a bit off so i stayed away from it. cause they replaced her with jennifer hale... she's one of the most famous va's for video games. so whatever they offered her was good enough for hale.... so the offer obviously couldn't have been that bad.
Some of it too is that because it's a Japanese company, they tend to not "fire" anyone and usually will sift away people who are unpleasant to work with by not giving them work, paying them less, and putting them in a corner until those people decide to leave by choice.
I imagine that while we won't be told the story, she probably became unpleasant to work with and communicate with and decided to throw a fit when she couldn't get what she wanted (being the star, and all) and it backfired further on her.
I mean I would say so if she literally didn't respond to their offer for a year?? What makes her think she'd still have the job? And I know she went all gung ho before Hale was announced and that already made it look bad. But did she really not think that the information about them offering her more money originally wouldn't come to light? Seems like she got greedy.
I remember the cartwheels people were doing to convince themselves that they didn’t just participate in a harassment campaign against a developer
I'll never forgive her for making Kamiya look reasonable.
Oh yeah whenever VA drama or something like it happens, all sorts of people, mostly other VAs, come out of the woodwork and say every mean thing under the sun (Blacklist, ban, sexist, etc etc) and then when the real story comes out they just delete their tweets and say nothing. It's fucking crazy.
It seems like a cult of people thinking of themselves being higher than others. Very entitled.
Voice acting and animation is full of deeply unserious human beings
That voice actor was such a fuckwit. Girl wanted like a years wage for a day's work and was just bullshitting non stop. I'm glad they went with someone else.
Same. Once you start acting ungrateful like that, just absolutely full of yourself as if they couldn't replace you with 15 thousand other voice actors in a fucking heartbeat... She got what she deserved. And she did it to herself by not responding quick enough to their initial attempts at contact and her behavior once they did finally start a dialogue.
She wasn't even really in the industry anymore anyway. I think it had been years since she'd gotten any sort of VA role.
Was still the weakest storyline and voice acting in the series sadly
I didn't even finish the game, I was so disappointed. At least the book it came with was pretty nice though
Her old VA screwed up big time but man Bayonetta herself doesn't hit the same without her. Sounds less unique too.
Which confused me because J.H. voiced Sheena Fujibayashi from Tales of Symphonia and her Summoner Quotes were top tier and powerful! This director failed her and us with that performance (her Enochian was pretty bad and corny)
Jennifer Hale? I didn't realize that was her in Tales of Symphonia! I mean she's been on so many projects
And the gameplay too. It just felt…clunky. Way too much empty space as well.
Yes thank you!! The game was incredibly unpolished. Clunky and had very little positives IMO.
Compared to Bayo 2, Bayo 3 is an embarrassment
Too focused on the new transforms to
Ya had a lot of cancelled Scalebound in it, which probably would have been more epic if not confined to the Switch and a Bayo sequel. Bayo 1 and 2 was very grabbing from the get go, not sure why the spectacle of 3 wasn’t quite hitting for me and others…
Yep. Sequel-itis. Similarly, Ninja Gaiden 3 (the modern one) did not need to happen and had lost its mojo.
Original NG3 was shit. Razor's Edge is pretty dope, if you can stomach a game that delights in being a cunt (lovingly, mostly).
Still a horrible final boss though.
I found the voice acting was fine, and...Bayonetta isn't exactly known for it's "great story".
Fuck, I've beaten Bayo 1 about a dozen times and I couldn't tell you the plot of it.
I'd argue it was better than Bayonetta 2s story which was just a rehash of Bayonetta 1. I don't think the performance was substantially worse either, just different
I agree about the story but not the performance, the new actors delivery just felt off
It felt off to me at first too just because it was different, I got used to it fairly quickly. But that's just me
I thought the complete opposite. Storyline was actually interesting for once, combat is a ton of fun and the voice acting sounded great and similar to the original.
My advice: if you are famous to any degree but your income does not depend on how famous you are or interacting with people online, don't have social media.
And if I hadn't opened reddit while taking a shit. I may never have heard of this at all.
thank god you took a shit
I actually didn't open the article and bumping through the top few comments just revealed that he blocks people who speaks English. So thankfully I'm still in the dark.
I remember lots of YouTubers talking shit at the time, but when they were wrong, they didn't own up to it and just talked more shit.
i was always skeptical and getting vindicated was so satisfying
like from the outset a lot of stuff didn’t add up, namely that hellena is a union actress, so her rates are effectively guaranteed, they legally COULD NOT offer her the number she was alleging
but anyway, i get it, companies tend to be evil, siding with the little guy, generally, is correct. however, if it does come out that the little guy was indeed wrong or straight up lying, as was this case, if you were engaging in harassment, you better apologize
Kamiya is the bubba ray dudley of the video game industry
Not much in the article, but it seems people just started dogpiling the devs over the VO change.
Other people in the industry would also send these tweets stirring up more controversy and then delete them without apologizing thus “Real coward s***. “
The real shitty part, even though I loved the game, was waiting so long for Bayo 3 to come out. I remember seeing that trailer so long ago where Bayonetta teased us with a line like “it seems I’m unfashionably late, but I’m here to give you what you want ;)” breaking the fourth wall. And the game wasn’t what people wanted lol
I mean, it won action game of the year. I'd say it was a well received game, 86 on metacritic. Seems like it was what people wanted.
No I enjoyed it a lot. No enough to do a second playthrough yet though. Just the story isn’t what people wanted
I only remember people losing their shit because Bayonetta wasn't gay. I never saw any legit complaints without people saying that.
this is the first ive heard of this. what happen? did they get a new va?
you know the crazy thing is, i didn't believe her at first. I actually was waiting for Platinum games and Hideki Kamiya to come out and explain the whole situation then just listen to one person. and i agree with him. When you get news reports and tv and newspapers news is always one sided and not the whole story where we all believe just one. and this was at a time to "Believe everyone" thing. So if i were to believe her, then let me believe in the team behind platinumgames and the creators of bayonetta and let me hear their side. and i'm glad i did and went with platinum side
It was crazy to me that anyone believed her for a second.
I would normally believe "they replaced me because they wanted to underpay for work." But not when your replacement is Jennifer fucking Hale.
I'll admit, I believed her. I should've waited for Kamiya's response. But I went in knowing that voice actors are not treated fairly, let alone paid a fair wage. And I heavily misjudged Kamiya's actions. He was blocking so many people that he got suspended for a spell, iirc. I thought that he acted kind of suspicious. Now I know better. Hindsight is always 20/20.
Say what you want about her but Helena was a better voice for bayo though
Sure.
She’s a scum bag though.
heard that b*tch never got another job in voice acting since
He makes cool games but this is one of the most childish and weird men on the face of our planet. I can't say I care too much what he has to say.
This and Hades 2 VA thing really made me sorta wish for the old "Not your personal army" mentality to come back on internet, at least some degree
What happened with hades ii?
The main VA wanted to flip the game into a SAG AFTRA union game when the game was non union and the indie company had a lot of their voice actor being their own developers.
For context if the game flipped union they would have to replace all the voices to Union VAs which made no sense for a non union indie game that uses their own developers as voice actors.
It wasn't the main VA btw, she voiced a few of the characters.
Is this part of why the game is taking so long to release? Recast or something
No, it’s still on track to come out soonish. The current patch of early access is supposed to be the last one before 1.0. According to some of the longtime fans of Supergiant, this is how they tend to do things. Hades 1 followed a similar path, but didn’t explode in popularity until after it launched iirc.
Hades 1 had the same time schedule, it’s just how they do things. The only difference now is that they are more mainstream and public notices more