Metal Gear Solid voice actress Jennifer Hale has said she was paid $1,200 for her role as Naomi Hunter in the original 1998 game.
As spotted by Genki on Twitter, the voice actress confirmed the amount on the My Perfect Console podcast while sharing her desire for video game voice actors to earn residuals.
Hale was recorded as saying in a 2011 New Yorker article that Metal Gear Solid made $270 million, though said on the My Perfect Console podcast (released October 3, 2023): “the figure I heard actually was $176 million.” While the exact profit is unclear, the original Metal Gear Solid sold more than seven million copies and is considered a monumental success that spawned a franchise still going strong 25 years later.
Hale’s comments come just days after members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) voted to authorise a video game strike. This means negotiators can call for a strike if talks with video game companies don’t produce the desired results, of which they’ve not so far.
The disparity between Hale’s alleged payment and the success of Metal Gear Solid is “indicative of what’s happening in modern culture”, she said, adding she hopes the standard for these payments changes.
When asked what changes she’d like to see, Hale said: “Residuals for games on a flexible structure that honours the indie developers, that honours the budgets and capacities of teams. I would like to see that.” This would allow voice actors to earn money beyond their base rate if a game performed particularly well, was redistributed, and so on.
Metal Gear Solid will be released again as part of the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol 1, which includes the trilogy of Metal Gear Solid games alongside the original Metal Gear 1 and 2. It also comes packaged with additional content like digital graphic novels and a screenplay book.
Announced alongside Metal Gear Solid 3 Remake, the Master Collection Vol. 1 arrives on PlayStation 4, Xbox Series, Nintendo Swich, and PC on October 24.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.