Anyone who follows video-games knows just how big the video game and interactive entertainment industries are. Games have come a considerable distance since their birth, to the point that the industry is now nearing the size (if not the penetration) of Hollywood. After all, a title like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, which, at its launch in 2011, sold for $60 per copy and grossed $400 million in its first 24 hours in the U.S. and U.K. Compare that with Iron Man 3, which, at $372 million, was the sixth largest worldwide opening weekend ever.
The budgets and prestige of the video-game industry have risen accordingly. Add that to the fact that actors can generally do their video-game work fairly quickly, in a studio without grueling location shoots, and it's not surprising that the video-games are becoming increasingly attractive to actors. One sea change is that, whereas before it was mainly C-list actors or B-listers who'd do anything for a buck (I'm looking at you Malcolm McDowell), these days more and more current A-listers at the top of their games are lending their voices to video games.
