Not even to mention the Star Wars games, any Marvel games, the new indie game, the Avatar game from Ubi. They might not have any active in-house studios but they are quite active in giving the rights to studios for their franchises.
So this is slightly misleading. The board approved a strike authorization vote which will run from 9/5 to 9/25. If the impacted members authorize a strike the negotiation team will have that as leverage day one of contact negotiations.
I agree. Once I realized the distinction, tho, I’m still happy. Having the authorization in hand when negotiating, especially after taking into account the current double strike, will presumably give them more leverage than ever. I’m cool not having any new media for a couple years if it saves the industry.
Sad to say, but the union probably won’t get many meaningful concessions from this one. The technologies to fully generate model movement (motion capture) and emotive voice (voice acting) are already reasonably mature and constantly improving.
The artists will (rightfully) get strong control over their own likenesses, but if they think they’re going to stop mass adoption of AI in video games they’re dreaming.
Don’t underestimate the power of celebrity actors in games in terms of sales. There are people who buy games specifically because certain actors are in them.
That’s true, and there are people who go see movies specifically because of whom appears in them. But I’d hesitate to call that the majority, especially in gaming. The set of people that play games and the set of people who follow the industry are certainly overlapping, but are far from identical.
I think this is pretty much the perfect time to be doing this.
Plenty of actors and actresses do motion cap, or even full FMV acting, for a lot of smaller tier games. And plenty of major games outright market themselves on getting “real actors” involved. Remember how Patrick Stewart was in 30 seconds of Oblivion and Sean Bean was in five minutes? And not to mention the likelihood that GTA6 is publicly revealing fairly soon.
And looking forward: Anime games continue to be a thing and… that is an ongoing area of concern where the american VAs are openly acknowledging they are afraid to even SAY “union”. And while dubs are very much a third class citizen as far as studios are concerned, they are still a lucrative one and a lot of the major VAs have branched out enough that this could be an issue.
As for “AI”: All signs point toward The Law being about training data. In part because that maps best to the existing structures (if you steal a clip of a movie and don’t credit it, you get DMCA’d) and is something that benefits the actual major studios. With most of the SAG negotiations being about a performer/creator’s rights to their own media. The outcome will almost definitely end up being “all previous content is off limits for training. An actor or a writer can ‘agree’ to having their performance be added to a training database X years from now”.
But in games? Kojima is infamous for just making Snake look like (and be named after…) Kurt Russel’s performance in Escape from New York. And plenty of versions of Lara Croft and the like have looked eerily similar to some actresses. Same with studios over the years accidentally openly acknowledging that they are using episodes of Days of Our Lives or whatever as motion cap to model face emotion and the like. Hell, how many thirsty bois were wondering who the face model of the new soldier lady Jane in FF7-R was?
Right now, that is a wild west. But if that gets your studio put on the shitlist then it starts being a real issue. Especially with the ongoing acquisitions (even if we are in a lull). Get caught training your AI off of Anna Kendrick’s performance in 50/50? Your studio has now become radioactive.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but since this strike is against certain companies and not some entity that represents the entire industry like it does for movies and television, that means that other individual companies who come to an agreement can still hire these people, right? If so...imagine if we had that in movies and television.
We do. A24, for instance, is still making a couple movies by agreeing to work under the proposed terms by SAG. As far as I know, no one else has made such agreements yet. The more of such exceptions that get made, the weaker the AMPTP’s position will get.
Because they have a different contract for work not covered by the current strike? That seems kind of a weird take, especially since they thought the strike did apply to them originally and they shut down for several weeks until the lawyers got together and said, oh no, you have a different type of agreement.
It’s not like they changed or updated their contract to become exempt. SAG just went, oh, your business doesn’t fall into the terms of the strike so you don’t have to strike with the rest of us.
Everyone in the games industry is vastly underpaid because of the glory of working on games. Game Execs are ruthless to gamble and exploit where they can. Crunch exists mainly in the games industry for a reason. You don’t hear of any other industry where office workers are getting early on-set PTSD symptoms from their job.
On top of that, if you are a woman, you will get a lot of people trying to either sleep with you or talk down to you like you are a child.
Workers rights absolutely. Pay your human workers even while using ai to make a great product. AI didn’t do anything to me, it’s how the companies decide to use it.
Oh yeah I’m sure they will use the ai to pay human workers as well. You definitely know that if they are allowed to use ai they won’t use it in a way that means they can stop paying humans and can just have ais generate everything all whist delivering a lower quality product to the customer.
It’s a win win, as long as you are an executive or a shareholder.
I am potentially okay with this. The entertainment industry has been creatively bankrupt for too long. Actors will move to more independent work, more interesting and experimental content will get made, corporate will advance AI technology. Win-win?
Or more Ai as a cash incentive. It’s already an industry that creates npc’s, Ai will improve this, Indy’s might just sit there and craft perfect Ai actors and license them out.
Hey voice actors, take this five bucks today so we can make your job vanish tomorrow, it’s a win win! For us. Not you. This guy thinks you should do it though because we already… make npcs? That you currently voice.
I just think it’s inevitable that we will see fully voiced and interactive ai npc companions. I’m not saying it’s good or bad, I’m in a union and I’m pro worker but this is tech and I think tech is gonna tech.
It’s inevitable if you give up and let companies do whatever they want yes. It’s not if you get them to sign papers and lobby for regulation to protect workers.
I don’t understand this defeatist mentality at all sorry.
Either everyone needs to get royalties or nobody does.
Pay your voice actors right the first time instead of paying them shit per line. Or if your video game becomes an astounding success, all 1,000 people get a slice of that 100,000,000 million it made in sales via residuals. A cool $100,000 for everyone!
Don't forget to advocate for yourself even if you have a union. Nobody ever gets paid more by saying nothing.
The coders have their copyrighted works replicated infinitely without royalties as well.
What makes a voice actor’s contributions more meaningful than that? Especially since they can get a half decent voice performance out of any coder and the right generative software which already exists.
Yeah perpetual royalties are a nonsense slippery slope. People are pushing for it in all the wrong ways wanting a piece of the pie from the higher ups when in reality the way the money flows just needs to be altered.
Bridge and road crews don't get to get a penny every time someone drives over stuff.
Creation does not mean benefit in perpetuity. It means you created something. You should be paid properly for it, yes, but it doesn't mean every time someone mentions your book you get a penny from them lol.
Melancholy Elephants was a great Hugo Award short story about this very thing written in 1983. It's a great read for those who want to go in a bit blind. http://spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html
I think that the main problem is that companies keep getting revenue even if actors don’t. Book writers don’t stop earning money just because they wrote their book 5 years ago, and yes, they don’t win money for reselling, but companies like Amazon and their editorials will keep earning money because of their work, so why shouldn’t the writers earn money?
If your work isnt being streamed or sold, well, you won’t see much. But still, you signed a contract, like the old perpetual pensions.
Creation does not mean benefit in perpetuity. It means you created something. You should be paid properly for it, yes, but it doesn’t mean every time someone mentions your book you get a penny from them lol.
Frankly, this is what people in this thread are missing. I’d argue profits are reserved for those who dedicated themselves to making the game. Putting heart and soul into it. Sometimes that can be a VA but most of the time those VAs are like “Listen, we got a week to do this within budget and I AM NOT doing any more than that!”
It’s absolutely fine to draw that line but it’s not fine to then expect profits for doing just the minimum to get the job done. You’ll see a lot of studios just go get non-unionized VAs. People trying to break into the games industry as VAs are a dime a dozen and so any attempt at getting profits as a whole is going to fail.
🤷♂️I’ve made multiple million-dollar titles and haven’t gotten more than a paycheck from them. I really don’t think VAs should get much if any in the way of residuals. Engineers, artists, and designers should get a huge portion of the profits. Giving VAs even a 1% residual is a slap in the face of the rest of the team who build those games. Not to mention the whole team of LA Noire was laid off later that year.
Someone else made an interesting point how a lot of people don’t get residuals. That residuals don’t make sense for some jobs. For a VA in the background of a small indie games, do you think it’s okay for them to require residuals for their work? This lawsuit focuses on large AAA studios but it will set a dangerous precedent. There any many actors who have to find loop holes to build smaller movie projects. “We technically paid ourselves then invested it into the movie” sort of thing.
That said giving everyone residuals is better than giving no one residuals.
I will just say I think everyone involved in a project should be paid a fraction of the proceeds roughly in proportion to the work and sweat they contribute
Absolutely agree. But I think if we are going to start doing that we’ll have to start with the designers, engineers, and artists. Not the voice actors that spend weeks on the project and never think about it again.
What people might not catch is that this isn’t artists, designers or engineers. It’s voice actors only. I’m all for people getting what they deserve but as I see voice actors in the games industry demand profit sharing and more rights, I’m reminded that those who actually make the games don’t get that. They have overtime without pay.
Voice actors are among “those who actually make the games.” Voice acting in particular also is strenuous work that can and does cause physical injury when workers are compelled to work long hours doing rough voices and so on. People end up having to have surgery on their vocal cords.
We don’t need to devalue voice actors to value other game industry workers. The only difference is the voice actors organized first, probably because of the injury risk, and when you form a union you have to define a group that you can reach and coordinate. It shouldn’t be an us vs them among works.
Don’t forget mocap. A lot of actors are doing mocap for games now, which also potentially results in injury.
This also includes stunt workers (who do the more intensive motion capture work) and stunt coordinators, many of whom are in the Screen Actors Guild already.
Oh, great, trade unions. That never caused any issues for worker’s unity. If you can’t organise everyone, from tech lead to cleaning staff, in the same industrial union you’re playing right into the capitalists’ divide and conquer game.
Not so. It makes sense to organise in trade unions. The heads of those unions are on the same side most of the time, as it would be in this case, and they can easily coordinate their actions. But in some cases the interests of one trade have no bearing on another, or are even in opposition, in which case it would be somewhere between difficult and impossible to organise a balloted action across the entire union. Thus nullifying the strength of the union and playing right into the capitalist’s hands.
So instead of coming to terms with your fellow workers you rather have them fight capitalists by themselves? Leave them to the scraps the bosses deem sufficient while you’re wheeling away a wagonload of concessions won through your unique bargaining power?
You’re limiting the strength of worker’s. If train conductors don’t strike for train toilet cleaners noone will.
And any opposition between worker’s interests is negligible compared to that between workers and capital, who have no interests in common at all.
They need to unionize too. Also count actors are included in the "actually make the games" group. Everyone should be paid well, don't drag a group trying to fix that down because the rest aren't doing anything.
I’m reminded that those who actually make the games don’t get that. They have overtime without pay.
Yes, capitalism fucks everyone every day unless you fight for what you deserve, usually for decades, and even then only getting half of it. It's surprising that keeping this in mind requires reminders.
I think they asked for that in the last strike, but I haven't seen it mentioned in this one. And some speculated it was only included for something they could drop in the eventual resolution as a form of compromise.
The Bayonetta lady was asking for profits and took to Twitter to boycott the game when she didn’t get what she wanted. Claiming that she made those games what they are.
I never said it was about this strike directly but instead overall how VAs have been pushing to get more than those on the front line of game creation.
I know most if not all of the cast of Critical Role (who are voice actors for many video games) are members. Ashley Johnson is the voice of Ellie for TLoU, so if they’re working on TLoU3, they’ll likely have to delay it.
It doesn’t, unfortunately. Programmers, animators, concept artists, designers, each need to unionize in order to leverage collective action grants at the bargaining table. With last week’s decision by the NLRB though, it’s certain to be easier than ever to get unionized. Still, the amount of coordination it gets to even petition the NLRB to have your union recognized is no small feat. Just now it’ll be that much more difficult to bust a union election
It all depends on where you work and what lines you personally draw in the sand. Some novice game developers will not draw a line in the sand near release and management will work them to death. Stress causality is the term for when people don’t quit, don’t say anything, and just stop showing up for work. If you work at a studio where crunch is normalized then usually there is a stress causality normalization too.
Thanks for sharing ! Looks like the usual “small white male feeling powerful because he’s the boss” bullshit more than a problem specific to the gaming industry.
Anyway, unionizing should protect them better from these kind of abuse, which is good :)
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