Wow, end of an era, even for people like me that fell off the RT train years ago. RvB was such a hit (at least the first several seasons, it seems like they ended up making 19?!), and they pivoted to different types of content and kept trying to diversify revenue streams ever since (games, movies, podcasts, etc.)
RT should be remembered as failing in selling out to Fullscreen/AT&T/TimeWarner, etc, etc., but more importantly, engaging in honestly some pretty horrific working conditions that were exposed over and over again throughout the years. They eventually made some changes that moved the company away from being a bro-fest for pals, but only slightly and way too late.
The IP should still have immense value, so it will be interesting to see what happens in that arena.
I think, other than RvB, my favorite memories of RT revolve around Gavin and Monty (RIP). Hopefully the less popular/wealthy employees are taken care of, somewhere far from Austin. The founders though… Gus, Bernie, Geoff, Matt, etc. are all multi-millionaires and/or long gone anyway, and I’m pretty sure each of them have their own controversies to deal with…
And then the post-bro-culture company fired Matt Bragg, a blameless font of positivity and beloved addition to any video. This was a long time coming.
Even if they hadn’t betrayed Ray over streaming, the whole Let’s Play format was going to trend down as Youtube stomped around blindly across people’s livelihoods. The company maybe could’ve been ahead of the curve on managing streamers? But ehhh. Their live content was never as good as their edited content.
Gus Sorola was always a complete piece of shit in my humble opinion and this was never more clear than his lame attempt to attack Jeff Gerstmann over Fallout 4 while hosting what was clearly a Bethesda funded podcast.
Yeah, his shtick of being the weird anti-social sardonic ass got old real fast once it became clear that it wasn’t an act (or once it was an act for so long that it just became his personality). I think working around him and Geoff specifically would have been extremely draining, having to walk on eggshells all the time lest you become the object of ridicule on the podcast/let’s plays.
Looking up all the RT employees that I remember on Wikia, though, it was pretty surprising to see that they ended up being some of the least problematic people there, at least from a legal standpoint. They had their issues, which I don’t want to diminish, but it was always very transparent with them admitting they’re assholes pretty much every chance they got. But, like, Ryan was fired for sexual harassment and grooming, what in the actual fuck?
Obviously this is all parasocial, so who knows what they were, or now are, really like, but playing a dick for 20 years might just make you a bit of a dick.
We already have strong indications of companies like Ubi using AI models based on past performers. And stuff like Tomb Raider/Lara Croft is downright famous for how much they model her appearance off actresses (sometimes the mocap actress, sometimes just a random attractive one). And its worth remembering that the big attempt at “a virtual actress” was from a Final Fantasy movie. Hell, the rumor has been that most of Martinet’s Mario lines were recorded decades ago.
Plus, as much as I love Warframe and DE, it has always been more than a bit sketch how many characters are voiced by non-union employees of the company (and, bottom dollar, Space Mom going out for a pack of smokes for a few years was worries that Reb would leave). And they are not at all out of the ordinary in that.
So yeah. Video games should fucking respect the unions
And for people thinking nothing will happen (like last time) because the vast majority of game dev can be done without the VAs or even the motion capping done?
Take a look at the SAG strike. A24 and the like “rolled over” almost instantly and are largely operating like nothing has changed. Expect the vast majority of indie and “small studio” productions to do so. It means higher cost per game, but the SAG rates are nothing compared to the rest of game dev. And then it gives them a significant advantage.
Whereas the big studios? Rockstar are nearing formal announcement on GTA6. Can’t do that if your talent is refusing to record lines and the like (not to mention the rumors (?) that they blacklisted the hell out of Nico Bellic’s VA after he dared to ask for more money). And you can bet that Sony are trying to find ways to get the TLOU show crowd playing games (although I totally expect Troy Baker to scab the fuck out of things).
Does Troy Baker suck? I know he voices he a ton of characters but I've never heard of anything about him personally.
And ya, this is a great step forward. Like movies and tv, the video game industry is rife with the money taking advantage of people. Maybe even more, because there's less union backing in video games.
In early 2022, Baker was the subject of controversy due to his partnership with an NFT company that had been revealed to have plagiarized voice lines generated from 15.ai, an artificial intelligence text-to-speech project developed by an MIT student, as part of their marketing campaign.
There have been some fan stories of Troy Baker that make him seem like a real douche bag. But mostly, just watch basically any time he does a big stage interview. It is almost a meme that he will find a way to talk about how amazing of an actor he is and cut off any woman in sight.
He could very well end up being insanely pro-SAG and the like. But he shows every sign of being a Stephen Amell level of “Fuck you for not letting me promote my products”
I was a committed fan back when they were so proud of being an indie studio. I paid for sponsorship because I loved supporting them as creators.
Then they sold themselves out, changed sponsorship to a subscription service, tried to squeeze every last penny out of their audience with adds and shitty merch and low quality loot crate shite, all the while they massively expanded their productions as fast as they could, way beyond their means.
And anytime they did some shitty business practices that actually caused some controversy they essentially said “fuck you, we’re right” even when they completely shat on the legacy of Monty, fucked over his Widow, and fired the guy that was essentially his apprentice because he disagreed with all the changes they made to his visions and all the cost saving measures they implemented that tanked that quality of RWBY.
They leadership and key talents all had their heads so far up their own assess they thought they could do whatever they want and get away with it. Whether it was abusing their staff, lying to their audience, being openly homophic and trnasphobic or grooming 16 year old girls.
Honestly it’s a tragedy that it took so long.
Although I do feel slightly bad for the tiny handful of their staff that were genuinely nice people, but overall this is a good thing.
It would be pretty dumb for the video games industry to let these actors go to strike, no one wants to do that, we’re already seeing that all that happens is that the companies lose millions of dollars during downed work time, and the unions are gonna get what they need anyway.
I don't want to polarize or argue. My basic conclusion, having watched the quality of the storytelling decline AND the moviegoing populace check out is: People are over the MCU. Whether it's the Sony-based characters that are also tangentially connected to the MCU or otherwise.
Yeah, it's definitely clear that you don't enjoy the MCU. I don't think anyone has an issue with you feeling that way. What I don't like to see is when content is misrepresented in titles when posted, it degrades the quality of the platform as a whole and encourages reactions which aren't based on the actual content.
it degrades the quality of the platform as a whole and encourages reactions which aren't based on the actual content.
As the guy who posts content 2-4 times a day because others don't, I would absolutely welcome this level of passion to posting new, appropriate, original content as opposed to complaining because the posted content doesn't meet your standard of quality.
Cool, always glad to see another user who makes an effort to submit content - I'm glad you're doing the same. I took issue with your title for this post, and I think I expressed that adequately here. Take care.
Curious. Does this strangely help game devs avoid crunch? If the stories and acting can’t be completed, does that buy them more time to just make the gameplay?
If the game is already cast and VO/performance hasn’t been entirely recorded yet, then yes, it will grind production to a halt.
If the game hasn’t been cast yet, some studios might decide to go record VO in the UK instead. Typically that leads to lower quality unless the cast needs to be British. The American voice actor pool in the UK is much smaller than the U.S. for obvious reasons, and that leads to much lower quality of performance.
So basically, it will slow down productions if they don’t have the option to go to the UK instead. For everything else, it depends how badly a studio wants to release within the given time frame, but there are options.
No. Not unless devs unionize. More time to make the game doesn’t mean less crunch, it’ll usually mean more crunch as crunch used to be a month or so before release and is now just the entire time a game is in production. So a longer production just means more crunch.
Crunch is a worker power problem, it’s companies taking advantage of the power they have over workers who can’t individually refuse.
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