I think it would be better for all involved if we figure this out now. Existing Voice Actors should not have their performances used without their explicit consent. Any performances used by current or past voice actors must have explicit consent and compensation. “New” voices generates by AI must be sufficiently differing from existing performances and any existing performances used in the generation must have consent by the original voice actor.
New creations from existing training data from an actor should have some type of royalties involved. The complication with that is the AI tools are largely a black box and it can be murky on where things come from.
Thats a solid and necessary addition. This comment section alone has already done more than any regulators. Its like they’re afraid to at least lay down protective ground rules so VAs can continue to eat. Too much profit salivation.
That's correct, but it's important to distinguish something explicitly here. The voices may not be copyrightable, but the dialogue is, as long as it's not also generated by AI (i.e., dynamically generated). Also, the trained model that generates the voice is still proprietary: only its product (and only the sound itself, not the words if the speech is from a script) can be openly used.
Existing performances must not be used to train models. If you wish to train a model you should need explicit consent and hire an actor to record such data. The actor should also receive royalties when the resulting model is used for a commercial purpose.
See, minus the royalty part (in most cases) this has been how VOCALOID, SynthV and the like has more or less operated for two decades now.
This is the one career I wanted to do something in. I started voice acting years ago.
Honestly just seems so pointless lately. Half the time voice over artists are not even recognized or even paid a decent amount. Now they wanna just copy and paste our voice.
Even the recognized ones don’t get paid well. Weird that SAG would sign off on this so easily when SAG actors and writers striked for months with AI being a big part of the issue.
Because voice actors are not considered real actors by SAG-AFTRA. Despite the fact that doing voice over work is typically far more grueling than being in front of a camera. I’ve never met a VOA who wasn’t looked down on by other SAG members. Even by fucking extras. “You just stand in a booth and read lines.”
Guarantee none of them have experienced being on your 10th take in the booth, with the previous line fed to you by the Audio Engineer through your cans, and the next line is whatever comes next alphabetically. Its just as valid as any other form of acting. People on a high horse because of their job is the most asinine shit. Its all work.
It’s why I love actors who’ve done voice over work. Like most of the Star Trek cast has in one form or another, whether thats for Star Trek Online or another game entirely. All of them saying that it was mind numbing work and it drained them but that they now have enormous respect for people who do that.
While most people look at Critical Role and just go “oh it’s easy!” as if you aren’t spending 4 hours doing exertion noises for climbing fucking stairs.
Question, what do conventional actors fall under when they voice for something like a Disney or Pixar movie? What would be the protections from using Seinfield’s voice if he did a new Bee movie? Or are they protected by SAG Actor and its just the nerd VOs that are fucked?
Couldn’t imagine an A-lister ever voicing a AAA game if they fell under those rules.
I occasionally record readings and narrations of dumb things on Mastodon but they’re usually just super quick. Like so quick that I don’t even bother fucking with noise reduction or anything. Just get bored and go “I LIEK THIS POEM”
I’ve done voice acting before, and honestly, you’re right on the money.
So many people don’t even notice if the voice work in a piece of media is good/bad.
Playing one game, several of the main characters sound like they were recorded in completely different rooms.
And I’m sat here like a mug with a deadened setup, wondering why I bothered.
When that little detail is paid, I can see games absolutely jumping on the machine generated bandwagon.
I’ve been trying to figure out a deadened set up for a while. My closet isn’t big enough as a gay man, no. I’m not going back in. I need one of those lil curtain thingies that create a dead space.
But yeah I agree. Resident Evil 4 killed me for that. So many of the characters sounded amazing and then Ada just stuck out like a sore thumb. I don’t mean because of a poor performance or anything either. I wasn’t totally happy with it but I blame the game director for that, not her for doing what they asked of her. But everyone else was done in a professional set up and her quality is NOTICABLE different. It fucked up the entire DLC for me and I haven’t been able to really enjoy it.
Doing voice acting and then hearing all the ways people mess up in stuff is astounding. Not that I don’t, mind you. I’m not perfect. But my god do you notice all the major errors in every game out there once you start working a bit in the field.
"It’s suggested that Netflix would only introduce ads to users who already see ads as part of their subscription, which is the case for users on the lower-priced ad-supported models."
I think people here either did not read the article or completely missed that sentence.
On Android, not including stuff you can also get outside netflix:
deaths door
into the breach
shovel knight pocket dungeon
Poinpy (from the downwell dev)
Spiritfarer
Moonlighter
There’s also a few things that you can get through Netflix that’s also available outside of it, like dead cells, world of goo and btd6
Overall it’s my go to place when I feel like finding a game to kill some time. They have a lot more than that but those are some of the higher quality ones
I like… don’t even have an idea in my head of what we’re talking about. Is it like Gamefly for renting video games? Is it like Epic Games Store, a pathetic attempt to cash in on Steam by offering the exact same service but worse? Is it like Amazon App Store, a pathetic attempt to copy the Google App Store but worse? Is it games you play on your TV with the TV remote? (I’m pretty sure I have seen one of two of those on Netflix that my kids played.)
I could look it up but they might see that as interest, and I’m really not interested. Just OOTL.
You have access to a bunch of games accessible through the Netflix app or directly through your app store. Most of the games are available elsewhere and pretty solid like Moonlighter, Terra Nil, Oxenfree, Spiritfarer, Storyteller, Into the Breach. But they are (were?) ad-free full versions of the paid counterparts
So weird… I wonder why they have this whole thing that I had no idea about. I’ve been using Netflix since they were a DVD rental service and I’ve been gaming since the days of Wing Commander and King’s Quest. You’d think I’d be the target demographic yet it’s news to me that it even exists.
EDIT: Oooooh, it’s mobile only. I get it now. It’s really obvious in the app but I never watch Netflix on my phone. And yeah, it’s basically the Amazon app store all over again.
I love companies swinging between “we have to increase your subscription costs to allow us to offer more great features” and “our customers are excited about our new features so we need to leverage advertising to continue providing them”. Just repeat until everything is loaded with ads AND costs twice as much!
honestly, the thing that gets me here is–who even focuses on Netflix Gaming in the first place? i never hear about stuff dropping in their ecosystem, and so it really feels like an afterthought service to begin with that they’ve bolted onto their main business
Ok no joke, I discovered Dead Cells, one of my favourite rougelike games currently, through Netflix. I was browsing through Netflix mobile, saw that they had a gaming section, and that was one of the first suggested games.
I now own 3 copies of Dead Cells+DLCs (one for every platform I game on). However, I don’t have a Netflix subscription anymore, lol.
They throw a half assed product at the wall without notifying anyone, nothing sticks, so now they’re throwing in ads to recover costs.
I really feel like the C suites of these companies are run by complete morons, without hyperbole. These people are not good at what they’re doing. They just floated to the top during a period where money was free and being bold was more important than being right.
the way i try to make sense of it is imagine if every commercial movie was released on the same platform. when i say every movie i mean every movie. every movie from film school thesis that got a limited screening in the local cinema to hollywood blockbusters, from every country of the world, USA, china, india, nigeria, etc… all released on the same platform. i’d bet it would probably have the same amount or even more movies than steam has games. valve just has that kind of global monopoly on the PC gaming space. we only tend to see the shovelware since they are predominantly made to swindle cash out of highest value customers which are english speaking people either in anglosphere or in parts of europe that english literacy is high. we never get to see countless good or bad chinese games because… well they are in chinese.
don’t get me wrong steam is filled with crap and scams but it’s because everything is filled with crap and scams. although actual moderation from valve would be welcome. it’s a hard problem but they got the money and no excuse.
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