Just in case you skip to the comments: the complaint is that actors are not being told anything about what game they are working on or what kind of scenes they will be doing. Then, they show up to the studio and they are asked to do explicit sex scenes or sexual assault scenes day-of with little warning or time to consider whether they are comfortable with that.
What a shitty title to the article. It should be "Actors demand action over unanticipated video game sex (and rape) scenes". Especially if the actor may be a rape survivor, asking them to act that out without any warning is idiotic at best and harmful at worst.
There are absolutely actors who are down to do that stuff but you can’t hire people with a script sight-unseen and just drop stuff on them that might straight up give some people a panic attack to even think about, let alone re-enact.
Title makes you think there are actors who don’t want games in general to contain explicit adult content, but this is 100% reasonable, and yet another reason voice actors and game industry workers need to unionize.
I bet your ass the same shit is happening with asset creators and animators.
I think they actually are unionized. At least in the UK. That’s what some of the Baldur’s Gate 3 actors said when asked about the anti AI strikes. They can’t participate because of the rules of their union.
If I recall correctly there is even a sentence in the article about the British union starting to tackle this issue.
In some countries, some people, in some parts of the industry, are unionized. It’s not even close to being the norm. It’s only slowly starting to happen.
Yeah, what they’re asking for is pretty standard stuff in other media. A friend of mine is an actor who played a scene where he had to shoot a masturbation scene. He was alone in a room with like 3-4 people: sound guy, camera guy, director, and I think the intimacy coach was there too.
Having a whole team watch you pretend to have sex is not okay, what the hell.
I mean, most of the team should be watching because they’re trying to do their jobs, not because they’re ogling the actors. And this is even more removed from sex than movies’ simulated sex, because I assume they’re in full mocap suits and everything.
Hell, you don’t even need both people doing motion at the same time, as long as you have the poses roughly correct. You can edit the motion curves to make the rhythm match.
I wonder if that would be a genuine use case for “AI”. If the voice actor consents to have his voice represented in such a scene but doesn’t want to play it out in a studio, the computer model could take over that part.
I don’t believe you’re wrong here in saying that. These don’t seem like unreasonable asks at all, and something I’d expect to be normal standards for the industry.
They are the bare minimum that should be expected. Honestly, the studios who did this should be named and shamed. The actors shouldn’t ever have to deal with this, and I’m sure the studio would lose far more money than they could wish to gain by being deceptive. It’s capitalism. They’re after profit. Make honesty the most profitable option or you’ll get dishonesty.
Yes, these precipts seem to be common in the TV industry
Ms Jefferies stresses the guidelines are not trying to put boundaries on storytelling … She says - and “these guidelines are just to bring it even more in line with the best practices in the film and TV industry”.
And I can’t think of news stories that show this is a problem in terms of leaking a story.
So, why not have the same degree of safety and protocols in game development?
With THIS context added, yeah I see why people are mad. I thought this was the usual “Video games are too sexy!” nonsense we’ve had ever since we saw Princess Toadstool’s ankles for the first time back in 1964… But uhh, wow… This
This is just outright fucked, I would even argue this could legally count as a form of sexual assault. IANAL though
ok so like, is video game acting like the worst field on earth, could you not just, refuse to do this? Seems like a fully reasonable thing to do to me.
I am an adult. Im not prudish. I watch porn. And whenever I see a sex scene in movies/tv shows/games I cringe.
They are usually most unnecessary to the story, and IMO a good movie makes you know it happened without showing it happening (without at least wiping the cock afterwards of course).
This made me hate Game of Thrones for example. I simply referred to it as midget porn. I even hated on it in front of my friends, they put it on to prove me wrong and lo and behold a midget is fucking a whore on screen.
Yeah, I know where to find porn and they even show genitalia there, thank you very much.
What do you think these movies or shows are doing when they let people know without showing the sex scene? You think the narrator is just saying “then they had sex” and describing the sex while the screen is blacked out?
I agree. I typically skip sex scenes in movies. Those scenes very seldom add anything to the story imo.
Unless it makes sense. In “What Women Want” with Mel Gibson, I believe that is a great example of a sex scene adding to the movie. The whole premise is him reading women’s minds, so him having sex with Marisa Tomei and hearing their thoughts while in the act added to the premise.
So when I see a movie that is just like “hey these people are hot and we should film them go at it” is just boring imo.
Meh, some of my favorite shows and movies have a lot sex scenes. Sometimes, they just add realism or contribute to aesthetics. Other times they show personality, relationship dynamics, are symbolic of other things, or are important to the plot.
I don’t see sex scenes as any different than other potentially “unnecessary” scenes, like a long shot of a dripping faucet, for instance.
But, yeah, most sex scenes in games make me cringe.
I feel like some nudity and sex scenes when it’s appropriate are better than not. Really ruins my sense of immersion when there’s a naked person with a random potted plant conveniently blocking your view of their bits. Either commit to them being naked or don’t have them naked at all is my take
Sex scenes are common in modern games - and are often made by filming human actors who are then digitised into game characters.
Is “common” referring to cringey low budget Steam games? I don’t think I’ve seen any sort of on screen simulated sex in a game, ever. Granted I tend to only play well publicized indie games and larger releases. But how common is this? Am I out of the loop?
I only played partially through the first and the most graphic sexual thing I remember there were the little cards you'd get, which don't require any actors.
I don’t recommend it, but going bass-to-mouth was a very popular and hyped feature addition for SEGA Bass Fishing. I’m surprised this is the first you are hearing of it
The Witcher and Cyberpunk I’ll give you, but Mass Effect definitely fades to black before getting to actual sex, the other two are mods. I wasn’t saying sex in games doesn’t exist, but if we’ve gotta go back several decades for a handful examples, that doesn’t feel like something that’s “common.”
Yeah, there was a whole kerfuffle about it because all the files were still on the disc, therefore some jurisdictions re-rated the game to some version of adults only. Rockstar definitely did all the development work to get that sex in the game, they just decided not to show it in normal gameplay.
I think “common” here would refer to having to produce them, over the actual explicitness of the scene. Whether Mass Effect fades to black or not isn’t really the point when the voice actors still have to record the lines that play while the screen is dark.
ME is like cuddles that fade to black, The Witcher is funny little drawn cards you get after a fade to black, San Andreas was a mod as the actual function was never part of the released game - and those animations definitely were not mo-capped, no idea wtf a fishing game has, CP2077 kinda the same as ME but a bit more raunchy I guess. But even those very non explicit examples are a tiny fraction in the grand scheme of things, even among "adult" games.
Witcher 3 and cp2077 definitely had what i’d consider full sex scenes. Like, you don’t have full on piv, but it’s about as close as, say, TV typically gets.
Witcher 3 it is more explicit if you buy the services on offer in the brothel. But it’s still far less than one romp in Wicked Whims, which of course is all mods so no motion capture there
Actual sex scenes are incredibly rare. In most cases, which are still rare, it is implied with some cuddly scenes that fade to black. I think the most "explicit" sex scene I've seen in a regular game was in TLoU Part 2.
I have no idea what game has a realistic rape scene in it. All I could find for her credits in video games was this:
– Unknown9: Awakening (Video Game)/ Casting Director – full performance capture cast & all additional voices./ Dir. Damien Goodwin.
– Peaky Blinders (VR video game)/ Casting Director – full performance capture cast. / Dir. Kate Saxon.
– Warhammer 40K: Battlesisters (VR video game) / Casting Director – full performance capture cast. /Dir. James Horn.
– The Witcher Series 2 (TV) / Casting Associate for VFX & SFX with Sophie Holland Casting.
– Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League (video game) / Casting Director – motion capture cast. /Rocksteady Games.
– Little Hope (video game) / Casting Director – motion capture cast. / Dir. Nick Bowen.
Her credits are not where a game she wasn’t in would be listed, smartass. That’s just the list I was able to find of her work. People like you are so eager to prove everyone wrong on the Internet that you can’t use your brain.
Sometimes I forget how unprofessional the game industry still is or how little respect people have for well being of others. I’d like to say I’m surprised but that would require having some expectations towards those companies.
I hope more VAs speak up about stuff like this so we can have some real changes.
I’d say that isn’t the game industry, but it’s basically every company and employer everywhere. Nobody matters. Nobody is important. We’re all expendable seems to be the world.
And also largely nonsensical in how they occur and are written. It’s so boring. I mean I would love an actual intimate relationship to contact such a broken world but the devs of course won’t let me, instead I get fanfic writing.
There’s a lot of straight up porn games out there so who knows what kind of shit these actors end up in when they show up for a generic “motion/voice capture for video game” gig.
And on the other side we have the Baldur’s Gate actors praising Larian for hiring intimacy coordinators and not requiring themselves to mocap the sex scenes.
Edit: Ah, just saw that this is addressed at the end of the article.
Yes, quite. I’m a regular practitioner of touch-stimulated emotional relief aided by intimacy content distributors on the digital nexus of information.
Actor here. Doing intimacy scenes is surprisingly difficult, arguably more so than combat, because usually people train and get certified in sword and dagger, rapier, firearms etc to get cast
When working a job, putting your mouth on another person’s mouth is a very unusual act, and you want your actors - regardless of gender - to feel safe, comfortable, professional and not exploited - not to mention you might spend 2x 14 hours days on this sequence from multiple angles getting it the same every time
The issue is much bigger than this and much bigger than valve.
The underlying problem are nation state sized companies that are so vertically integrated that they profit from every step of the process they are involved in.
Through their huge size they have the power to profit on procurement, labor, production, sales, etc. compared to smaller companies. The concept of billion dollar companies (and individuals) is perverse.
The capitalist system was not designed to harbour companies that never make a loss and are sold or broken up just because they dont satisfy last quarter‘s predictions.
Everywhere where joe or jane average cant start a competing business (either through overzealous regulations like tiny banks or through monopoly inducing IP laws like the one allowing valve to infinitely hold games hostage) you will have overcharging, barely any progress in development and small numbers of people ridicolously raking in profits.
We need to get rid of the right to „sell“ limited licenses, billion dollar companies and shareholder primacy.
I’m fairly certain that applies to keys a dev requests be generated, so that any Steam keys can’t be sold elsewhere for cheaper than they are on Steam itself. Games that are sold on multiple platforms including Steam can absolutely be sold at different prices. I know, because I’ve bought games elsewhere because they were cheaper than on Steam at the time due to sales.
The lawsuit doesn’t imply that Steam forces their piece to always be cheaper than the competition. Sales can happen on different stores at different times, thus a game can be $50 on Steam and $40 on Epic today.
But Steam forces sellers to offer “the same offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time” - source (sorry, Shitter link) from this article, which is about a similar lawsuit from 2021.
And the language used means that, while this only applies to devs who make use of Steam keys, it doesn’t apply to the Steam keys themselves - if you want to use Steam keys, you also can’t offer discounts on competing storefronts. From the source:
Rosen said he ran into that issue when he decided to release Overgrowth at a lower price on other storefronts in order to take advantage of their lower commission rates. “When I asked Valve about this plan, they replied that they would remove Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM,” Rosen wrote.
Like it’s fine if they sell their game on Steam for $40 and another store for $60 as long as the thing on the other store is for that platform and not a key to activate it on Steam.
They just want the price of a game that’s on your Steam library no matter the source to be the same no matter where you purchase it.
That is my understanding. Additionally I have seen no evidence that it is actually enforced either. You could get Ghost of Tsushima for $59.99 on steam and for like $51.xx on another site using keys. Same happened with forbidden west.
The agreement is only between the dev and Valve; 3rd party key sellers like G2A or Eneba usually obtain their keys through trades, buying them from the original seller, or by stealing them (which is an entirely different can of worms). They’re entitely user-driven marketplaces selling second-hand merch.
Doesn’t even have to be sketchy resellers like ones mentioned like g2a. Normal ones like fanatical and humble bundle sell cheaper. Those aren’t user driven market places.
Just have to take a look at isthereanydeals which anyone should do before buying a game.
bbc.com
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