arquebus_x

arquebus_x, miesiąc temu

The whole point of Jenny Nicholson's epic video was that it did NOT, in fact, offer a "unique, interactive 48-hour movie-like adventure."

That Screen Rant article was almost certainly planted by Disney PR. No actual employee who had to deal with all that bullshit would write something so sycophantic.

arquebus_x, 4 miesiące temu

It also has a 1v1 mode (player vs computer or PvP) that is just fantastic. I actually spent most of my time playing the 1v1 mode way back in the day.

arquebus_x, 4 miesiące temu

Huh. I thought for sure this was quietly canceled.

arquebus_x, 5 miesięcy temu

This deal solves the problem you're encountering, because it allows game companies to use real voices to generate dialogue. It will sound a hell of a lot better than the 100% AI generated voices you dislike.

And it will protect voice actors' jobs because the deal effectively requires new contracts for each use out of scope of the previous contract (i.e., the "opt out" language), and it encourages game companies to continue to rely on voice actors rather than switch to 100% AI generated.

Without this deal, game devs will just go 100% AI (and the tech will improve dramatically), and within a year or two, game voice actors will have no jobs to contract.

This is especially important in light of the trend toward dynamically generated dialogue in RPGs, etc. Without allowing an AI to train on real voice actors, dynamically generated dialogue will have to be 100% AI generated (no human voice involvement).

Voice acting in all fields is already a diminishing market because of AI generated voices. One of my coworkers had to get a job where I work because his VA jobs basically dried up. This agreement stanches the bleeding by permitting the use of AI trained on VAs (but only allowing use on a per-contract basis). Without that permission, AI would just be trained on open source / freely available voice samples, and there would be no contracts, and VAs would just .... not exist anymore.

arquebus_x, 5 miesięcy temu

That's... what this agreement proposes.

arquebus_x, 5 miesięcy temu

It does, yes. And they can also choose to opt out of future uses of their voice in the AI trained model. Which essentially means that their contracts are on a per-project basis, rather than allowing the game developer to force them to contract for the current project and any future use of the model by that game dev.

arquebus_x, 5 miesięcy temu

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.

arquebus_x, 5 miesięcy temu

The contract would be a combination contract, for performance and AI training. That's explicitly the thing that's been agreed to here.

arquebus_x, 5 miesięcy temu

Do you not understand how unions work?

arquebus_x, 5 miesięcy temu

"What's up" is that people are stupid and don't know things. Popular vote awards (and national elections!) always suffer from lazy ignorance.

arquebus_x, 7 miesięcy temu

I can't imagine there's any way to make optical drives that much faster. The spin rate is already very high and the media size has been standardized. (You'd get a lot more data throughput with a laserdisc-sized drive spinning at the same speed as a CD/DVD.)

arquebus_x, 8 miesięcy temu

I'm much more interested in the original games, which are now available for free as Aleph One.

https://alephone.lhowon.org/

arquebus_x, 8 miesięcy temu

You probably already know this, but there's a free open source version of all three original games, plus others:

https://alephone.lhowon.org/

arquebus_x, 8 miesięcy temu

Shit, why not just 30? The frame rate a viewer needs is very different from the frame rate a player needs.

arquebus_x, 8 miesięcy temu

Welcome back to the 1980s!

arquebus_x, 8 miesięcy temu

It's fish and children, isn't it?

arquebus_x, 8 miesięcy temu (edited 8 miesięcy temu)

@JohnnyCanuck is right in a bunch of important ways, but there is one additional factor to consider. The reason the Hollywood guild system works the way it does is because no one is contracted to any given studio. It used to be that actors and writers were required to have locked-in contracts - they couldn't work for anyone else - but that hasn't been true for a long time. (There are exceptions: writers and actors can choose to have multi-picture/script deals, in exchange for an up front wad of cash, but it's not the norm outside of the really heavy hitters.)

A standard union protects a worker's existing job, and helps that worker negotiate terms for an existing job.

A Hollywood guild protects a worker's future jobs - because the one they have now will absolutely not be the one they have in 2 years, a year, maybe even in 6 months. This is the nature of the Minimum Basic Agreement (MBA): it dictates minimum terms of employment. It's not designed to give writers/actors the best deal, it's designed to give them the least shitty deal the studios will agree to.

Why does this matter?

It matters because what most people think of as "Hollywood" is all the extremely pretty, extremely powerful, extremely prolific actors and writers who make lots of money and show up on magazine covers and in media podcasts. (No writer is showing up on a magazine, I don't care how pretty he is.) But the MBA is there for the day players, the low rung people, the staff writers, the gal who had one spec script produced in her career so far.

What the WGA managed to achieve recently with its negotiations is an absolutely phenomenal success. But it still only really impacts the MBA - the minimum basic agreement!

So... uh... why does this fucking matter?

The game industry doesn't really have superstars. It doesn't have the equivalent of Tom Cruise and John August. At least not at scale. And the ones who are that shiny are usually studio heads or creative directors, not "employees." So they wouldn't be covered by a union anyway (which cannot apply to managers - i.e. anyone who has authority over other workers).

Suggesting that the game industry adopt the Hollywood guild model is to suggest forcing a pear into a box shaped like an apple. The MBA protects low level employees in their future employment, and isn't really all that great - at least not the way most non-insiders think. It still results in a ridiculous number of workers making poverty wages.

Is that what you want a game voice actor to have? A minimum basic agreement for their future employment? A programmer? A graphic designer?

No. You want them to be in a union.[1] Which will protect their current jobs and create conditions for advancement, sufficient income at the lowest tiers and long term stability. None of which the Hollywood guilds really do.

[1] The distinction between a union and a guild isn't a "real" one in modern U.S. law, strictly speaking. But conceptually, as above, a union is for people in regular employment with a single employer, and a guild is for (effectively) contract workers. The terminology of "guild" came from the older, pre-industrial idea of "the X workers guild" (masonry, carpentry, bricklaying, etc.), which were really just social organizations that sorta kinda acquired enough power to flex their muscles against the people who were contracting them by having minimum demands in solidarity within the guild (does that sound familiar...?). Guilds eventually "became" unions in the modern sense, once people were working with single employers over a long term. Put simply (and a bit stupidly), unions make contracts between workers and companies; guilds make contracts between workers and their industry. Part of the reason gig workers (Uber/Lyft/etc.) in California have been more active about getting better terms is because that state is super familiar with how guilds work, which is exactly what gig workers need, since their employment is with the industry as a whole (they can work for more than one company), not so much with a specific company. (It's also why they're having a much harder time - because California employers are super familiar with all the shenanigans Hollywood studios use to suppress the guilds that feed into them.)