A Video Game Actors Strike Could Happen Following Union Vote for Action

I guess enjoy your bigger moneybags while it lasts…. AI is eating their breakfast and at this rate they could most likely be replaced before the end of the 2020’s.

Just replace them with A.I. Let them do a real job on minimum wage and see how much they complain.

I do get a bit confused when employees ask for “fair compensation”. Surely fair compensation is what you are worth. Meaning if your skillset is incredibly common and you have to fight against loads of other people for a job then salary is lower, if you bring something unique then you will be in demand and warrant higher payment because people will be fighting for your services. That’s how I always thought these things worked as long as there is no monopoly or collusion between competitors.

Of course if the government allows the market to be flooded with cheap labour, whether that be immigration from poor countries or AI which have a limited cost post development, then this is an issue that really needs to be dealt with, but surely that’s a matter of politics, not a matter of laying into the employers??

@BrockSmith @starbuck2212 Imagine having an account on a hardcore gaming website such as this and reacting like that to the people who make video games possible. Really, really disappointing to see.

The whole A.I. thing sucks but it's also inevitable. Can't stop progress unfortunately.

@LiamCroft my thoughts exactly. Dear God...

@thefourfoldroot1 if employers include a clause in your contract stating that they can use your voice any way they want in perpetuity and you're too young and too broke, so you take the job, you can be taken advantage of. I think this is one of the things they're trying to prevent.

Like with movies, actors took an issue with studios wanting to pay extras once and then use their image for any new movie, TV show forever. I don't know about you, but it doesn't sit well with me.

I'm gonna be honest with all of you, I'm starting to get tired of some of these Push Square comment sections.

Questioning people for something as simple as fair treatment and a guarantee to not completely lose their jobs over artificial intelligence is insane. I can understand skepticism or pessimism, but some of you people are full on insulting talented people for reasons I cannot wrap my head around.

Edit: Even better, more bickering going on in the comment section below this comment. The Push Square community just feels divided these days, and I personally am really starting to get tired of frequent conflicts in every other major article's comments.

Don't even bother scrolling down.

@HotGoomba I think you'll find negative people everywhere. The reason I'm sticking around is that the majority here is better than that.

@LiamCroft What? Why? Some of the demands of these recent strikes are dumb. Wanting to be paid per stream instead of for doing a job. Demanding a minimum amount of people in a writers room regardless of if they are good or not. Demanding no use of AI tools, perpetual licensing of work that has to be renewed every few years, etc.

Wouldn’t some of the proposals being demanded encourage even more IP erasure? For instance, work in the 60’s-80’s had perpetuity as standard. So if say, a movie featured Earth Wind & Fire song, they got a one time check for that. But now, with digital distribution, everyone wants a cut of every single time someone hits the play button.

Won’t the new demands just cause these companies to release a game and then scrub it as it’s not worth the overhead in licensing to maintain on their servers once the opening window of excitement drops off?

Listen, I think asking for more money is simply always a valid approach, irregardless of justification, qualification etc. Theres just nothing wrong with that and has always been the standard “can I have a raise” kinda thing. In the instance of asking for all the data sets from the companies the talent simply “works for” (essentially), that feels muddy. I’m trying to think of an analogy but, say a bar asks me to come play guitar for an evening as live music for their patrons and offers me $400. I can either say “sounds good” or “my minimum is $600 a night.” In these union’s case, they are saying “I want $400 plus $7 for every single person that walks through that door.” I think the studios would know handing over that data would just be leveraged for another strike a few years down the line. If I was a studio, I might consider that under the guise of removing minimums then, knowing we are both rolling the dice on success since the unions demanded transparency.

And as far as unions go, I appreciated what they did 150 years ago, and think they were needed when 13 year old were getting their fingers cut off in meat packing factories, but todays unions are a far cry from that.

Obviously go get paid what you’re worth, but the big corps. will try to hold out for as long as possible or just give them breadcrumbs. This is one of the major reasons Netflix has started pumping out K-dramas.
Not every actor can just sit at home. During the last major strike some actors & writers got 2nd jobs.

Selfishly I’m just glad the new season of It’s always Sunny got out before the strike.

Wonder how badly this will affect game dev time? Total standstill? You’d imagine Wolverine would be affected.

@naruball
The simple truth is that voices will soon be able to be fully synthetic, but will likely still need to be meshed with someone doing the acting / intonation etc. As such I still think voice actors will have a role to play. And even more so people with a brand who are influential enough for others to want them in full to act in their product. For basic bits of work - saying a few lines - unfortunately that’s already a low skill job that is soon to be phased out.

I do feel they are hastening this with some unreasonable demands also.

English voices certainly add to the experience of games that they’re in. But I would hope that games would ship without rather than delaying.

People deserve to be paid fairly, but fair for a video game that is a game. It’s different from a live action film where essentially the product is the work of the actors.

I hope it can be resolved quickly, but compromise is certainly required on both sides.

For better or worse, this is "progress". Hundreds of jobs over the past 150 years have been phased out due to automation, this will just be another that will gradually disappear.

The whole progress of human society is inventing machines to do our jobs for us. Computers, robots in factories, production lines, self-driving cars, delivery drones/robots, and now AI have all been invented to simplify the work humans have to do. People need to learn to adapt their skills and predict what jobs will be viable in the future. Even as a writer myself, it's mandatory to have an AI assistant to correct any potential writing or grammar mistakes we make where I work. While I hope AI doesn't replace me, I'm not blind to the fact that being replaced by an AI makes sense in many ways, not least for the company I work for.

Lol, people buy game for their gameplay, not for their (western) voice acting. Besides, do you know there's other talented people that's not in sagafra (or whatever it called), or just replace them with AI I guess.

Wow some comments I would downright refer to as stupid here. This is literally the point of unions, they’re fighting to protect their members’ livelihoods.

Can't believe the idiocy and malice in this comment section.
Sounds like caring for other fellow humans' livelihood is a rar thing these days.
Also, those of you who talk about the "inevitability of AI" don't know the first thing about it, so maybe educate yourself first.
Repeat after me: "Artificial Intelligence doesn't exist, yet it will still ruin everything".

The strike probably won't happen because unlike other industries the game industry can, and will, outsource any part that becomes a hindrance or bottleneck.

So yeah, a strike happening on US will probably mean outsourcing it to UK/Canada/Australia/etc.

@thefourfoldroot1 dude is it that hard to understand that "what you're worth" is decided by those who are going to pay them?
Do you think it's fair for a CEO to decide that actors should starve while they take home 20+ millions a year?
I really, really can't fathom this line of thinking.

@clvr For starters, AI is an insane misnomer. And it’s down to human nature more than anything that we see a tool and think of new and exciting ways to screw over our fellow man.

"98.32 per cent of the vote being in favour of a strike"

Damn the 1% at the top are really against it 😮‍💨

@LiamCroft While I do not know enough about the subject to have an opinion, I think saying that voice actor are the one that makes video game possible is a bit of a stretch…

Very few games are dependant on a specific voice actor and I think that while voice actor are part of the process they are a very small part of it. I don’t think that the last bayonetta or the next Mario (to name 2 of the biggest recent voice actor change that comes to mind) will sell any less copy because of the change in voice actor. A lot of games don’t use any voice actor and still make it pretty well. To be honest, while I appreciate their contribution, I can name very few of them and I never decide what game to play on wether or not a voice actor have a contribution to the project or not…

It’s pretty clear some people here have no respect for the craft of acting and just want more content to consume.

@clvr
It’s not that hard a line of thinking to be honest, nor in any way original. It’s basically supply and demand. Owners need to pay more when there is a lack of the available skill in the market because they are competing with others for staff, when the job is low skilled, and thus there is no shortage of available workers, the salaries do not need to increase. Sure, In theory, and owner could pay less than everybody else, but then they will have the worst workers, and not enough. It is not the case that what someone is worth is decided by those who pay them (Unless a monopoly situation, or where there is collusion between competitors in the same market) but rather by how rare their skillset is and how much of a contribution to profit they make for the company.

@QuietintheCorner essentially, they don't mind AI replacing people's jobs until it replaces theirs.

@Mikey856 that line of thinking really disgusts me.
I'd like to see what you would do if you were to lose your livelihood to greedy CEOs who rake in the millions and have to retrain for another job after spending all your life studying for it and then doing it.
Let's see if you're still willing to lick CEO boots then.

This has been enlightening. It's no wonder people are happy with games becoming digital only when you have people who are even more happy for whole aspects of games, whether voice acting, art, or even coding to be handled by AI. There is no respect for any original creative passion.

I do hope that everything goes well for the voice actors and they need not proceed with a strike, but in this world, I fully expect it to happen sooner rather than later.

@QuietintheCorner haha. EXACTLY!

@LiamCroft Imagine having a really cushy job that pays pretty good and still complaining. Imagine expecting people with real jobs, hard jobs that get paid next to nothing and then imagine expecting them to care all that much.

@thefourfoldroot1 "originality" says the guy spouting capitalist realism on me lol
Your points are so tired I don't even feel like rebutting them.
Let's just say I'll wait for you to tell me what invaluable skill CEOs like Bobby Kotick bring to the table that justify them earning 400+ times what their workers earn.
But I'm sure you'll keep spouting the same old "they made themselves", blah blah blah

@starbuck2212 imagine being so frustrated that everyone's life has to suck just because yours does.

@starbuck2212 I think it's funny how when someone has a job that someone else desires more than their own all of a sudden it's not a real job anymore.

@wiiware Baldur's Gate 3 isn't doing well with that argument. It's both. Games should have good stories and characters as well as gameplay.

@BrockSmith not likely. AI just can't fake emotion. They can't fake context, and they can't fake the originality of the delivery of those emotions. I guess a good example of this would be benedicta in ff16 after a major scene where she's faced with one of the games major plot elements. Or even Clive soon after that fight. The last of us at the start with Troy bakers performance. Each of those have extreme moments of pain, all presenting the same emotion of internal conflict, confusion, and sadness. Each displays them in a different way.

Ultimately an AI could be given everything it needs from a director that an actor would need and just fail at it. If you get a performance, it'll be a generic one, or worse a replicant that doesn't understand what it's copying.

That being said, I can't say I agree with their need to strike. If they aren't careful, it won't be ai they are competing with, but new talent.

@BrockSmith You should have started off with that. Some of the demands from what I know seem reasonable, but that's a much better argument than "moneybags" and doesn't just make you look petty. You have some good points in your second post.

We will see what happens.word up son

@Mikey856 what the actual **** does that even mean?
Seriously, I have no clue what you're getting at.

@Kidfried It's because people are bitter and jealous unfortunately. They see someone with a job and paycheck he/she wishes he/she had, and so it's decided it's not a real job anymore and doesn't deserve anything more since it already has more relatively.
It doesn't matter how risky the vocation is or how possible it is for your career to end because you can't find your next gig.

@starbuck2212 @BrockSmith So you're saying you want all of the people who make all of the characters you love and grow attachments to not get reasonable pay for the work they put into these huge blockbuster million selling titles and replace them with generic and soulless ai recreations and have more money fill the pockets of the already overpayed CEO's

@clvr
Did you mean to reply to me? I didn’t use the term “originality” so you likely meant to reply to someone else. I would suggest that, whoever you are debating with though, that you don’t say things like “that’s so tired I can’t be bothered to even explain how you are wrong” this sounds very weak.
On the off chance you were replying to me though, everything I said is common sense to people using reason and logic. No moral statements made.

And I won’t pretend to know what a CEO brings in terms of value. I’m not even close to that level of success (although I am willing to believe luck and nepotism helped a lot along the way).

Video game publishers/developers make bank when releasing games and leave a lot of the creative minds that grind to make the game possible in the background.

Voice actors are no different, spending countless long sessions to bring characters that we love to life, and the thing is, a lot of voice actors have to work separate jobs and do voice acting to make a living.

Voice actors deserve way better in, not just the video game industry, but every industry that has voice over work.

@Mikey856 Buddy factories put automated forms of production there because they do a simple binary motion over and over again. It's simple. Something that requires human context and thought to do simply doesn't apply. AI just takes existing works, jumbles them up to make something different, and people who just wanna consume product eat it up because they lost all of their brain cells to realize that if this happens, we're gonna get the same slop over and over again

@Jaz007 Chrono trigger and final fantasy 6 already has great story even in snes era, we don't need voice actor to have a good story for games.

Besides, I'm talking about voice actor, not story.

Love the first comments that pop up were union busting, pro AI comments! Gamers™ always stepping up to the plate!
In all seriousness, the game industry probably gets away with way more than the studios were getting away with in Hollywood. All of these strikes have been long overdue, I hope everyone gets what they want and of course, once everyone gets what they want, the studios, publishers, etc will still be making BILLIONS.
Everyone can win here, sadly one side has to fight for it like the game is on Give Me God of War difficulty.

Good voice acting does indeed enhance a game. And bad voice acting can almost ruin an otherwise good game.

I am curious about the voice actors’ group and what kind of numbers we’re talking about here. We all know a handful of famous voice actors (Troy Baker, Laura Bailey, Nolan North, etc, etc) but I don’t reckon it’s a very large group, at least compared to screen actors. And with voice acting, they often have a much less recognizable quality which could be more readily switched out (which I think a commenter alluded to above) as compared to media where the visual likeness is displayed. So I do wonder how well this negotiating will go, and it’s good to see the whole SAG-AFTRA helping them out. When it’s a group of 90% unknowns, then the game industry isn’t likely to feel as much pressure.

Yiiiikes some of the comments here.... Really illustrates the importance of unions

@wiiware I certainly buy it more for the gameplay but that does not mean I'm gonna accept terrible VAing. Especially with the recent one Ada Wong(Holy crap she is flat).

@starbuck2212 that's being lost to technology as well I lost my job as a cashier thanks to self checkout bright side is the store started loosing lots of money do to stealing and less customers cuz people don't always like technology

I know a lot of starving artists and actors. This might be the break they need. Go ahead and strike.

@Drago201 Same. I work in the automotive industry and A.I. and robots have been taking our jobs for years. No one cared then.

@naruball in the automotive industry where I work A.I. and robots have been taking out jobs for years. No one seemed to care then. Funny that.

reading the comments on here i wish people would educate themself more on this topic , anyways i hope this gets resolved soon , a lot of people in these industries deserve to get paid , and i don't think people realize how little they do get paid. this also wouldn't be good for gaming along with other forms of entertainment especially with all the delays over the years from covid and working from home.

@Th3solution You’re confusing main voice actors with the massive group of voices that play every single extra in games. Think about all the citizens in open world games, enemies with small lines and such. This is about their livelihoods. Same as how the writer and actor strikes are about the ones plugging away doing a job that can barely get by. A lot of the big actors threw their weight behind the strike but it was never about them.

@Nepp67 Yeah, I dont know if it's the va fault or capcom fault (telling her to go flat), but capcom need better voice for ada. The other characters are good though.

@wiiware I mean this genuinely but it is definitely the VAs fault. Literally listen to her death "screams" in death scene video. The only time she ever screams like she's dying is when you fail the drill section. When she's getting sliced in half by a chainsaw she screams like she is bored out of her mind.

I hope this doesn't bleed over to Voice Actors too, like with anime dubs. I'm not for or against something, just don't want to see delays with seasonal anime.

I don't know why game companies pay for PR services. They've got tons of people here in this comment section who will do the work for free.

@starbuck2212 that sucks but hasn't the automotive industry sucked since the company's kept moving labor overseas. Dang and u guys got robots taking over ***** that really sucks

I'll be sitting here, watching the keyboard warriors shout "I support the strike, got get 'em!" today, so that tomorrow they can come back to the comments section and whine that Jim Ryan sucks 'cause PlayStation hasn't released a single AAA game this year.

They're always ready to virtue signal, but never willing to pay the price.

We aren't sure how much the last strike impacted things since games take so long to complete...we may not this time, either, if it comes to that. Still, screw AI. That being said, I have a ton of backlog, so if it slows down this constant stream of releases, I'd be all for it to play some catch up. Quite a few game studios wouldn't be sidelined...so we'll just have to see how it all plays out. Hopefully it doesn't have to come to that, but...if it must, it must.

@nessisonett True. Playing FFXVI right now and there’s is a lot of voice actors in that game, for sure. And yeah, I also didn’t think about the fact that a lot of voice actors do both — screen acting and voice work. There is a lot of overlap. It behooves the entire acting community to all be on board. The numbers are probably a lot bigger than I initially thought.

@starbuck2212 I don't know about that. For what it's worth, you and every person losing their job due to AI or similar reasons have my sympathy. I think it's absolutely terrible.

@jorel262 personally, I'd rather see delays than know that people are being mistreated or are struggling financially because certain CEOs next some extra millions.

@naruball Thank you and I care too. I don't want any industry to fall because of A.I. and I think we all should earn more. We're all taken advantage of. I was just angry that no one cared when it was blue collar jobs.

@Nepp67 Her voice acting actually reminds me of this video somewhat

@naruball Yep. I don't want to see talent mistreated either, for the record.

@BrockSmith I doubt that'll happen. AI really isn't good enough to be able to replace the range of a genuine, authentic actor. That's to say nothing of motion capture. It'll be employed in some areas, probably, but VAs are always going to be a thing and I'm convinced that they're always going to outnumber AI at least 10 to 1.

@wiiware Ah yes, because there have been good silent movies I suppose movies don’t need actors who speak either, or books that have good stories, they don’t need voice actors either.
Yes, of course there have been good stories without VAs, but to say that the entirety of many games with their stories we have now wouldn’t be kinda ruined without voice acting or not hit half as hard would be disingenuous as the most charitable interpretation.

@Jaz007 I'm 100% sure that there are talented VA that's not in the union, that if the union strike video game company, that company just use VA that's not in the guild.