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SAG-AFTRA Gears Up For Possible Strike Against Video Game Industry As Board Approves Authorization Vote By Guild Membership
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FunkMiller
Member
You do know all those voices you hear in that game are actors, don't you?
It ain't Miyazaki putting on a load of accents.
StereoVsn
Gold Member
How is it tonede
Because Acting and VA compensation models were generally based on those residuals. That's more acute in TV/Movies of course.
Developer jobs are not based on that. Now, are developers in games fairly compensated? They would depend on the Studio and Publisher and that's a different conversation.
Astray
Member
Modernization that completely fucked Hollywood's profit margins and lead them to nickel and dime the performers and writers that are integral at making the product?
The way the subscription businesses are built is just terrible for everyone all around.
Because here they have a shot at getting a solid deal before the industry goes all in on subscription models.
Unlike the film and tv industries, the video game industry still relies on consumers buying games (both physical and digital).
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
I remain unconvinced that this is going to be the long-term direction the industry takes. The product, per release, is simply too expensive and time consuming to generate for it to survive the value destruction that the model brings. And I absolutely believe that its destructive in the sense that when you, the consumer, are presented with an endless stream of stuff that you mostly are luke-warm to cold about in terms of interest, your general level of enthusiasm doesn't grow - it shrinks.
There'll be a period of greater consumption initially when you take the "cream of the crop" in terms of what interests and excites you personally, but over time, as you get exposed increasingly to content that doesn't "stick"... you end up jaded and disinterested. It encourages cynicism in the product, not enthusiasm.
This is my point. Under that model, the type of residuals enjoyed by performers in movies and tv are entirely alien. Noone else is getting that sort of recompense, and especially not for contributions that are relatively small in terms of the overall success of each product. Actors "open" movies and TV shows, they don't impact games in anything like the same way.
Seriously, if they concede this to actors, then they have to extend it to writers and designers too on the same principles. And that, I assure you, is not going to happen.
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Kilau
Member
No need to use wildfire imagery so soon after the Maui disaster where they are still looking for victims.
ByWatterson
Member
It's similar to when an animated movie advertises the voice cast who showed up for two three hour sessions, but not the animators who worked for years.
On another note, I don't think people have truly processed that linear media, generally (TV, movies) is dying. It's happening slowly now, but later it will happen all at once, and the idea of acting as a large, prominent industry (which it has only been for about 90 years) will be a relic.
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StereoVsn
Gold Member
Oh damn, good point.
SportsFan581
Member
If we go through a period where it sounds like everyone is reading a script for the first time, we'll know why. Not that I care that much, even the best "acted" games typically come off as b-tier at best in comparison to TV and Film. LOL
I'm actually for AI voices but yeah why are people so aggressive against those fighting for their jobs.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
IMO writing isn't even that important. Most media has lousy writing. And for gaming, most games dont even rely on a story, or the story is so thin nobody cares. People just want to jump in shoot people or score goals. Just find a website that publicly shows hollywood scripts. Find your fav tv show or movie and read the lines. Its actually pretty mundane. You'll probably doze off.
But what makes dialogue, one liners and academy award winning scenes is more likely going to be due to the actor performing the scene or line. I love Married with Children and have read some online scripts. Absolutely 100% UNFUNNY. Have me do that scene and it'll be unfunny. But get Ed Oneill and Amanda Bearse bickering at each other and it's funny shit. Thats not writers credit. Thats actors and directors credit.
A lot of the shitty dialogue in games are due to shit voice actors. The content is likely not much different than a tv show or movie. After AI is given a few years to improve, use it for cheap and funnel that money to better voice actors.
ThisIsMyDog
Member
China would have long been a giant market for ambitious AAA games, there is one problem, it's a communist regime that censors everything. If China were a normal liberal country by now a huge part of the games released for PS/Xbox would have been from there and they would probably have their own domestic console.
delfrickintree
Banned
Yea I don't really believe you. Why do people read books if they aren't performed by the almighty Calculon ACTORS?
Now I dont want to get into the dynamics of hollywood vs gaming and what constitutes the essential roles, the topic is more about the industries being in peril due to economic and political turmoil. People are fighting to keep their jobs amidst a technological upheaval or a restructuring of infrastructure because of ideological motives. On the consumer end, the disenfranchisement is rampant and what used to be a form of escapism is now an vessel for pandering, insulting, and propagandizing. Nobody is in the mood for that shit when our paychecks are shrinking compared to cost of living, etc.
Ask why we should worship these distressed performers who are under this hilariously dramatic assault by self aware AI. It's not like anyone else matters and other industries havent suffered massive layoffs shutdowns outsourcing and you name it, over the past few decades. Nobody cares about them. Learn to code! All they while they have thrived in their lucrative lifestyles.
the_master
Member
It makes me sad to see so many gamers being so arrogant, entitled, and disrespectful to everyone involved in making games.
Just an overall comment
Just an overall comment
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Big difference is that books are 100s of pages of pure text and when it comes to fiction it can vary wildly what you get. But tv, movies and gaming are pretty predictable, the dialogue is awful, and the voice actors usually arent good either (although much better than the 90s and 2000s). what makes awesome tv, and movies and gaming cntent is often the actor doing it. Books have no narrators except your own mind.
If the overall writing/VO work isn't great to begin with (there is no way anyone can say gaming content is anything close to award winning content), then I dont see why companies trying out AI isn't worth doing. If it sucks, then nobody has anything to worry about. Right now, it's not even great. Some things are clever like cool images and the OT thread about cover songs, but the quality is shaky and anyone can already see issues (like all the pics where AI cant figure out that humans have 4 fingers and a thumb - and not 6 fingers or 5 fingers and no thumb.
Its really no different than any other job. Prove you're pretty good and you keep your job. Cant keep up with a program churning out bits and bytes and the employee loses.
It's not a dire situation because if tech was so rampant taking over everything in life, nobody would have a job except for IT guys making it and VPs running the company. Totally untrue. It's simply a reshuffling of roles. Its happened across time. Even going back to ancient Roman times there were probably blacksmiths selling shitty copper swords. Someone invents higher quality iron swords and suddenly anyone making copper shit just had their business model and job go down the drain. Thats just the way life and human progress work. Things advance. Anyone trying to hold onto their grassroots "I wanna keep my job with job security and higher pay doing it my way forever" is going to be a tough slog to do forever.
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ProtoByte
Weeb Underling
I'm not speaking in hyperbole. In the grand scheme of things/the larger picture, not everyone wants all of those things, but the conglomeration of everyone in the consumer market for games comes to all those things being what's ultimately demanded - this is for the caliber of games, I'm talking about. Let's be honest. That's what is most likely to sell the high numbers and to get the status. How it's always been and will always be.
On the back of that, no one wants the sausage to be made in a way that actually incentivizes its creation in the first place. That doesn't make sense.
Sleepwalker
Member
Armored core 6 would be fine if all the dialogue was text based only lol
twinspectre
Member
Behave, behave.
Hayabusa83
Banned
One thing I can say that I admire about the Ancient Romans, their disdain for actors.
Yeah its not like we devote money and more importantly our time to their products.... How entitled we are... Give me a break. Nobody is entitled to a profit for unsolicited passion products or poor products in general.
Yeah its not like we devote money and more importantly our time to their products.... How entitled we are... Give me a break. Nobody is entitled to a profit for unsolicited passion products or poor products in general.
cartman414
Member
A lot of VAs are advocates for both animators and game developers uniting for better deals.
cartman414
Member
It also comes down to the voice director, no matter the medium. A bad one will neglect to emphasize context among other important things, and you'll get be left with a bunch of voices talking at, instead of responding.
Ideally yes, but if there's a cheaper option that results in lesser yet still "acceptable" quality, that is also more likely to supercede the rival/existing model. (See: hall effect vs. potentiometer analogue sticks) All it takes is for AI to reach basic competency.
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StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
So true.
And if AI makes something that is good enough that's ok. If people accept it thats fine. Not everything in life has to be high end stuff made by hand. Most stuff in people's homes were probably made in India or China at a good price. If someone wants something more clever, domestically made and pricey, they can go that route too. But most people will buy something reasonable for a good price and call it a day. There's not that many elitist people in the world demanding the best. If so, there wouldnt even be Walmarts around.
It's like my $30 or $40 Black and Decker toaster. If I wanted to I could buy one of those $100 giant ones which can toast, cook and rotiseree a chicken in it. No doubt it's a better piece of gear, but a basic toaster oven with a metal tray is good enough.
Principal
Member
Even on the off-topic side the reactions are...interesting. People want AI replacement for the entire film industry just to spite Marvel, DC, and Star Wars.
Edit: Or they'll blindly stand against it all because a Purple website stands with it.
Spite-style decision making.
Craziest part is that they will complain only when all games become samey as the algorithm will calculate that this is whats best for mankind, or even worse, seems that they believe that once AI is strong enough to make full games that they can make their own games and that people will want to buy it when they themselves can create a game, aka making millions and millions of people unemployed and create a massive hassle on the economy... How can people be against others wanting more rights is baffling...
Principal
Member
Yeah what you don't realize is that you yourself wrote that there were tons of you, now in your new job it's only 4 people, that means more and more people are getting unemployed and that's not good.
Loomy
Banned
Not everyone can read, or read well. Also, reading text on screens is hard for some people.
Principal
Member
Yeah, seems very toxic to be so hyper aggressive towards people who don't want to be f'd over... It's a weird take.
Principal
Member
I call cap, If Armored Core 6 came out with 0 VA you'd question it, it'd be so out of place for a modern game, especially since you wouldn't want the gameplay to stop just for you to read a wall of text explaining context. OR rather you running around shooting people for no reason because you missed a text blurb mid combat.
Edit: Also yeah F everyone with dyslexia.
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Fake
Member
Wasn't Pokemon franchise not having VA for centuries and selling like no other game?
You can't get both ways.
Principal
Member
Problem was that the franchise was designed around that, once they introduced it it's hard to go back. Look at Zelda, no 3d Zelda will ever go back to 0 VA from here on out, that's the nature of evolution.
Now, the irony is that you could argue that Ai could be, but evolution is not meant to be detrimental to peoples livelyhood, that's not an evolution, it's a devolution.
Fake
Member
Don't make much sense your point. There is no nature of evolution, just some design choises. New IPs can start their journey being 'designed around' not having VA.
In fact, not every game need to have VA because this can increase the production cost, most of the companies aren't like Microsoft/Sony/Activision in question of money bugde.
The point here is, some companies get pass over some choises, while others don't. Nintendo games are famouns for not having VA, neither others language subs or acessibility options. This would require a lot of change in their games core design.
Principal
Member
Show my any game that had VA and chose to go none VA route and it went better (IF they stayed in the same perspective 3d to 3d and 2d to 2d)
Fake
Member
Star Fox.
Principal
Member
Aha, and when was the last Starfox game released again?
Fake
Member
You asked an example. Don't change the subject.
Principal
Member
Dude, the last Fox game was 2017, it was a cancelled nes game that they restored, its not a new game, aka it's not the evolution of the Starfox game, this is an old game restored, you haven't answered the question. I am sorry for asking that last question (Aha, and when was the last Starfox game released again?) that was dumb of me I agree! But you yourself never answered my quesiton. Starfox 2 is not a new game. And according to sales it did not do that well, otherwise we'd have a sequel but we aren't so...
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StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Not true at all.
Over time, every company I've worked at has increased head count. It's just that it's in different roles and departments. Out with the old, in with the new.
Also, that department of 4 people in my current company isnt the department I work in. I work in finance. Our department has literally doubled in size the past 10 years. But that CSR kind of department has shrunk. Sales, marketing and demand planning have increased as well.
I think the only department that has gotten smaller is CSR/orders.
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Principal
Member
This is a quote from yourself buddy "
My first job out of university (late 90s) I was an anlayst. There tons of us and the customer service team was giant. At that time everyone knew how to us a PC, but it was still kinda dodgy, Unix screens, not everyone had a cellphone yet etc... It was a lot of ragtag analysis our team did doing the best we could with Excel 97 and whatever shitty reports that green screen unix program we used did. The customer service/order team were almost an entire floor of people on the phone, processing fax orders, paper pushing etc....
Fast forward to now and the company I work at is bigger than that one. Our customer service/order team is 4 people and everything is automated best as possible. Its so little manual work, they work from home most of the time. No need for faxes, print outs etc.... And for my role, I still got to do reports for manual analysis, but we get automated dashboards and Power BI shit that does a lot of the stuff for us by the time we log in every morning. If youre a decent worker you'll be kept and paid well. If you arent a great worker, you'll be cut." So even you admit that LESS people get the job no, it's not good, considering we are more people today than in the late 90s.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
And where did I say the finance department has been downsized like CSR?
I can tell youve never worked in finance because the trend for decades is fewer junior grunt roles and more mid level analysts, senior roles and FP&A managers. With automation, you dont need those kinds of roles as much because IT can set up good ERP and database programs
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
And the next step in communication is AI.
Text boxes --> human voice actors --> AI voice acting.
the_master
Member
Yeah, what an effort I make when I get home, and the game I have been waiting for months, has just released.
I guess the time I put into playing the game gives me the right to shit on the developers, demand them to crunch or to lose their jobs. I just want to get a bit more excitement at any of their cost.
Din’t call me entitled
<\sarcasm>
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
It's already samey. And AI hasnt even contributed anything yet. Sequelitis at the hands of human creators. So it cant get any worse. Give AI a try and see where it goes. If AI sucks, then companies will junk it and gamers will avoid it. And if game makers are still afraid, then just prove to gamers and bosses their work is much better than AI and there will be nothing to worry about. I dont think plumbers or doctors or guys who clean swimming pools care about AI, so why do creatives worry?
Dont tell me their experienced creative brains cant outdo a bot?
FunkMiller
Member
What ‘woke’ concessions are SAG demanding from the film studios?
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FunkMiller
Member
It’s not a weird take if your entire opinion is warped by some idiotic political biases, and you have zero actual understanding of the issue itself.
I may be wrong but I heard they wanted mandatory race and gender identity "Quotas" before they will agree to work on any project.
Major Actors have had similar quotas in there contracts for years now but from what I hear it sounds like they want those same policies mandatory for all SAG actors.
Listen having representation here or there to remind people that certain individuals "belong" to our collective isnt nessessarily always bad but if its mandatory thats a whole other issue and policies like that have no place in artistic mediums.
FunkMiller
Member
You're wrong.
https://time.com/6294212/sag-aftra-actors-strike/
Where did you hear that shit about mandatory quotas?
I just read there offical 12 page demand list and unless I missed something you are correct it seems I am wrong...phew.
As far as where I saw the orginal white paper list Im not sure. It was weeks ago and looked very similar. All I can say is it wasnt on any rightwing, far right, extremist , or anti-woke sites since I dont visit any of that stuff. Maybe I saw it here hmmmm.....either way sounds like there demands for the most part of what I just read at first glance seem pretty reasonable.
Hayabusa83
Banned
You are ignoring the effort you spent working and saving enough money to buy the product.
I love gaming, and there are some developers I hold in more esteem than others. Nobody is above criticism. The reason why so many franchises are in the toilet is because of blind brand obedience and the inability to comprehend legitimate constructive criticism. I hate to see anybody lose their job, I really do; however, there are consequences for making a bad product. I love Volition for The Punisher and a couple other games, but they made their own bed tarnishing the legacy of one of their most treasured franchises.
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Geomancer86
Member
Imagine if the current video game industry was something like "hey, we need to implement pathfinding, call Dijkstra LLC and tell them to licence us their algorithms"... that wouldn't work... I don't see why actors want to be paid perpetually for their job on a game when the actual developers aren't...