"SAG-AFTRA is standing up to tyranny on behalf of its members,” stated president Fran Drescher.
Good
We already have strong indications of companies like Ubi using AI models based on past performers. And stuff like Tomb Raider/Lara Croft is downright famous for how much they model her appearance off actresses (sometimes the mocap actress, sometimes just a random attractive one). And its worth remembering that the big attempt at “a virtual actress” was from a Final Fantasy movie. Hell, the rumor has been that most of Martinet’s Mario lines were recorded decades ago.
Plus, as much as I love Warframe and DE, it has always been more than a bit sketch how many characters are voiced by non-union employees of the company (and, bottom dollar, Space Mom going out for a pack of smokes for a few years was worries that Reb would leave). And they are not at all out of the ordinary in that.
So yeah. Video games should fucking respect the unions
And for people thinking nothing will happen (like last time) because the vast majority of game dev can be done without the VAs or even the motion capping done?
Take a look at the SAG strike. A24 and the like “rolled over” almost instantly and are largely operating like nothing has changed. Expect the vast majority of indie and “small studio” productions to do so. It means higher cost per game, but the SAG rates are nothing compared to the rest of game dev. And then it gives them a significant advantage.
Whereas the big studios? Rockstar are nearing formal announcement on GTA6. Can’t do that if your talent is refusing to record lines and the like (not to mention the rumors (?) that they blacklisted the hell out of Nico Bellic’s VA after he dared to ask for more money). And you can bet that Sony are trying to find ways to get the TLOU show crowd playing games (although I totally expect Troy Baker to scab the fuck out of things).
Curious. Does this strangely help game devs avoid crunch? If the stories and acting can’t be completed, does that buy them more time to just make the gameplay?
It depends.
If the game is already cast and VO/performance hasn’t been entirely recorded yet, then yes, it will grind production to a halt.
If the game hasn’t been cast yet, some studios might decide to go record VO in the UK instead. Typically that leads to lower quality unless the cast needs to be British. The American voice actor pool in the UK is much smaller than the U.S. for obvious reasons, and that leads to much lower quality of performance.
So basically, it will slow down productions if they don’t have the option to go to the UK instead. For everything else, it depends how badly a studio wants to release within the given time frame, but there are options.
No. Not unless devs unionize. More time to make the game doesn’t mean less crunch, it’ll usually mean more crunch as crunch used to be a month or so before release and is now just the entire time a game is in production. So a longer production just means more crunch.
Crunch is a worker power problem, it’s companies taking advantage of the power they have over workers who can’t individually refuse.
