A reminder that the SAG-AFTRA videogame voice acting strike is STILL going on #performancematters

A reminder that the SAG-AFTRA videogame voice acting strike is STILL going on #performancematters

K. I care more about the code monkeys that worked harder and got paid less than these wannabe divas.

#bump

I completely forgot this exists. Are they making any progress?

That's pathetic.
I hope they realize that no one cares about them.

If they want a bonus they should have negotiated it in their contract.

Anyone can do Videogame Voice Acting

No, nothing is happening.

The union wants residuals but the games industry will never give them residuals.

The union really does not care about videogame voice actors or how the vidya fundamentally differs from the TV/film, but they feel they cannot be seen to be backing down. The games industry represents such a small amount of SAG-AFTRA's work that they feel they can just hold videogame VAs in limbo without resolving the issue for the principle of the thing.

I believe the games industry is simply moving onto using non-union actors instead.

>Anyone can do Videogame Voice Acting

This is how you get hentai tier dubs in video games

>Sign contract that states "Do VA, get paid this amount and fuck off"
>Complain when the game is a sucess
Christ, if they're going to complain they should get better contracts. It's not like people buy CoD for the story.

Quality control didn't suddenly disappear

You act like this isnt the norm

>hundreds of educated programmers work long hours for low pay to make games

>some diva who records a few minutes of lines over the course of an afternoon thinks they derserve more.

lol.

>hundreds of people that went to film school, learned video editing, sound production, make-up and costume direcion work long hours and low pay to make movies

>actors get paid millions playing pretend

4.5 million isn't too bad considering most VAs in CoD say less dialog than in an average anime episode.

As long as they're decent, I'm fine with that. Them getting royalties for every single work is ridiculous.

I'd say the comparison doesn't work since a lot of people will watch a movie because a certain actor is in it.

People buy movie tickets to see Brad Pitt.

No one buys a game to hear Nolan North.

Sucks for western VAs.
Nip VAs sell games.

What "performers" is this even talking about?

VAs and union mo-cap

>belittling people who are brave enough to risk their jobs for better pay and working conditions.

Americans truly deserve to be miserable with this backwards bootlicking mindset.

that's like 10k a line across the who francies

The "performers" probably spent at most 100 hours of delivering lines already written for them with someone else telling them exactly what to do.

A standard employee working a typical 40 hour work week on a 3 year development cycle will put in 6240 hours. That's 6240 hours of actually creating content and having your job actually depend on its success. And of course this doesn't count the unfortunate reality of crunch turning 40 hour weeks into 60 or even 80 for months.

I'm not trying to defend all the garbage studios pushing out shit for casuals and quick money, but I just cannot fucking respect these whiny little faggots complaining about how they don't get a bigger slice of the pie for contributing only such a small amount.

Also this

English dubs were a mistake.

>Other people work in shitty conditions with no job security so everyone else should too!

KEK

From what I remember, some of the things they were asking for were reasonable. But royalties, nah, that's just "game is making big bucks, I now want a bigger share"

>Anyone can do Videogame Voice Acting
There must be a BACK door somewhere. Let's try to find IT first. Shall we? JUSTAMOMENT!

Name some people in the company that are more important than voice actors

>the custodian who keeps the office clean

Voice acting in general was a mistake

Oh boy, I am going to enjoy the shit sandwich of voice acting that will be Mass Effect on top of the amazing animation.

western VA's are people they found on the street
nip VA's actually practice and go to lessons

voice actors are entirely interchangeable. soon we'll just have computer programs to do the same thing. Id say 0.03% is too much

When has voice acting ever been good?

>Programmers are too stupid/brainwashed into not deciding to Union up to have some basic worker rights in the games industry. Thus they are preyed upon by publishers.

>This is somehow the VA's fault.

Just because someone decides not to stand up for themselves doesn't mean someone who does is being selfish.

Still 450 million

They don't just want better pay, user.

Actually 4.5 million

I thought they were mainly looking to get better working conditions and terms when it comes to recording sessions? In order to not damage their chords or similar, I don't know.

Which is still alot of money. More than most people will ever own

The only major disagreement is over residuals, which the videogame industry refuses to negotiate over. The industry offered the union more than they asked for otherwise to try and avert a strike.

The only other real point of contention is releasing the game titles to VAs, which videogame publishers are incredibly reluctant to do because they know they will leak. The union doesn't get it because they come from the TV/film world, where the acting is late in the process and doesn't have the same culture of unannounced titles having unveilings. SAG-AFTRA proved they don't understand the difference by leaking quite a few unannounced games in their strike documentation (one was Telltale's GotG, but there were others too).

this is nothing without showing amount of hours of dialog recorded. I bet every game has barely a hour of narration, so there 12 main games, 4.5m for 12 hours of work is not bad, or even 24 hours.

well let's not pretend that money is divided evenly through a small amount of people

It's a bit weird to think about it but I don't see why VA's need to know what the game is going to be, assuming that it doesn't affect their performance. Them not getting any sort of guidance from their voice director is ridiculous and was one of the terms I fully defend. It's just the whole residuals that leaves a bad taste.

and they don't understand that by their nature, video game stories get changed all the time even at the last minute

like RE2, the whole game was changed 6 months before its release. RE4, which went at least 10 revisions. Last of Us went through many story and character revisions.

>risking the comfy work environments of voice acting
You do know that they aren't going through the harsh struggles of coal miners right?

Why don't they just actually act and get paid real money if they care so much?

No, the strike is pretty much solely about residuals.

SAG-AFTRA wants to include residuals as compensation option in the acting contract, so they can negotiate them as mandatory next time around.

The games industry has flat-out refused to include them. They don't want residuals in the contract. They fear it will open the door to the entire industry wanting royalties.

SAG-AFTRA doesn't really care or understand the videogames industry, which is really small potatoes for them (although growing). The union leaders don't see why the games industry is so against residuals, and seeing it as putting it on a par with TV/film, not really understanding the fundamental differences that mean they don't have the same leverage. It's also the merged unions first negation, before their big TV/film contract coming up and they don't want to be seen to back down.

That's the essence of the strike.

My guess is SAG-AFTRA will end up backing down on residuals after the TV/film shit is settled. The games industry will be de-facto non-union by then, so they will have shot their members in the foot but meh.

>first negation
*first negotiation

If coal miners have issue with their jobs than they can go on strike themselves, you don't shit on others for trying to improve their working conditions just because you perceive their job as "comfy" and easier than other jobs.

Its fucking work, what do you expect to do about it?

You can't just remove any aspects about it that count as work. Miners have mine no matter what.

No one cares about the campaigns in CoD. They spend all their money getting an actual actor to come in and shit out lines without care and that's all the casual audience cares about.

And you want more money because the FRANCHISE has sold a lot so far? What about new games? Should we just pay you less?

but it literally is easier that 50%+ of jobs out there

>call of duty VA
>"Ok now talk like a normal, slightly gruff human please"

Is it the lowest form of VA? Is voicing more unique characters more difficult? Lets say the Bloodborne voices for instance

Hi Hayter. How's your film director career coming along?

You made me read his post in hayters voice

Thank you senpai, now I'm reading them all is his delicious gravelly voice

no problemo.

>The only other real point of contention is releasing the game titles to VAs
Now that I think about it, I don't see why they couldn't compromise.
If a VA worked with a high-profile dev, they'd obviously want to put it in their resume to get other high-paying gigs. The compromise could be "Before a game's announcment, VA's can only say they worked with X dev on "internal name"". Like saying you worked on Project Beast with FromSoftware and only after announcement/release update to Bloodborne.
This industry can be too secretive at times and I don't get why. It's not like From isn't working on something as we discuss this. Having the internal name "Project Handkerchief" wouldn't matter.

They should be happy they get paid at all. some deeplearning text to speech is going to take their job in a year or two. There was a demo by Baidu like a week ago, it sounded like a real person.

I believe that's often how it works in practice, although many companies outsource their VA recording to external companies so it becomes further obfuscated to "Project X from VoiceActingCompany"

Just go and neck yourself already.

Reported :^)

Who said anyone was? People just want what they feel they're owed, voice actors still have to act this was never an argument about not doing your job and expecting money.
oh really? than please go try out for a VA job right now and see how far you get.

I don't give a shit. If you're not happy about your pay check, talk to your boss about it. Trying to rope me in won't work. Especially if a successful outcome for the VA won't change anything for me.
Will VA performance improve? Nope. Will they stop using the same 5 people? Nope.
In fact, I as the consumer will probably just have to pay up more for games to make up the difference.

It's against the rules to announce reports, ya dingus.

I'm curious as to how much Japanese VAs get paid, percentage-wise.

Couldn't we base dub rates off of that?

>wasting time in a VA job in this economy
nah nigger, you first

Miku is going to take your job.

You make it sound as if that's a bad thing?

I do think VA's in vidya are more interchangable than other industries. Think about it this way, if you hire Jack Black for VA, it's because you want Jack Black to talk and act like Jack Black.
Compare that to something like Batman Origins with Troy Baker as Joker doing a Mark Hamill impersonation. He's not hired because of some characteristic in his voice or personality. He's hired for doing decent variations in his work.

>waaaah VAs don't get paid
When in reality, the actual coders matter and VAs are a really common commodity.

>make funny voices for a living
>Expecting to be paid like real actors

What sort of bullshit is this?

Why should voice actors get paid more than someone who does art or code

>having to convey all of your acting without the use of body language and facial expressions.

Really think Bobby Kotick should get the bigger cut?

They should be paid more too. Industry has a lot of dead weight at the top. People who do all the fucking work never get anything more than crumbs.

>Industry has a lot of dead weight at the top. People who do all the fucking work never get anything more than crumbs
How is this different from companies in literally any other industry? That's just the way the world works

Yes he absolutely should get a bigger cut the voice actors should make less than min wage they could hire second rate rappers who could do better voices than ANY voice actor they all deserve ti fucking starve or get REAL jobs


Please assume I know what I'm talking about

Mostly just the US

of course. publishers have to take massive loans from various banks in order to finance making games, which they have to pay at an interest.

not only that, coordinating these money to various departments and whatever resources and with various marketing and x-deals and promotions. its a lot of hard work compared to speaking to a mic for a few hours

wanting Ashley Berch in every game instead

>mfw games that are light on voice acting tend to be better over all
Since when did reading become a bad thing?
Why are video games trying to mimic 2 hour movies when they could mimic novels and long form prose?

>Christ, if they're going to complain they should get better contracts.
That is literally what they're trying to achieve with the strike.

So that's why Ghost Recon's VAs are beyond terrible.

Do construction workers also deserve more money when they build house in a nice neighbor that sells for a bunch of money?

Construction workers would be like the programmers in your analogy.

VAs might be interior decorators or landscapers.

Fuck this just abolish money world wide and assign jobs 20 hours a week by law no more no less you tube and other stupid bullshit doesn't count infact ban all entertainment at all people should be focused on other things than pointless time wastes

So, when these VAs are on strike, does that mean that no one involved with SAG can do voice work or do they just choose not to work? I'm not too keen on how union strikes work.

No-one in the union can work for the companies they're striking.

nah, at best they're the movers that put furniture in place.

No one has any sympathy for them when they refuse to negotiate.

The had a bunch of reasonable demands and one absolutely unreasonable one, and when offered everything if they'd just drop that one they refused.

They were unable to justify that demand when asked publicly to do so.

Their union leaders are screwing them, and games are marching on without them as if nothing changed.

>Ashley Berch

This bitch was supposed to be on strike but I keep seeing her get announced for VA gigs

I'd care of voice actors knew how to act. When real actors who have no experience doing voice alone do a better job then something is wrong.

I don't really care about the pay or residuals or whatever, but more transparency is something from this strike that would actually be a big benefit. You're far more likely to get a good performance if the actor actually knows what the fuck they're working on.

She's a scab

thats still 4.5 million dollars and there were aall of what, like 100 voice actors including "screaming guy number 2" across all the titles? thats still a fuck tonne of money each after splitting it for just yelling jarhead shit into a mic.

There's no way to slice the residuals that make them really work.

Everyone thought it was the thing the union would drop to get the other things, but nope, they are dead serious about it...

When it comes to VA in video games, stage actors > voice actors >>>>>>>>>>> Hollywood actors

They have no leverage because there are a ton of people willing to break the strike for video games.

The union really wants to put games on a par with TV/film and I think they see it as the big test of the power of the merged union.

This shit is going to run, because they aren't going to get it. They don't understand the games industry.

Best case scenario is this shit is resolved after the TV/film contract shit is over but it could easily run for years.

why couldn't they just hire cheaper actors?

They have no leverage because no-one buys games for the actors or acting, so developers can easily use non-union actors instead without there being any real issues.

That's exactly what they're doing.

"Oh gosh, the main character in this game is voiced by Yuri Lowenthal, I have to buy it now!"

Said no one who ever lived.

>On par with TV/Film

That will never work. In TV and Film the actor's performance is the main product being sold. They are the meat of the experience.

In videogames however, voice actors are an extremely small part of the whole. You can easily have a great videogame with little to no voice acting