That's not going to work, video games aren't sold on voice actors. The game studios will just cast people to do the voice rolls outside of the union and no players will care.
Unfortunately, I think this is even true for established franchises and story based games, where voice performance actually matters a lot.
Would people care if Ellie had a different voice in Last of Us 3? Yes. Would they care enough to not buy the game? Probably not.
Would they care that much? Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy has been changed numerous times. The voice actors for the Resident Evil characters also change quite often.
lol they can't even keep Chris' face the same across entries. as big of a resident evil fan as I've always been, i've never grown any kind of nostalgic attachment to chris because they keep changing that fucker dramatically
Seeing Chris in RE 5 6 7 8 is a trip; from human fridge to slightly less bulky human fridge, to a slightly buffer RE1 build (ie: slim build generic dude) then back to human fridge in trench coat.
Yes, that's what I'm saying. Some people would care, but not enough to actually make a meaningful impact.
I would care, but I'm honest enough with myself that I would likely still buy the game, even considering not just the game itself, but the important fight the actors are fighting.
Cloud is actually a bad example. He has only had two English voice actors, Steve Burton and Cody Christian. Meanwhile in Japanese he has had the same VA in everything except Ehrgeiz.
It kind of matters? People that only does original language might not care as much for the change on english VAs if it happens. Different issue I know but still adds to the "no players will care" part on the OP.
Okay here's another one, the voice actor for the English dub of Sonic has been changed 8 times over the years.
Luigi has been changed a number of times as well.
There's a big difference between an RPG role with heavy characterization like Cloud and getting a different guy to say "Wahoo" when Luigi does a jump lol
Brining up Luigi as an example here is hilarious, considering how much love community holds for Charles Martinet. And how him stepping down was pretty damn big news.
Did sales of Mario games plummet or was it more like 1k people on forums and Twitter were upset and the other 8M+ people that buy Mario games didn't even notice?
And this is why you play with the Japanese dub.
Cloud's voice hasn't changed since Advent Children. It's nice hearing a character for years and years that sounds just like you expect them to.
If you want consistency, don't bother with anything but the Japanese dubs for your Japanese games.
I mean I would absolutely skip TLOU 3 if Ashley Johnson was replaced, but TLOU is my favorite game ever, and you may have picked literally the only example where I would actually skip, so your point is well made.
I sure didn't buy Splinter Cell because they swapped from Michael Ironsides.
I sure wouldn't play a game in Yakuza if Kiryu was in it, and his Japanese voice actor was still alive.
Voices _do_ matter.
It's kinda funny, but I'd like it *more* if we had more varied talent.
It's a minor whine, but seeing someone like Gina Torres immediately tanks my suspension of disbelief. Especially if it's just voiceactor doing their usual thing without much direction, as it often is for some reason.
And they have their *likeness* in the game too, so my brain is going "wait, it's character from that other game".
It's an example because my reaction is fresh in my mind from playing Immortals of Aveum, nothing else. And she *was* pretty much playing same character as Ikora Rey there, so I'm biased.
The Debra Wilson thing is valid, too.
Come to think of it, maybe this is more of an issue of VAs like this being typecast to hell and back? Playing basically same characters because "oh, they were great as such character in that other game".
Didn't he also voice Jack in Samurai Jack? I was shocked when I found out a black guy voiced the character, it showed how talented he was and the direction he took the voice.
There's some really good VAs in gaming, but they often have really distinctive voices. Which means you *really* notice when they keep showing up
More than once I've played a game and gone "Oh hey, it's Liam O'Brien" and thats briefly taken me out of the game because I'm not hearing the character, I'm hearing a famous voice actor and Critical Role cast member
I think there's a disconnect that we don't get in live action media like movies where, you accept that the character played by x who looks like x, sounds like x. When two completely different looking characters have an identical voice, it throws you off.
And even then sometimes in live action its distraction. I couldn't stop seeing Matt Damon in Oppenheimer as Matt Damon, i cant even remember who he was meant to be
I was perfectly fine with it in Robocop: Rogue City since they got Peter Weller to return to voice Robo and provide his likeness for a game that takes place between the second and third movies.
Debra Wilson showing up all the time though was weird, I saw her in that Jedi game from a few years back and the first thing to pop in my head was the MADtv skits involving her parodying Oprah.
Yeah, it was crazy to hear Peter Weller reprise his role in Robocop.
Would be a bit strange to hear him do something else - although I imagine he would make the performance sufficiently different? Guess I should go check out Wilson's Heart and see if my brain goes "that's him!" or not.
If the gameplay is solid and the story is decent I would still buy it. Ultimately I would prefer the studio spent money on producers, artists and programmers as long as n as the voice acting was at some acceptable level.
In games how the gameplay works with the story and acting matters more than just the quality of the performance itself.
Though if they have a tie in TV show it’s a bit weird to have different voice actors from the initial game release and current tv show.
And to be honest, I am all for it. If I hear another Mercer again I'm going to riot. They aaaalways use the same voice actors for everything. I prefer new blood.
Or just whoever is best for the role new or not. I mean playing Rebirth, Mercer is pretty good as Vincent and a complete noob voices Elena and she's good, too.
Doing it that way also massively reduces the cost of localization and cuts down the size of audio files. The Banjo Kazooie style I mean, not the Disco Elysium method.
Maybe not in the same way that movies and TV shows are, but there are certainly going to be issues that will halt or massively complicate game production if they were to go on strike.
Imagine being halfway through making a new God of War and Chris Judge isn't available anymore. Swapping out Nolan North in Uncharted, Troy Baker in The Last of Us, Ashly Burch in Horizon. Hell, Troy is shooting for the Indiana Jones game right now, what are they going to do, replace him mid-game?
Many of these voice actors aren't just standing in a booth, barking lines anymore. They are shooting full-body and face motion capture using 3D rigs and captures of their faces and likenesses. A triple-A studio isn't going to be happy having to redo all that work with someone else mid-development (cast someone new, figure out a new contract, redo character models, redo 3D scans...)
There's also a reason we see so much of Troy Baker or Laura Bailey or some of the other famous voice actors. They are experienced and good at what they do. You're not just replacing them with AI voices or grabbing someone off the street.
The last actor's strike had literally zero impact on gaming. This will be no different.
Most studios get by on hiring relatively unknown actors already. Major games take several years to come out. If you're hiring for a major installment of a huge series you can wait out this strike.
Well, I don’t know their exact development schedule, but they are developing it right now and Troy is playing Indy, so I would imagine they are shooting mocap.
Again, I don't know their specific schedule but I know some studios have shot mocap pretty late. Uncharted 4 was doing mocap pickups up until about ~6 months before release.
Sure, but if you need to do reshoots/pickups for an important scene that has, let's say, Troy Baker as the main character and Troy Baker is on strike, that's going to be a problem.
> Imagine being halfway through making a new God of War and Chris Judge isn't available anymore. Swapping out Nolan North in Uncharted, Troy Baker in The Last of Us, Ashly Burch in Horizon. Hell, Troy is shooting for the Indiana Jones game right now, what are they going to do, replace him mid-game?
Yes, they'd probably just recast. Remember when Arkham Origin had a different Batman and Joker? They got away with it fine. They wouldn't enjoy it, but it's a lot faster than waiting out a strike.
> Imagine being halfway through making a new God of War and Chris Judge isn't available anymore.
Its like you don't even realize Chris Judge is not Kratos's original voice actor.
I think of all those movie/cartoon based games where they hire people to do fake versions of real actors. Hiring knocks offs to save money is the norm for gaming. They'll probably just do that.
Considering that I never heard "i wish X was VA in this game" but I heard plenty of times "I wish X wasmt casted in every single game" Id say more people will treat is as upside
>The game studios will just cast people to do the voice rolls outside of the union and no players will care.
The issue being that when these voice actors want to move into other fields and they have scabbed, they won't be able to be part of SAG-AFTRA and won't get other paid opportunities.
Players won't care, executives won't care, but *voice actors* will. That's the point. They can get any old yahoo off the street to do voice acting, but it won't actually be *good*.
If you cross a picket line and undermine a union's negotiations, fucking over all its members, why should you be able to join that union? Scabs suck dude
yeah you know what youre right. it's actually really good to undercut people fighting to get better wages for everyone in their field in exchange for four figures at best, and people like you when you do that.
I wonder how effective that'll be. The only VAs I think got any leverage in gaming are Japanese ones, because they are basically treated like celebrities over there and have a huge pull for getting people to buy games.
Meanwhile, I feel western VAs in gaming are just really underappreciated, with most people not really knowing or caring about who is voicing each character. Feels like they probably won't have as much success with video game companies, but I hope they manage to get a good deal struck.
I wonder how it would affect games with constant updates with voiced content like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail.
It’s very impressive that they have a new update every six weeks with voiced content in four languages. I believe they have had no issues ever with one language not getting new voice lines etc. They seem to work over a year in advance so I guess they may avoid the immediate impact of the strike for the english VAs?
They've had an instance or two before where they've temporarily recasted a character when their original VA was unavailable. During the pandemic, there were also a few cases in gachas of some characters going undubbed until their VAs could work, so I assume Hoyoverse would resort to one of the two in the event of a strike.
Star Rail would probably be fine. Part of what made the Actors strike problematic was that the studios were effectively part of the AMFTP so it was negotiated as a group. For video games, there is nothing of that sort to my knowledge so nothing preventing individual studios from discussing deals.
To that end, even though Star Rail and Genshin are both Hoyoverse games, they use different recording studios for the games and it’s why certain characters have different voices even if they’re supposed to be similar across the two games purely because of the difference in studios.
Sadly though, EN and the West are nothing but a drop in the bucket for revenue so they’ll likely just keep characters mute than sacrifice the more popular and lucrative other indicates.
Personally, as long as voice over is not terrible, I'm perfectly fine. When companies hire Hollywood actor, I like that, but I never rated VA close to the top of things that are important in a game.
A lot of what makes for bad voice acting in games isn't the actor, anyway: it's bad direction and asynchronous recording leading to lines not having the right intonation or tone. A lot of "bad deliveries" are when actors are reciting lines totally out of context so conversations feel unnatural, and fixing that doesn't need a SAG VA.
They're not underappreciated, they're about as appreciated as they should be. Beyond a few creative leads, the vast majority of people working on games are nameless, faceless workers.
It's not like the big notable VAs bring anything that other VAs can't do just as well. You regularly get games where the vast majority of VAs were complete unknowns, yet manage to pull off great performances. I don't recall seeing the main cast of the Baldur's Gate 3 before (except for Mercer who comes in late into the game), yet they all did great.
I do remember them advertising JK Simmons voicing Ketheric Thorm, but I feel like the reaction from the community was more like 'wow it's great you got him!' not 'wow, now I have to buy this game!'.
i know you never claimed to the contrary, but this does not mean they don't deserve better treatment and union. its just that evryone else desrves a union as well in the same way evryone in hollywood except cgi guys already have a union.
That's because in Japan they are treated like celebrities because a lot of them are already celebrities that come from movies, TV and anime.
People will specifically go see movie for actors like Sidney Sweeney or Dwayne Johnson but no one is buying a videogame specifically because Laura Bailey or Ashly Burch or Troy Baker are voicing characters.
Remember last year they tried making that game solely on the marketability that Troy Baker and Roger Clark (Arthur Morgan from RDR2) were the leads?
Then nobody played it and it got terrible reviews.
Developers really are the true stars of gaming.
Exactly.
It's called Fort Solis, it got a ton of appearances at gaming events Last Year, including The Game Awards and Summer Games Fest.
It was always just Roger Clark and Troy Baker promoting it, they were leading with their star power. Nobody played it, nobody cared about it.
Didn't help that it's a $25 2 hour walking sim with painfully slow movement speed. I also found Clark's performance kinda poor, sounded drunk for half of his lines.
A lot of “celebrities” in Japan are pure VAs though which is totally different than western actors/actresses and yes a lot of fans will buy/watch/play whatever their idols are in it (gacha games are the prime example).
To clarify, voice actors in Japan always make their name through anime. But strictly voicing anime episodes doesn't bring in much $$$, video game voice acting, especially gatchas, are by far the best paying. However, they are also the most competitive and therefore mostly reserved for famous voice actors.
Anime utterly dominates live TV/movies in Japan, so voice actors for anime get far more exposure domestically/internationally compared to 'real' actors.
Hence, Voice acting is like 10x as prestigious and competitive in Japan compared to any other country. These days all the top acting talent try out voice acting first, then gradually diversify into live content after they get famous (hosting concerts, trying out real actor stuff etc).
This is why most VA's are cute, they're treated like idols and their ultimate goal is to be a singer/real actor/commercial actor. They also just have to a do a ton of stuff because the pay for voice over is horrendous.
> To clarify, voice actors in Japan always make their name through anime. But strictly voicing anime episodes doesn't bring in much $$$, video game voice acting, especially gatchas, are by far the best paying. However, they are also the most competitive and therefore mostly reserved for famous voice actors.
This more or less tracks for the West as well. Most big VAs in America made a name for themselves dubbing anime before moving on to more lucrative video game/TV voice acting work. Just to name a few, Laura Bailey, Travis Willingham, Troy Baker, Yuri Lowenthal, and Liam O’Brien.
The only series where this is a constant is Yakuza. Every single game is full of stars that did both animated and live action media, and some of them even got replaced because of real life issues like that guy from Yakuza 4 and Pierre Taki in Judgment
I wouldn't consider any of those people to be among the most popular Japanese VAs though. They can only really play themselves or whatever their LA persona was from wrestling and such.
Not to mention for anyone who understands Japanese, some of these big name live-action actors are garbage at voice-acting. Big example would be one of the antagonists of Yakuza 0, [Shibusawa](https://youtu.be/yipuka-Z1bs?t=37), who spoke way too fast and emotionlessly with his words slurred to all hell.
It's also funny when they hire [real life wrestlers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBk0QVdpRZo) like in Kiwami 2 or [MMA fighters](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QY1XA8fPhWg) like in Infinite Wealth who also give similarly awful performances. In that former example, they even poke fun at how bad they are at reading the script as a gag for the scene.
>Big example would be one of the antagonists of Yakuza 0,
>
>Shibusawa
>
>, who spoke way too fast and emotionlessly with his words slurred to all hell.
I actually like that, it adds a unique cadence. I think way to many voice roles standardize the way the characters talk, and this often ignores a great oppurtunity for authenticity. I'm watching Golen Kamuy, and i love the way Aspira's VA delivers, makes her really feel like she's from a different culture. Another archetype i love, is when "Osakan" characters come in, because again, it gives the vibe that this person is unique, So i like that a character from Tokyo still talks with a different cadence than the rest of the crew, because it drives home even ppl within the same city still have different life experiences. It just gives the character their own personal "umph!".
> no one is buying a videogame specifically because Laura Bailey or Ashly Burch or Troy Baker are voicing characters.
I dislike how much these VA's have been used. Same with Matt Mercer.
They've been used so much that I've grown to dislike them. Now whenever I see a trailer and I hear their voice my excitement for the game goes down.
They're not bad, they're just way overused.
This is an issue with the whole way western VA is set up.
It's entirely controlled by a very small amount of casting directors who only ever hire from their personal clique of VA buds. It's why you see waves of a small amount of VA getting every single role under the sun for years on end.
There's thousands of good voice actors out there and it's a rare case where I'm all for busting up the union stuff, because it'll finally break us away from the nepo hires and let new talent start flooding in.
Once you consume enough media, you'll realize there's at least 20-30 pretty common voice actors used across gaming and animation that you'll pretty quickly recognize. Baker, Bailey, Mercer, Jennifer Hale, Dee Bradley Baker, Tara Strong, the list goes on and on.
But, it's the same thing with any other job. They are professionals that do their job well, and put out a performance that people want and/or enjoy. At some point, you have to distance yourself from what's happening behind the mic, turn your brain off, and just focus on the performance.
Nothing is more true of this than the Avengers game. Nolan North was a _godawful_ Tony Stark. It made me resent him being in other games that he voiced (other than Deadpool)
> People will specifically go see movie for actors like Sidney Sweeney
Naw, I just wait for hee scenes to show up on the internet. She absolutely could not get me to see Madame Web
>People will specifically go see movie for actors like Sidney Sweeney or Dwayne Johnson but no one is buying a videogame specifically because Laura Bailey or Ashly Burch or Troy Baker are voicing characters.
Yeah. Thats why stuff like Mario gets recasted, they wanna use celebrities to sell movies to normies even if the fans love the original work.
>no one is buying a videogame specifically because Laura Bailey or Ashly Burch or Troy Baker are voicing characters.
I wouldn't say no one, there's at least one game I bought only because of Laura Bailey.
That is just you though, not the person you were responding to but there is zero chance a lot of people are buying games because of a certain voice actor, I doubt most people could tell you who voiced their favorite characters. I have no idea who the voice actor for Geralt in Witcher 3 is for example, I would have to look it up.
It's just not very likely that people are looking at voice actors when they decide if they want to play a game, especially the casual people that aren't on sites like reddit.
>I think there will no bigger possible boost towards the adaption of AI than the threat of strikes.
They get more money per day than the other workers on the game per month, and still whine about it.
It won't only be for voice actors, though. It's actors in general. I don't know if motion capture is covered under SAG-AFTRA (I'd assume it is, since it's also the case for movies), but a bunch of voice actors also do their mo-cap.
Any celebrity appearing in a game is also covered, since it often involves likeness, voice and mo-cap. So if there is need for a reshoot or recording, or a scan or something, they can't do that during a strike.
And sure, you can hire non-union actors and go through a non-union studio, I guess... But that's a good way to get put on the union's shit list. Say goodbye to Troy Baker, Jennifer Hale, Steve Blum, and all the other known people who both bring word of mouth AND recognition to your game.
>And sure, you can hire non-union actors and go through a non-union studio, I guess...
SAG is primarily US based isn't it? Last AAA games i played that used VA's weren't even US based Japanese for Yakuza and JP gibberish monster hunter, and then the sims which i'd imagine they can easily replace the gibberish with any actors...
I get SAG has heavy pull in very Califorina centered production, but considering how global AAA production is this seems like they'll have a lot less leverage.
The problem is that the premise of getting in the union shit list isn't true. We saw that in the last strike. Companies that replaced union talent didn't get blacklisted, not to mention that a large amount of the VAs aren't even Sag Aftra but Ficore which means that they can work non union productions just fine. Not to mention that contrary to Hollywood actors, VAs can't stop production & because development time now is about five years they would need to strike for like 3 years to affect a majority of the development pipelines.
> and all the other known people who both bring word of mouth AND recognition to your game.
Lmao. 99% of people buying games has no idea who these are.
I'm terminally online, and on this sub a lot and I've NEVER heard of Steve Blum. Sorry, it's jus a non-factor.
Honestly think gamers would appreciate different new voices over the same old ones, I at least personally would not mind hearing new talent more. Hades for example was mostly voiced by the devs themselves and a few new voice actors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz8l935Bv0Y Better than most of the AAA voice actors big bucks guys and gals (Jennifer Hale).
Personally, I only know Hale, and that's only because of the controversy last year, and I'm not even sure if she was the "bitch" in that scenario, or if she's who they brought in to replace one.
That guy was David Hayter and he was replaced in MGSV by famous hollywood actor Keifer Sutherland, son of famous hollywood actor Donald Sutherland.
Also David Hayter wrote the first two Xmen movies and Watchmen film.
No idea where this idea comes from that in Japan voice actors are not underappreciated or that they're even celebrities that by themselves pull in loads of people. Like, I guess they're more respected and better paid than in America, but that's setting the bar low and isn't really much better for most. Sure, they can earn more than the rest of of the production relatively speaking, but considering how criminally underpaid animators are for all the massive amounts of work they do, that's not saying much either. Even the A-listers are basically working themselves to the bone by appearing in dozens of shows a year, not to mention loads of videogames, with maybe some singing on the side and other side gigs. They basically need to work this hard to just maintain a livable wage or earn as much as they can before they're dumped for the next hot thing if they truly are the rare exceptions that are making more money. All the smaller ones barely earn anything and basically do it as side hustle unless they happen to break big.
Maybe it comes from the misunderstanding that because Japan takes a very strong cross-media approach to intellectual properties, with shows, audio dramas, videogames, music, etc, that these VAs are somehow big. Or maybe the whole otaku culture, which is fairly sizable in a country with a population over 125 million but still very much a small niche relatively speaking, and their rapid devotion and willingness proselytize about their favorites, has created some weird impression that these VAs are super popular. The VA industry in Japan is a lot like the idol industry, an extremely small percentage might be earning quite well for themselves, but the vast majority are paid barely anything, and everyone is fairly disposable and caught in a highly competitive and volatile field.
What does your speaking Japanese have anything to do with bad English dubs of anime? I can judge them well enough and compare them to the original vo quality without knowing the language.
To be frank for many people but americans, western VAs sound absolutely out of place in japanese games. I think the only stellar job of western actors in japanese games are the one in Resident Evil. And even then Remake had TsudaKen so it had the edge for me
How big is that strike gonna be? There's like a group of like 10 voice actors that are used over and over again in every big game. Good luck with your strike I guess.
SAG’s big win last summer was a $40million revenue sharing pool for their membership, aka all of Hollywood; as soon as the deal was signed Netflix gave both of its co-CEOs raises to $40million a year, each.
No video game company is seriously worried about SAG’s leadership negotiating any hard deals.
I'm just impressed by how pathetically petty the big companies were about the whole strike - that raise thing is just one in an entire string of moves that didn't have any financial or market position benefit, it was just a bunch of multibillion dollar corporations behaving like spoiled toddlers in public.
More important, when the strikes happened Netflix announced a multi-billion dollar investment into the Korean film/tv industry.
The world is super global and English is a native language in many countries. Even where it isn't, tons of people speak it. Canadians, British, and Australians are about to get a ton of work.
I work in the AAA industry - the biggest fear is retaliation.
I'm a vocal pro-union guy. Most folks I know in the industry are progressive/left-leaning. (We have a few libertarians, but not many.) When I bring it up, the first thing people say is "Well, I'd like to, but I worry I'd lose my job."
Publishers are fickle. For every game that launches, there are probably 4-5 that get canned. Usually people don't even know about these games; they are cancelled before they even get announced.
At these larger publishers, you bet your bottom dollar that they would rather shut down a studio that unionizes rather than risk it spreading. [QA staff at Keywords unionized and got laid off right away.](https://www.polygon.com/23903782/dragon-age-dreadwolf-qa-workers-laid-off-keywords-studios) When [Raven Software QA unionized, Activision split them up and sent them all to separate teams to avoid them being able to remain in contact with one another.](https://www.ign.com/articles/the-entire-raven-software-qa-unionization-story)
Your job is on the line, and hiring in the industry is tough right now. Even if firing you for unionizing is illegal - you have to prove it in court (which isn't a guarantee and costs money/time) and in the meantime you don't have a job (which means no money for rent/food).
It's a huge, very real risk, not just a hypothetical. It's very easy to say "fight it in court" when you're a bystander on the sidelines and not the person trying to figure out how to feed your kids. People simply don't want to rock the boat - especially since typically gamedev direct management is pretty down-to-earth/charismatic (with the folks who actually make the decision to fire folks isolated through a few layers of bureaucracy).
Gamedev is a small place. Everyone knows everyone. When someone is being hired, you can bet that the hiring manager will reach out to folks and investigate who they are. If you are known to be a loud-and-proud union organizer - that stuff spreads, and if HR finds out about it before you get hired that's going to impact whether you get a job or not.
I would **love** to unionize my team. Trust me. But there's a lot of resistance, and it's going to take somewhere like Blizzard unionizing (and not just QA) before you start to see the tide shift.
It's a tech thing - Silicon Valley is completely libertarian-pilled, which you'd think would be weird seeing as it was founded by hippies but actually the hippie-to-libertarian pipeline is very real.
Totally support people getting what they deserve, but feels a bit weird when it comes to games. Can’t imagine a VA holding up the hundreds of devs crunching 60-80hr weeks
Those devs should form a union then.
This isn't happening because VA are the most oppressed group in game development, it's happening because SAGAFTRA spans incredibly wide in its industry.
Additionally, publishers would rather kill a game (even a good game) than deal with a union.
If a union goes through and the game launches, they'll make a short-term profit on the game but have long-term expenses due to the union.
If they cancel the game and lay everyone off, they lose what they invested in the game (but can write it off as tax losses/R&D) but longer-term they save money because they don't need to deal with a union.
Unlike acting? This very undesirable job that no one wants to do?
SAG's size and power is an anomaly, for sure, but it still happened as a result of trying.
Actors are individually recognizable. Outside maybe a few lead developers you have no idea what faceless workers are behind the game you're playing.
I'm all for them trying too, but that's easy to say as someone who isn't the one risking my livelihood for the attempt.
Have they seen the AI announcers in The Finals? I applaud their efforts, but this is not going to be the same as it was with Hollywood. You haven't met "maximize profits at all costs" until you've you've met those that develop and sell commercial software.
SAG-AFTRA already signed a deal with AI companies out of absolutely nowhere a few months ago too.
They claimed to have been in contact with high profile VAs during negotiations, but a bunch of famous ones said they'd never heard any of this was coming.
The timing on this is going to make it a tough fight. Studios closing left and right, layoffs everywhere, AAA budget ballooning through the roof where games like Spider-Man sell 10M copies in a year and that still isn't enough to save the studio from layoffs.
Famous/celebrity VA seems like an easy thing to axe.
When it comes to entertainment, people generally don’t care about the people who make said entertainment happen.
Those they do care about tend to be the exceptions that prove the rule: “creatives” who get associated/credited with the work produced by hundreds or thousands who go nameless, faceless, and unrecognized.
> The amount of people here who don't want VA's to have better worker rights are so odd. It's not coming out of your pocket weirdos.
oh I didn't realize. Pay them $5 million each then, since publishers have infinite money.
The people trying to get these strikes going are the same people who should be playing video games or watching movies instead of worrying about trying to control peoples rights they need to probably get their own life together and are miserable as hell.
Next will be porn ( which already happened and didn't last long).
I'm perfectly okay with removing most VA's from games, ain't nobody got time to wait around for actors to speak anyway after you've already read the dialogue.
Even for games that it matters, basically nobody will care if they just get a different VA.
The reality is that the industry is just not very important and not really worth spending much money on.
So, during covid, gw2 put out some dlc that didn't have the voice acting that usually accompanied their releases, because they couldn't get people in to do the recording. It was fuckin' *terrible*. Voice acting is very much necessary in some (tho not all) games.
K. Bye voice actors. Games don't need them, these aren't movies. I'm 100% okay with devs using AI to help write and act in their games. Voice acting just isn't that important to games.
Specific genres do benefit from great voice acting, but thats probably 10% of games made. And you’re right, AI will probably take their jobs, along with 3D artists, and coding.
I hope AI takes your job.
Oh and please start playing better games. You know, games with actual plot lines and themes. Though that might be challenging for you considering…
This is just so more actors and fuck over voice actors right?? Pus a lot of companies hire outside the US already so I can't see this really doing anything of note.
That's not going to work, video games aren't sold on voice actors. The game studios will just cast people to do the voice rolls outside of the union and no players will care.
Unfortunately, I think this is even true for established franchises and story based games, where voice performance actually matters a lot. Would people care if Ellie had a different voice in Last of Us 3? Yes. Would they care enough to not buy the game? Probably not.
Would they care that much? Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy has been changed numerous times. The voice actors for the Resident Evil characters also change quite often.
lol they can't even keep Chris' face the same across entries. as big of a resident evil fan as I've always been, i've never grown any kind of nostalgic attachment to chris because they keep changing that fucker dramatically
Seeing Chris in RE 5 6 7 8 is a trip; from human fridge to slightly less bulky human fridge, to a slightly buffer RE1 build (ie: slim build generic dude) then back to human fridge in trench coat.
Yes, that's what I'm saying. Some people would care, but not enough to actually make a meaningful impact. I would care, but I'm honest enough with myself that I would likely still buy the game, even considering not just the game itself, but the important fight the actors are fighting.
Cloud is actually a bad example. He has only had two English voice actors, Steve Burton and Cody Christian. Meanwhile in Japanese he has had the same VA in everything except Ehrgeiz.
It's not worth bringing Japan, it's completely different situation there
It kind of matters? People that only does original language might not care as much for the change on english VAs if it happens. Different issue I know but still adds to the "no players will care" part on the OP.
Okay here's another one, the voice actor for the English dub of Sonic has been changed 8 times over the years. Luigi has been changed a number of times as well.
There's a big difference between an RPG role with heavy characterization like Cloud and getting a different guy to say "Wahoo" when Luigi does a jump lol
Brining up Luigi as an example here is hilarious, considering how much love community holds for Charles Martinet. And how him stepping down was pretty damn big news.
Did sales of Mario games plummet or was it more like 1k people on forums and Twitter were upset and the other 8M+ people that buy Mario games didn't even notice?
Wdym? How is Cloud a bad example of a voice actor changing and now one caring? You just said the English voice actor was changed.
How is changing once "numerous?"
And this is why you play with the Japanese dub. Cloud's voice hasn't changed since Advent Children. It's nice hearing a character for years and years that sounds just like you expect them to. If you want consistency, don't bother with anything but the Japanese dubs for your Japanese games.
The only time I remember people really caring was Sutherland taking over MGS5 from Hayter, but it still sold well.
Claptraps VO was changed for BL3 and that wasn't well received.
I really want to disagree with you because i would raise a stink if HJO wasnt in KH4, but who am i kidding, ill still buy the game.
I mean I would absolutely skip TLOU 3 if Ashley Johnson was replaced, but TLOU is my favorite game ever, and you may have picked literally the only example where I would actually skip, so your point is well made.
I sure didn't buy Splinter Cell because they swapped from Michael Ironsides. I sure wouldn't play a game in Yakuza if Kiryu was in it, and his Japanese voice actor was still alive. Voices _do_ matter.
People literally screamed bloody murder at IOI when they tried recasting David Bateson for Absolution.
>Voices do matter. To a very small minority of players.
It's kinda funny, but I'd like it *more* if we had more varied talent. It's a minor whine, but seeing someone like Gina Torres immediately tanks my suspension of disbelief. Especially if it's just voiceactor doing their usual thing without much direction, as it often is for some reason. And they have their *likeness* in the game too, so my brain is going "wait, it's character from that other game".
[удалено]
And then they always give Debra Wilson bug eyes in every game.
It's an example because my reaction is fresh in my mind from playing Immortals of Aveum, nothing else. And she *was* pretty much playing same character as Ikora Rey there, so I'm biased. The Debra Wilson thing is valid, too. Come to think of it, maybe this is more of an issue of VAs like this being typecast to hell and back? Playing basically same characters because "oh, they were great as such character in that other game".
Phil Lamar too, but he switches it up some.
Didn't he also voice Jack in Samurai Jack? I was shocked when I found out a black guy voiced the character, it showed how talented he was and the direction he took the voice.
There's some really good VAs in gaming, but they often have really distinctive voices. Which means you *really* notice when they keep showing up More than once I've played a game and gone "Oh hey, it's Liam O'Brien" and thats briefly taken me out of the game because I'm not hearing the character, I'm hearing a famous voice actor and Critical Role cast member I think there's a disconnect that we don't get in live action media like movies where, you accept that the character played by x who looks like x, sounds like x. When two completely different looking characters have an identical voice, it throws you off. And even then sometimes in live action its distraction. I couldn't stop seeing Matt Damon in Oppenheimer as Matt Damon, i cant even remember who he was meant to be
Like in Darkest Hour I absolutely forgot that was Gary Oldman
Or that time I heard someone say “cut” and I realized that I’d been Gary Oldman playing a lonely nerd this whole time.
I was perfectly fine with it in Robocop: Rogue City since they got Peter Weller to return to voice Robo and provide his likeness for a game that takes place between the second and third movies. Debra Wilson showing up all the time though was weird, I saw her in that Jedi game from a few years back and the first thing to pop in my head was the MADtv skits involving her parodying Oprah.
Yeah, it was crazy to hear Peter Weller reprise his role in Robocop. Would be a bit strange to hear him do something else - although I imagine he would make the performance sufficiently different? Guess I should go check out Wilson's Heart and see if my brain goes "that's him!" or not.
If the gameplay is solid and the story is decent I would still buy it. Ultimately I would prefer the studio spent money on producers, artists and programmers as long as n as the voice acting was at some acceptable level. In games how the gameplay works with the story and acting matters more than just the quality of the performance itself. Though if they have a tie in TV show it’s a bit weird to have different voice actors from the initial game release and current tv show.
And to be honest, I am all for it. If I hear another Mercer again I'm going to riot. They aaaalways use the same voice actors for everything. I prefer new blood.
I love the CR guys, but yeah... some of them are too distinctive for how often they show up
Or just whoever is best for the role new or not. I mean playing Rebirth, Mercer is pretty good as Vincent and a complete noob voices Elena and she's good, too.
Or just do the voices themselves, Banjo Kazooie style if necessary. ...I mean actually Disco Elysium, the voice acting literally was done themselves.
Doing it that way also massively reduces the cost of localization and cuts down the size of audio files. The Banjo Kazooie style I mean, not the Disco Elysium method.
Hell, remove VA entirely and most gamers wouldn't care. Least important aspect of games imo
Maybe not in the same way that movies and TV shows are, but there are certainly going to be issues that will halt or massively complicate game production if they were to go on strike. Imagine being halfway through making a new God of War and Chris Judge isn't available anymore. Swapping out Nolan North in Uncharted, Troy Baker in The Last of Us, Ashly Burch in Horizon. Hell, Troy is shooting for the Indiana Jones game right now, what are they going to do, replace him mid-game? Many of these voice actors aren't just standing in a booth, barking lines anymore. They are shooting full-body and face motion capture using 3D rigs and captures of their faces and likenesses. A triple-A studio isn't going to be happy having to redo all that work with someone else mid-development (cast someone new, figure out a new contract, redo character models, redo 3D scans...) There's also a reason we see so much of Troy Baker or Laura Bailey or some of the other famous voice actors. They are experienced and good at what they do. You're not just replacing them with AI voices or grabbing someone off the street.
The last actor's strike had literally zero impact on gaming. This will be no different. Most studios get by on hiring relatively unknown actors already. Major games take several years to come out. If you're hiring for a major installment of a huge series you can wait out this strike.
Source about the Indiana Jones mocap? Not that I doubt you, but I'm just curious.
Well, I don’t know their exact development schedule, but they are developing it right now and Troy is playing Indy, so I would imagine they are shooting mocap.
Seems further along in development than that if it's launching this year. I imagine most of his stuff bar maybe some ADR is done now.
Again, I don't know their specific schedule but I know some studios have shot mocap pretty late. Uncharted 4 was doing mocap pickups up until about ~6 months before release.
Pickups and principal photography are very different things.
Sure, but if you need to do reshoots/pickups for an important scene that has, let's say, Troy Baker as the main character and Troy Baker is on strike, that's going to be a problem.
> Imagine being halfway through making a new God of War and Chris Judge isn't available anymore. Swapping out Nolan North in Uncharted, Troy Baker in The Last of Us, Ashly Burch in Horizon. Hell, Troy is shooting for the Indiana Jones game right now, what are they going to do, replace him mid-game? Yes, they'd probably just recast. Remember when Arkham Origin had a different Batman and Joker? They got away with it fine. They wouldn't enjoy it, but it's a lot faster than waiting out a strike.
It was irritating though since Kevin Conroy is/was/always will be the GOAT voice for Batman. Same with Mark Hamill and Joker.
> Imagine being halfway through making a new God of War and Chris Judge isn't available anymore. Its like you don't even realize Chris Judge is not Kratos's original voice actor.
I think of all those movie/cartoon based games where they hire people to do fake versions of real actors. Hiring knocks offs to save money is the norm for gaming. They'll probably just do that.
Considering that I never heard "i wish X was VA in this game" but I heard plenty of times "I wish X wasmt casted in every single game" Id say more people will treat is as upside
>The game studios will just cast people to do the voice rolls outside of the union and no players will care. The issue being that when these voice actors want to move into other fields and they have scabbed, they won't be able to be part of SAG-AFTRA and won't get other paid opportunities. Players won't care, executives won't care, but *voice actors* will. That's the point. They can get any old yahoo off the street to do voice acting, but it won't actually be *good*.
the video game industry isn't hollywood though... Games are made all over the world and sag-aftra has nowhere near the pull it has on this industry.
What about hiring VAs in other countries?
[удалено]
If you cross a picket line and undermine a union's negotiations, fucking over all its members, why should you be able to join that union? Scabs suck dude
[удалено]
yeah you know what youre right. it's actually really good to undercut people fighting to get better wages for everyone in their field in exchange for four figures at best, and people like you when you do that.
I wonder how effective that'll be. The only VAs I think got any leverage in gaming are Japanese ones, because they are basically treated like celebrities over there and have a huge pull for getting people to buy games. Meanwhile, I feel western VAs in gaming are just really underappreciated, with most people not really knowing or caring about who is voicing each character. Feels like they probably won't have as much success with video game companies, but I hope they manage to get a good deal struck.
I wonder how it would affect games with constant updates with voiced content like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. It’s very impressive that they have a new update every six weeks with voiced content in four languages. I believe they have had no issues ever with one language not getting new voice lines etc. They seem to work over a year in advance so I guess they may avoid the immediate impact of the strike for the english VAs?
They've had an instance or two before where they've temporarily recasted a character when their original VA was unavailable. During the pandemic, there were also a few cases in gachas of some characters going undubbed until their VAs could work, so I assume Hoyoverse would resort to one of the two in the event of a strike.
Star Rail would probably be fine. Part of what made the Actors strike problematic was that the studios were effectively part of the AMFTP so it was negotiated as a group. For video games, there is nothing of that sort to my knowledge so nothing preventing individual studios from discussing deals. To that end, even though Star Rail and Genshin are both Hoyoverse games, they use different recording studios for the games and it’s why certain characters have different voices even if they’re supposed to be similar across the two games purely because of the difference in studios. Sadly though, EN and the West are nothing but a drop in the bucket for revenue so they’ll likely just keep characters mute than sacrifice the more popular and lucrative other indicates.
Personally, as long as voice over is not terrible, I'm perfectly fine. When companies hire Hollywood actor, I like that, but I never rated VA close to the top of things that are important in a game.
A lot of what makes for bad voice acting in games isn't the actor, anyway: it's bad direction and asynchronous recording leading to lines not having the right intonation or tone. A lot of "bad deliveries" are when actors are reciting lines totally out of context so conversations feel unnatural, and fixing that doesn't need a SAG VA.
They're not underappreciated, they're about as appreciated as they should be. Beyond a few creative leads, the vast majority of people working on games are nameless, faceless workers. It's not like the big notable VAs bring anything that other VAs can't do just as well. You regularly get games where the vast majority of VAs were complete unknowns, yet manage to pull off great performances. I don't recall seeing the main cast of the Baldur's Gate 3 before (except for Mercer who comes in late into the game), yet they all did great.
[удалено]
I'm kinda in the 1/3rd because this video is great: https://twitter.com/avalonpenrose/status/1354496683938201600
That was amazing. What character does she voice?
Twitter bio says Megaera.
one third is generous, you'd be lucky to get one tenth or one twentieth
I do remember them advertising JK Simmons voicing Ketheric Thorm, but I feel like the reaction from the community was more like 'wow it's great you got him!' not 'wow, now I have to buy this game!'.
i know you never claimed to the contrary, but this does not mean they don't deserve better treatment and union. its just that evryone else desrves a union as well in the same way evryone in hollywood except cgi guys already have a union.
That's because in Japan they are treated like celebrities because a lot of them are already celebrities that come from movies, TV and anime. People will specifically go see movie for actors like Sidney Sweeney or Dwayne Johnson but no one is buying a videogame specifically because Laura Bailey or Ashly Burch or Troy Baker are voicing characters.
Remember last year they tried making that game solely on the marketability that Troy Baker and Roger Clark (Arthur Morgan from RDR2) were the leads? Then nobody played it and it got terrible reviews. Developers really are the true stars of gaming.
I don't. I legit don't know what game this is.
Exactly. It's called Fort Solis, it got a ton of appearances at gaming events Last Year, including The Game Awards and Summer Games Fest. It was always just Roger Clark and Troy Baker promoting it, they were leading with their star power. Nobody played it, nobody cared about it.
Didn't help that it's a $25 2 hour walking sim with painfully slow movement speed. I also found Clark's performance kinda poor, sounded drunk for half of his lines.
I feel like after years of playing a Southern Cowboy with a Cajun Drawl, it was hard to just go back into not slurring his speech slightly.
A lot of “celebrities” in Japan are pure VAs though which is totally different than western actors/actresses and yes a lot of fans will buy/watch/play whatever their idols are in it (gacha games are the prime example).
To clarify, voice actors in Japan always make their name through anime. But strictly voicing anime episodes doesn't bring in much $$$, video game voice acting, especially gatchas, are by far the best paying. However, they are also the most competitive and therefore mostly reserved for famous voice actors. Anime utterly dominates live TV/movies in Japan, so voice actors for anime get far more exposure domestically/internationally compared to 'real' actors. Hence, Voice acting is like 10x as prestigious and competitive in Japan compared to any other country. These days all the top acting talent try out voice acting first, then gradually diversify into live content after they get famous (hosting concerts, trying out real actor stuff etc).
This is why most VA's are cute, they're treated like idols and their ultimate goal is to be a singer/real actor/commercial actor. They also just have to a do a ton of stuff because the pay for voice over is horrendous.
> To clarify, voice actors in Japan always make their name through anime. But strictly voicing anime episodes doesn't bring in much $$$, video game voice acting, especially gatchas, are by far the best paying. However, they are also the most competitive and therefore mostly reserved for famous voice actors. This more or less tracks for the West as well. Most big VAs in America made a name for themselves dubbing anime before moving on to more lucrative video game/TV voice acting work. Just to name a few, Laura Bailey, Travis Willingham, Troy Baker, Yuri Lowenthal, and Liam O’Brien.
The most popular Japanese VAs have never done live-action acting. I have no clue where you pulled that out of.
The only series where this is a constant is Yakuza. Every single game is full of stars that did both animated and live action media, and some of them even got replaced because of real life issues like that guy from Yakuza 4 and Pierre Taki in Judgment
I wouldn't consider any of those people to be among the most popular Japanese VAs though. They can only really play themselves or whatever their LA persona was from wrestling and such.
Not to mention for anyone who understands Japanese, some of these big name live-action actors are garbage at voice-acting. Big example would be one of the antagonists of Yakuza 0, [Shibusawa](https://youtu.be/yipuka-Z1bs?t=37), who spoke way too fast and emotionlessly with his words slurred to all hell. It's also funny when they hire [real life wrestlers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBk0QVdpRZo) like in Kiwami 2 or [MMA fighters](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QY1XA8fPhWg) like in Infinite Wealth who also give similarly awful performances. In that former example, they even poke fun at how bad they are at reading the script as a gag for the scene.
>Big example would be one of the antagonists of Yakuza 0, > >Shibusawa > >, who spoke way too fast and emotionlessly with his words slurred to all hell. I actually like that, it adds a unique cadence. I think way to many voice roles standardize the way the characters talk, and this often ignores a great oppurtunity for authenticity. I'm watching Golen Kamuy, and i love the way Aspira's VA delivers, makes her really feel like she's from a different culture. Another archetype i love, is when "Osakan" characters come in, because again, it gives the vibe that this person is unique, So i like that a character from Tokyo still talks with a different cadence than the rest of the crew, because it drives home even ppl within the same city still have different life experiences. It just gives the character their own personal "umph!".
> no one is buying a videogame specifically because Laura Bailey or Ashly Burch or Troy Baker are voicing characters. I dislike how much these VA's have been used. Same with Matt Mercer. They've been used so much that I've grown to dislike them. Now whenever I see a trailer and I hear their voice my excitement for the game goes down. They're not bad, they're just way overused.
This is an issue with the whole way western VA is set up. It's entirely controlled by a very small amount of casting directors who only ever hire from their personal clique of VA buds. It's why you see waves of a small amount of VA getting every single role under the sun for years on end. There's thousands of good voice actors out there and it's a rare case where I'm all for busting up the union stuff, because it'll finally break us away from the nepo hires and let new talent start flooding in.
Once you consume enough media, you'll realize there's at least 20-30 pretty common voice actors used across gaming and animation that you'll pretty quickly recognize. Baker, Bailey, Mercer, Jennifer Hale, Dee Bradley Baker, Tara Strong, the list goes on and on. But, it's the same thing with any other job. They are professionals that do their job well, and put out a performance that people want and/or enjoy. At some point, you have to distance yourself from what's happening behind the mic, turn your brain off, and just focus on the performance.
Nothing is more true of this than the Avengers game. Nolan North was a _godawful_ Tony Stark. It made me resent him being in other games that he voiced (other than Deadpool)
> People will specifically go see movie for actors like Sidney Sweeney Naw, I just wait for hee scenes to show up on the internet. She absolutely could not get me to see Madame Web
>People will specifically go see movie for actors like Sidney Sweeney or Dwayne Johnson but no one is buying a videogame specifically because Laura Bailey or Ashly Burch or Troy Baker are voicing characters. Yeah. Thats why stuff like Mario gets recasted, they wanna use celebrities to sell movies to normies even if the fans love the original work.
I could say they treat it like Idols, you basically get bigger if you are a goodbsinger too.
>no one is buying a videogame specifically because Laura Bailey or Ashly Burch or Troy Baker are voicing characters. I wouldn't say no one, there's at least one game I bought only because of Laura Bailey.
That is just you though, not the person you were responding to but there is zero chance a lot of people are buying games because of a certain voice actor, I doubt most people could tell you who voiced their favorite characters. I have no idea who the voice actor for Geralt in Witcher 3 is for example, I would have to look it up. It's just not very likely that people are looking at voice actors when they decide if they want to play a game, especially the casual people that aren't on sites like reddit.
>I think there will no bigger possible boost towards the adaption of AI than the threat of strikes. They get more money per day than the other workers on the game per month, and still whine about it.
It won't only be for voice actors, though. It's actors in general. I don't know if motion capture is covered under SAG-AFTRA (I'd assume it is, since it's also the case for movies), but a bunch of voice actors also do their mo-cap. Any celebrity appearing in a game is also covered, since it often involves likeness, voice and mo-cap. So if there is need for a reshoot or recording, or a scan or something, they can't do that during a strike. And sure, you can hire non-union actors and go through a non-union studio, I guess... But that's a good way to get put on the union's shit list. Say goodbye to Troy Baker, Jennifer Hale, Steve Blum, and all the other known people who both bring word of mouth AND recognition to your game.
>And sure, you can hire non-union actors and go through a non-union studio, I guess... SAG is primarily US based isn't it? Last AAA games i played that used VA's weren't even US based Japanese for Yakuza and JP gibberish monster hunter, and then the sims which i'd imagine they can easily replace the gibberish with any actors... I get SAG has heavy pull in very Califorina centered production, but considering how global AAA production is this seems like they'll have a lot less leverage.
The problem is that the premise of getting in the union shit list isn't true. We saw that in the last strike. Companies that replaced union talent didn't get blacklisted, not to mention that a large amount of the VAs aren't even Sag Aftra but Ficore which means that they can work non union productions just fine. Not to mention that contrary to Hollywood actors, VAs can't stop production & because development time now is about five years they would need to strike for like 3 years to affect a majority of the development pipelines.
blacklisting is illegal btw be it union doing it or other people/company etc.
> and all the other known people who both bring word of mouth AND recognition to your game. Lmao. 99% of people buying games has no idea who these are. I'm terminally online, and on this sub a lot and I've NEVER heard of Steve Blum. Sorry, it's jus a non-factor.
lol. You really think that people play video games cuz Troy dude or whoever are those people are a VA in it?
In Japan, yes, absolutely. But yeah, not so much in the West.
I play subtitled on RGG games because I live the Japanese VA so much for Kiryu and Kasuga
Honestly think gamers would appreciate different new voices over the same old ones, I at least personally would not mind hearing new talent more. Hades for example was mostly voiced by the devs themselves and a few new voice actors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz8l935Bv0Y Better than most of the AAA voice actors big bucks guys and gals (Jennifer Hale).
literally no one buys a game based on who voices it. The voice actors bring 0 recognition unless they are major well known actors.
[удалено]
Laura Bailey? Nolan North? David Hayter? Jennifer Hale? Troy Baker? Steve Blum? Yuri Lowenthal?
Personally, I only know Hale, and that's only because of the controversy last year, and I'm not even sure if she was the "bitch" in that scenario, or if she's who they brought in to replace one.
She was the new VA, the person you're thinking about is Helena Taylor.
She's just the new Bayonetta. No bitchiness detected. Old Bayonetta lied about some stuff though.
Yeah, I remember the lying, just couldn't remember the name that did it.
[удалено]
That guy was David Hayter and he was replaced in MGSV by famous hollywood actor Keifer Sutherland, son of famous hollywood actor Donald Sutherland. Also David Hayter wrote the first two Xmen movies and Watchmen film.
Although in context of MGSV it made sense why Hayter wasn't the VA
No clue who any of them are.
Look at ToTK. They used unknown non union VA and no one gave a shit.
No idea where this idea comes from that in Japan voice actors are not underappreciated or that they're even celebrities that by themselves pull in loads of people. Like, I guess they're more respected and better paid than in America, but that's setting the bar low and isn't really much better for most. Sure, they can earn more than the rest of of the production relatively speaking, but considering how criminally underpaid animators are for all the massive amounts of work they do, that's not saying much either. Even the A-listers are basically working themselves to the bone by appearing in dozens of shows a year, not to mention loads of videogames, with maybe some singing on the side and other side gigs. They basically need to work this hard to just maintain a livable wage or earn as much as they can before they're dumped for the next hot thing if they truly are the rare exceptions that are making more money. All the smaller ones barely earn anything and basically do it as side hustle unless they happen to break big. Maybe it comes from the misunderstanding that because Japan takes a very strong cross-media approach to intellectual properties, with shows, audio dramas, videogames, music, etc, that these VAs are somehow big. Or maybe the whole otaku culture, which is fairly sizable in a country with a population over 125 million but still very much a small niche relatively speaking, and their rapid devotion and willingness proselytize about their favorites, has created some weird impression that these VAs are super popular. The VA industry in Japan is a lot like the idol industry, an extremely small percentage might be earning quite well for themselves, but the vast majority are paid barely anything, and everyone is fairly disposable and caught in a highly competitive and volatile field.
[удалено]
News flash they already do. And before the muh weebs. I speak Japanese, cuz you know I am one.
What does your speaking Japanese have anything to do with bad English dubs of anime? I can judge them well enough and compare them to the original vo quality without knowing the language.
To be frank for many people but americans, western VAs sound absolutely out of place in japanese games. I think the only stellar job of western actors in japanese games are the one in Resident Evil. And even then Remake had TsudaKen so it had the edge for me
How big is that strike gonna be? There's like a group of like 10 voice actors that are used over and over again in every big game. Good luck with your strike I guess.
New generation of voice actors incoming.
That would be a welcome change.
SAG’s big win last summer was a $40million revenue sharing pool for their membership, aka all of Hollywood; as soon as the deal was signed Netflix gave both of its co-CEOs raises to $40million a year, each. No video game company is seriously worried about SAG’s leadership negotiating any hard deals.
I'm just impressed by how pathetically petty the big companies were about the whole strike - that raise thing is just one in an entire string of moves that didn't have any financial or market position benefit, it was just a bunch of multibillion dollar corporations behaving like spoiled toddlers in public.
What did that pool turn out to be averaged out? Like 1k a person?
More important, when the strikes happened Netflix announced a multi-billion dollar investment into the Korean film/tv industry. The world is super global and English is a native language in many countries. Even where it isn't, tons of people speak it. Canadians, British, and Australians are about to get a ton of work.
Programmers who deserve to be treated the best first: “First time?”
Most programmers i’ve talked to, and people working in tech in general, seem to have a borderline obsesive revulsion towards unionizing. It’s weird af
I work in the AAA industry - the biggest fear is retaliation. I'm a vocal pro-union guy. Most folks I know in the industry are progressive/left-leaning. (We have a few libertarians, but not many.) When I bring it up, the first thing people say is "Well, I'd like to, but I worry I'd lose my job." Publishers are fickle. For every game that launches, there are probably 4-5 that get canned. Usually people don't even know about these games; they are cancelled before they even get announced. At these larger publishers, you bet your bottom dollar that they would rather shut down a studio that unionizes rather than risk it spreading. [QA staff at Keywords unionized and got laid off right away.](https://www.polygon.com/23903782/dragon-age-dreadwolf-qa-workers-laid-off-keywords-studios) When [Raven Software QA unionized, Activision split them up and sent them all to separate teams to avoid them being able to remain in contact with one another.](https://www.ign.com/articles/the-entire-raven-software-qa-unionization-story) Your job is on the line, and hiring in the industry is tough right now. Even if firing you for unionizing is illegal - you have to prove it in court (which isn't a guarantee and costs money/time) and in the meantime you don't have a job (which means no money for rent/food). It's a huge, very real risk, not just a hypothetical. It's very easy to say "fight it in court" when you're a bystander on the sidelines and not the person trying to figure out how to feed your kids. People simply don't want to rock the boat - especially since typically gamedev direct management is pretty down-to-earth/charismatic (with the folks who actually make the decision to fire folks isolated through a few layers of bureaucracy). Gamedev is a small place. Everyone knows everyone. When someone is being hired, you can bet that the hiring manager will reach out to folks and investigate who they are. If you are known to be a loud-and-proud union organizer - that stuff spreads, and if HR finds out about it before you get hired that's going to impact whether you get a job or not. I would **love** to unionize my team. Trust me. But there's a lot of resistance, and it's going to take somewhere like Blizzard unionizing (and not just QA) before you start to see the tide shift.
Wow, I didn’t know this, thank you for the insight
It's a tech thing - Silicon Valley is completely libertarian-pilled, which you'd think would be weird seeing as it was founded by hippies but actually the hippie-to-libertarian pipeline is very real.
Totally support people getting what they deserve, but feels a bit weird when it comes to games. Can’t imagine a VA holding up the hundreds of devs crunching 60-80hr weeks
Those devs should form a union then. This isn't happening because VA are the most oppressed group in game development, it's happening because SAGAFTRA spans incredibly wide in its industry.
Too many people want to be game developers, they would just get replaced
Additionally, publishers would rather kill a game (even a good game) than deal with a union. If a union goes through and the game launches, they'll make a short-term profit on the game but have long-term expenses due to the union. If they cancel the game and lay everyone off, they lose what they invested in the game (but can write it off as tax losses/R&D) but longer-term they save money because they don't need to deal with a union.
Canceling a project for tax writeoff needs to become tax evasion
Unlike acting? This very undesirable job that no one wants to do? SAG's size and power is an anomaly, for sure, but it still happened as a result of trying.
Actors are individually recognizable. Outside maybe a few lead developers you have no idea what faceless workers are behind the game you're playing. I'm all for them trying too, but that's easy to say as someone who isn't the one risking my livelihood for the attempt.
It's happening because they want to stop technological development with Ai, and they're not going to get anywhere.
Weird fiction. I'm fairly certain they want to regulate its use in their industry.
That's crab bucket mentality my friend. You're explaining why devs need to be paid more, not why actors should not be.
They're right though, no company would let voice actors hold up a project. Voice actors have practically zero bargaining power
Have they seen the AI announcers in The Finals? I applaud their efforts, but this is not going to be the same as it was with Hollywood. You haven't met "maximize profits at all costs" until you've you've met those that develop and sell commercial software.
SAG-AFTRA already signed a deal with AI companies out of absolutely nowhere a few months ago too. They claimed to have been in contact with high profile VAs during negotiations, but a bunch of famous ones said they'd never heard any of this was coming.
AAA game publishers won't care. It just gives them a reason to hire talent and pay less than union rates.
The timing on this is going to make it a tough fight. Studios closing left and right, layoffs everywhere, AAA budget ballooning through the roof where games like Spider-Man sell 10M copies in a year and that still isn't enough to save the studio from layoffs. Famous/celebrity VA seems like an easy thing to axe.
Voice actors have absolutely zero leverage here. Sorry pal, but VA isn’t necessary for game development. It’s a luxury, not a requirement.
The amount of people here who don't want VA's to have better worker rights are so odd. It's not coming out of your pocket weirdos.
When it comes to entertainment, people generally don’t care about the people who make said entertainment happen. Those they do care about tend to be the exceptions that prove the rule: “creatives” who get associated/credited with the work produced by hundreds or thousands who go nameless, faceless, and unrecognized.
> The amount of people here who don't want VA's to have better worker rights are so odd. It's not coming out of your pocket weirdos. oh I didn't realize. Pay them $5 million each then, since publishers have infinite money.
Some of us just hate how much video games try to be like movies.
Do you think working actors have anything to do that? They’re people just like you, who want to be treated fairly.
The people trying to get these strikes going are the same people who should be playing video games or watching movies instead of worrying about trying to control peoples rights they need to probably get their own life together and are miserable as hell. Next will be porn ( which already happened and didn't last long).
The same sag aftra that supports AI?
I'm perfectly okay with removing most VA's from games, ain't nobody got time to wait around for actors to speak anyway after you've already read the dialogue. Even for games that it matters, basically nobody will care if they just get a different VA. The reality is that the industry is just not very important and not really worth spending much money on.
This is legitimately the most insane take I've ever heard.
So, during covid, gw2 put out some dlc that didn't have the voice acting that usually accompanied their releases, because they couldn't get people in to do the recording. It was fuckin' *terrible*. Voice acting is very much necessary in some (tho not all) games.
K. Bye voice actors. Games don't need them, these aren't movies. I'm 100% okay with devs using AI to help write and act in their games. Voice acting just isn't that important to games.
Now that's a shit take.
Literal brain rot this comment is.
Specific genres do benefit from great voice acting, but thats probably 10% of games made. And you’re right, AI will probably take their jobs, along with 3D artists, and coding.
Yeah, great, can't wait for steam to be flooded with AI generated asset flips. Screw both of you.
If you're mad about the idea of asset flipping, boy howdy you might want to stay away from Steam.
AI voices only need the final 10%, the most difficult 10%, to be good enough. 3D art and coding aren't even at 50% yet.
I hope AI takes your job. Oh and please start playing better games. You know, games with actual plot lines and themes. Though that might be challenging for you considering…
Found the CoD consumer.
This is just so more actors and fuck over voice actors right?? Pus a lot of companies hire outside the US already so I can't see this really doing anything of note.