SAG-AFTRA votes unanimously to expand its strike to include the games industry
The media artists union SAG-AFTRA has voted to expand its ongoing Hollywood strike to encompass the games industry. In …
Voice actors are among "those who actually make the games." Voice acting in particular also is strenuous work that can and does cause physical injury when workers are compelled to work long hours doing rough voices and so on. People end up having to have surgery on their vocal cords.
We don't need to devalue voice actors to value other game industry workers. The only difference is the voice actors organized first, probably because of the injury risk, and when you form a union you have to define a group that you can reach and coordinate. It shouldn't be an us vs them among works.
They need to unionize too. Also count actors are included in the "actually make the games" group. Everyone should be paid well, don't drag a group trying to fix that down because the rest aren't doing anything.
Voice actors have a union.
Designers and engineers generally don't. Yet.
for those in america, CWA, Communication Workers of America, is a union that's trying to reach out to the developers in the game industry
A better deal for one group helps the rest of them by setting precedent.
Or ensures the others get locked out, as the business feels the financial sting of the first effort
I’m reminded that those who actually make the games don’t get that. They have overtime without pay.
Yes, capitalism fucks everyone every day unless you fight for what you deserve, usually for decades, and even then only getting half of it. It's surprising that keeping this in mind requires reminders.
Well maybe every one should be getting a Lil slice? Ehh
Correct me if I'm wrong, but since this strike is against certain companies and not some entity that represents the entire industry like it does for movies and television, that means that other individual companies who come to an agreement can still hire these people, right? If so...imagine if we had that in movies and television.
We do. A24, for instance, is still making a couple movies by agreeing to work under the proposed terms by SAG. As far as I know, no one else has made such agreements yet. The more of such exceptions that get made, the weaker the AMPTP's position will get.
Dropout.tv (formerly CollegeHumour) is also an unstruck company.
Oh, I see. I thought all of Hollywood was AMPTP and that's why we can't have nice things like DRM-free movie purchases.
I never wondered about the conditions of videogames workers, but I'm really happy that they get better thanks to this movement !
It's 10x worse than whatever you're imagining.
No guarantee anything gets better yet.
And there’s no reason to think it will
Oh I can provide context with an entertaining and informative video!
https://youtu.be/DN-Hv3pnVz0?si=y11gki97RBZ5paQa
Shout out to Matt McMuscles who makes these. What a champ.
Thanks for sharing ! Looks like the usual "small white male feeling powerful because he's the boss" bullshit more than a problem specific to the gaming industry.
Anyway, unionizing should protect them better from these kind of abuse, which is good :)
Either everyone needs to get royalties or nobody does.
Pay your voice actors right the first time instead of paying them shit per line. Or if your video game becomes an astounding success, all 1,000 people get a slice of that 100,000,000 million it made in sales via residuals. A cool $100,000 for everyone!
Don't forget to advocate for yourself even if you have a union. Nobody ever gets paid more by saying nothing.
The coders have their copyrighted works replicated infinitely without royalties as well.
What makes a voice actor’s contributions more meaningful than that? Especially since they can get a half decent voice performance out of any coder and the right generative software which already exists.
Yeah perpetual royalties are a nonsense slippery slope. People are pushing for it in all the wrong ways wanting a piece of the pie from the higher ups when in reality the way the money flows just needs to be altered.
Bridge and road crews don't get to get a penny every time someone drives over stuff.
Creation does not mean benefit in perpetuity. It means you created something. You should be paid properly for it, yes, but it doesn't mean every time someone mentions your book you get a penny from them lol.
Melancholy Elephants was a great Hugo Award short story about this very thing written in 1983. It's a great read for those who want to go in a bit blind. http://spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html
How the hell do you spoiler tag on Kbin? lol
or nobody does
Be careful, Disney might like that idea
Great. Their CEO can make $2,000,000 / year and the rest $100,000 capping their maximum pay at 20x their lowest paid employee.
How so?
I wonder how many are actually in union to gain that bargain power?
Wasn't there a threat of a game VA strike a few years ago and it turned out that some of the bigger names like Troy Baker aren't in the Union?0
