SAG-AFTRA votes unanimously to expand its strike to include the games industry
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 …
Key issues up for negotiation include pay and conditions, but also "protections against unrestrained use of artificial intelligence", specifically the impact upon performance capture artists.
The companies involved in the negotiations include Activision, Disney, EA, Epic Games, Insomniac, Take 2, and Warner Bros.
"It has been nearly a year since SAG-AFTRA's video game contract, the Interactive Media Agreement, was extended beyond the original expiration date as we negotiated with the companies for critical terms SAG-AFTRA members need," the statement explains.
"Unfortunately, throughout the negotiations, the companies have failed to address those needs. For this reason, the negotiating committee and National Board unanimously agreed that the union should have a member-approved strike authorisation in hand when bargaining resumes on 26th September."
Nice nice, worker rights and less AI in video games. Win win.
Workers rights absolutely. Pay your human workers even while using ai to make a great product. AI didn’t do anything to me, it’s how the companies decide to use it.
Oh yeah I'm sure they will use the ai to pay human workers as well. You definitely know that if they are allowed to use ai they won't use it in a way that means they can stop paying humans and can just have ais generate everything all whist delivering a lower quality product to the customer.
It's a win win, as long as you are an executive or a shareholder.
I don’t know.. this is a development industry. I think this will just accelerate the move to AI.
Or more Ai as a cash incentive. It's already an industry that creates npc's, Ai will improve this, Indy's might just sit there and craft perfect Ai actors and license them out.
I don't think you understand. This strike doesn't include the game devs themselves, it only includes the actors who are contracted with game devs. This is unlikely to actually do anything for worker rights in the industry unfortunately.
It won’t lift up everyone, but the people that it will help are in any normal classification considered workers.
So this is slightly misleading. The board approved a strike authorization vote which will run from 9/5 to 9/25. If the impacted members authorize a strike the negotiation team will have that as leverage day one of contact negotiations.
I agree. Once I realized the distinction, tho, I'm still happy. Having the authorization in hand when negotiating, especially after taking into account the current double strike, will presumably give them more leverage than ever. I'm cool not having any new media for a couple years if it saves the industry.
Indie Developers right now: Oh no... anyways.
Excellent! Power to the people!
Sad to say, but the union probably won’t get many meaningful concessions from this one. The technologies to fully generate model movement (motion capture) and emotive voice (voice acting) are already reasonably mature and constantly improving.
The artists will (rightfully) get strong control over their own likenesses, but if they think they’re going to stop mass adoption of AI in video games they’re dreaming.
Don't underestimate the power of celebrity actors in games in terms of sales. There are people who buy games specifically because certain actors are in them.
That’s true, and there are people who go see movies specifically because of whom appears in them. But I’d hesitate to call that the majority, especially in gaming. The set of people that play games and the set of people who follow the industry are certainly overlapping, but are far from identical.
The vast majority doesn't give a shit about what voice actor voices their game, unless they stunt cast some Hollywood actor. Ask a random gamer if they've even heard of Troy Baker and your probably get blank stares.
I think this is pretty much the perfect time to be doing this.
Plenty of actors and actresses do motion cap, or even full FMV acting, for a lot of smaller tier games. And plenty of major games outright market themselves on getting "real actors" involved. Remember how Patrick Stewart was in 30 seconds of Oblivion and Sean Bean was in five minutes? And not to mention the likelihood that GTA6 is publicly revealing fairly soon.
And looking forward: Anime games continue to be a thing and... that is an ongoing area of concern where the american VAs are openly acknowledging they are afraid to even SAY "union". And while dubs are very much a third class citizen as far as studios are concerned, they are still a lucrative one and a lot of the major VAs have branched out enough that this could be an issue.
As for "AI": All signs point toward The Law being about training data. In part because that maps best to the existing structures (if you steal a clip of a movie and don't credit it, you get DMCA'd) and is something that benefits the actual major studios. With most of the SAG negotiations being about a performer/creator's rights to their own media. The outcome will almost definitely end up being "all previous content is off limits for training. An actor or a writer can 'agree' to having their performance be added to a training database X years from now".
But in games? Kojima is infamous for just making Snake look like (and be named after...) Kurt Russel's performance in Escape from New York. And plenty of versions of Lara Croft and the like have looked eerily similar to some actresses. Same with studios over the years accidentally openly acknowledging that they are using episodes of Days of Our Lives or whatever as motion cap to model face emotion and the like. Hell, how many thirsty bois were wondering who the face model of the new soldier lady Jane in FF7-R was?
Right now, that is a wild west. But if that gets your studio put on the shitlist then it starts being a real issue. Especially with the ongoing acquisitions (even if we are in a lull). Get caught training your AI off of Anna Kendrick's performance in 50/50? Your studio has now become radioactive.
Sweet.
I'm okay with this, the quality of game writing has been stagnant lately with a few exceptions each year
Actors are not writers.
Good for them. More power to them!
Question: why was Disney involved in the negotiation regarding video games? afaik they currently don't own any studios nor publishers.
Edit: they do, I just thought they didn't
Disney has been involved with video games since the late 80s. Recently they were involved with Disney Dreamlight Valley and the new Illusion Island.
Not even to mention the Star Wars games, any Marvel games, the new indie game, the Avatar game from Ubi. They might not have any active in-house studios but they are quite active in giving the rights to studios for their franchises.
Thanks. It's just that I was confused because they shut down Disney Interactive a few years ago.
Start the clock for how long it will take for Indy's to be the worst people on earth...