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Yeah. This is at the heart of what a lot of union negotiations boil down to: defining what "is" is. You can say something like "I fail to see why your late ass shouldn't be fined for wasting the publisher's money and the studio's time" and that sounds perfectly reasonable because people generally understand that you shouldn't be late for work. But what if you hit traffic? What if you have an emergency? What if you're sick? What if you get into an accident on the way to the studio? What if the dev miscommunicates the studio recording times? What if the dev told you to go to the wrong studio? What constitutes "late?" 5 minutes past call time? 10? Half-an-hour? What if you're 1 minute late and the publisher decides to slap you with a $2500 fine? What constitutes "wasting the publisher's money and the studio's time?" Who gets to the decide what wasting time is? In the bit Bleck quoted, the word "attentive" is being contended. They have to clearly define what they mean by attentive, because the repercussions for not being "attentive" are pretty severe. A lot of people goof off at work every once in a while. What if whenever you goofed off, your boss took $2500 out of your paycheck? Collective bargaining is all about working as hard as you can to clearly define the terms of the contract that everyone is going to abide by. Everyone in the union plays by the same rules, and management has to treat everyone in the union equally and according to the terms of the agreement. And everyone, generally speaking, has to be on board with the agreement.

The most important thing I learned in this compo is how to get ideas down fast and that I should never spend a ton of time tweaking minor things before writing the entire song structure.

Round 9 music is up. Voting thread tomorrow. Sleepy now. http://darkesword.com/compos/sfrg/Sigma%20Fortress%20Remix%20Gauntlet%20-%20Round%209%20(Sigma%20Stage%202%20%5BX3%5D).zip

The problem is music/voice unions and such have little to no bargaining power in the game industry, because music/voice (performance audio, really) are the only unionized disciplines that appear in game development and production, and even so, there are plenty of (extremely talented) non-union artists and performers. They can't reach to any fellow unions to put pressure, because... well, there are none. Just look at the AFM fiasco with Austin Wintory. AFM didn't get what they wanted, so they made their own union members suffer for it. The game industry didn't like the terms that AFM had put up, because from their perspective, those kinds of demands were ridiculous and they had never seen them before. After all, everyone else doing programming, art, and whatnot aren't part of a union and are just subject to whatever their workplaces throw at them and this includes the publishing economic system in games that SAG-AFTRA is trying to fight (and AFM was trying to fight before them). In their eyes, why should voice actors be any different? The exception would seem unfair from the outside, and of course there's the obvious factor that they would lose money. Now, that is a bad thing, yes. More disciplines in game dev/production need to be unionized because working in the game industry is pretty awful, working condition and quality of life considered. But as it stands right now, there isn't enough there for SAG-AFTRA to succeed in a standard union negotiation type deal, so their approach is... well, inefficient. That's because the AFM is run by someone who doesn't understand the game industry. Mr. Austin Wintory himself:

How serious do you take people handing out mix tapes? Releasing a physical boxed CD set would be really fancy, even pretty cool, but won't necessarily mean people will take you seriously. Having a good, clear image of your sound and style, and trying to promote your sounds however you can should be enough for people to take you seriously (if, of course, they're interested). Throwing your best stuff on soundcloud, highlighting the best of the best and directing people to them should be sufficient, and a lot cheaper. Having a personal website would also help.

Can't wait to listen to the track, as well as everyone else's! I have zero doubt in the fact that they will all be awesome!

Great work you two! And nice to see streifig posted here finally Btw, if anyone wants more Marshall Art awesomeness, their shows at last two Magfests were pretty damn great.

Wow, only six mixes. Shout out to those who submitted, especially ladyWildfire who was able to put together another awesome mix on a major time crunch and with a few drinks in her

I realized very early in the compo I had made a terrible choice with my Maverick. It's a cool theme but it has no melodies so making it recognizable was tough. At least, the cool chords progressions were put to good use!

SMRPG! Working hard! Music getting made! Keep it up folks, I KNOW we can do it! We still need a title, though. Here are most candidates I could find that people suggested yet: Tadpole Mixtape Show on the Road Trip to the Stars We're All Made of Stars Return of the Star Guardians Roadside Adventure I'd like to get as many opinions as possible, and more suggestions if you have any! Food for thought: finding something related to the Tadpoles and/or the Star Road might be a good idea!

Flood flood (Water levels) Flute flood (Remixes with a flute as the main instrument) Fruit flood (Games where you collect fruits) Foot flood (Football/soccer games) Food flood (Food themed levels)