The Potential Voice-Actor Strike

[AngelCityOutlaw]

Really surprised no one is talking about this on here.

 

Here is a link to just one article that tells you the general idea of what's happening.

 

Curious to know what everyone's thoughts are on this. In a nutshell, they want more transparency as to what the role(s) will require, 2 hours max for things that require a lot of vocal stress, motion capture clearly stated as a requirement, etc. Where it gets a bit crazy, in my opinion, is with the idea of not being fined for being late and residuals/performance bonuses. Most people on the interwebs have a problem with the latter, especially.

 

Renting a high-end facility isn't cheap and I fail to see why your late ass shouldn't be fined for wasting the publisher's money and the studio's time. Not to mention, some of the big names like Ali Hillis and Jennifer Hale have their own booths at home. As for the bonuses, they want to receive bonus payments around the 2 million copies mark. Which is, as described by one article, "When most major titles become profitable." I'm sorry, but that seems greedy as hell when I'm sure the roughly 10 people we hear in every damn game are already being paid quite well by the page, per minute, per line or whatever. I think the developer's and publisher's collective fears that other people involved with the games would demand similar, post-release compensation is justified. Just about every composer, programmer and artist I know of, i.e., the people who create arguably the most memorable elements of the actual freakin' game, never see any sort of bonus payment or royalties unless some or all of their work was licensed. The devs and publishers would much rather, and logically, re-invest the profits into making future products and paying employees both in and out of house.

 

TL;DR - It all seems fair to me except for the fines and performance bonuses, though I can see lower fines being fair. Either way, I don't see them winning on the bonuses.

 

Voting among the union closes on Oct. 5th. A strike may be imminent. What do you think will happen?

[Eino Keskitalo]

Well, game development workforce isn't organized that much. It is not unimaginable that (any) creative personel did receive royalty share from hit products. VA people are organized apparently, so they have the leverage to put this forward.

[Bleck]

Renting a high-end facility isn't cheap and I fail to see why your late ass shouldn't be fined for wasting the publisher's money and the studio's time. 

 

from the article;

 

- One suggests that an employer can fine voice actors up to $2,500 for showing up to a session late or not being "attentive to the services for which [you] have been engaged." The union argues that a hazy interpretation of what "attentive" means could see actors penalized for "checking an incoming text, posting to your Twitter feed, even zoning out for a second." - 

 

seems pretty unreasonable to me

[AngelCityOutlaw]

from the article;

 

- One suggests that an employer can fine voice actors up to $2,500 for showing up to a session late or not being "attentive to the services for which [you] have been engaged." The union argues that a hazy interpretation of what "attentive" means could see actors penalized for "checking an incoming text, posting to your Twitter feed, even zoning out for a second." - 

 

seems pretty unreasonable to me

 

Well yes, that part is. I'm talking about like, if you show up thirty minutes late and don't really have a good reason for it. Even still, 2,500 seems a bit excessive.

[SystemsReady]

My only problem with the demands is that this basically ensures that any VA who is NOT part of this union won't get work, or any VA who is part of this union will be penalized for working with non-kosher devs. And of course, this means that every goddamn game will have all the same goddamn voice actors like they already do. When Yuri Lowenthal voices two separate, but entirely different characters in Persona Q because he was a VA for characters in both Personas 3 & 4...

 

And I can't help but think of the composer for Journey, who got reamed for his work by his union because it was a non-union job. How is this helpful?

[AngelCityOutlaw]

Well, game development workforce isn't organized that much. It is not unimaginable that (any) creative personel did receive royalty share from hit products. VA people are organized apparently, so they have the leverage to put this forward.

 

According to this, CEOs and executives often get backend bonuses - not the creative personnel, who instead do serious crunch time. Shawn Elliott, formerly of Irrational Games puts it into words perfectly "...using CEO compensation as comparison point won't win sympathy from devs."

 

 

 

My only problem with the demands is that this basically ensures that any VA who is NOT part of this union won't get work, or any VA who is part of this union will be penalized for working with non-kosher devs. And of course, this means that every goddamn game will have all the same goddamn voice actors like they already do. When Yuri Lowenthal voices two separate, but entirely different characters in Persona Q because he was a VA for characters in both Personas 3 & 4...

 

And I can't help but think of the composer for Journey, who got reamed for his work by his union because it was a non-union job. How is this helpful?

 

To quote Kotaku user Garlador's comment in the article I share in this post

 

 

I have a sneaking suspicion that Tara Strong, Troy Baker, and Nolan North aren’t going to be afraid of being let go and suddenly having no job and no way to feed their families, not with the laundry list of other work waiting in the wings. But developers? Artists? Programmers? Their bosses tend to view them as expendable, and they’re the first to get axed when a game doesn’t sell Call of Duty numbers so their CEO can’t afford a new yacht this year.

[Native Jovian]

My only problem with the demands is that this basically ensures that any VA who is NOT part of this union won't get work, or any VA who is part of this union will be penalized for working with non-kosher devs.

That's...  sort of exactly how unions work.  If companies can mix-and-match union labor and non-union labor whenever they want, then the union has no bargaining power, because they can get the big-name union members they want and still hire non-union for the bulk of their casting.  This works the other way around, too -- if union members can take non-union jobs, that has the exact same effect.  The only way for the union to effectively bargain with companies is if it's an all-or-nothing deal -- the company agrees to take only union members or no union members, while the union members agree to work only for companies that hire union members exclusively.

 

I don't actually know if this is already the case or not.  I suspect it is, though -- I've heard of voice actors being credited under pseudonyms in order to avoid union rules.

 

Really, I tend to side with the union on this one.  According to the article, their contract is like 20 years old, so it's due for a renegotiation anyway, and nothing they're asking for sounds all that unreasonable to me.

[DarkeSword]

from the article;

 

- One suggests that an employer can fine voice actors up to $2,500 for showing up to a session late or not being "attentive to the services for which [you] have been engaged." The union argues that a hazy interpretation of what "attentive" means could see actors penalized for "checking an incoming text, posting to your Twitter feed, even zoning out for a second." - 

 

seems pretty unreasonable to me

 

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.

[Nabeel Ansari]

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.

 

 

And I can't help but think of the composer for Journey, who got reamed for his work by his union because it was a non-union job. How is this helpful?

 

That's because the AFM is run by someone who doesn't understand the game industry. Mr. Austin Wintory himself:

 

c/p my response on another poster of this article:

I'm skeptical of this. Having seen all this first-hand w/ the American Federation of Musicians, and their complete blindness to the needs of Dev's / publishers, I fear SAG-AFTRA may be digging a grave in a similar manner. It's very suspect that such reasonable requests as knowledge of a game before auditioning, or limitation of vocally stressful sessions would be completely stone-walled, if their negotiating tactic were otherwise respectful.

It very well could be that the large publishers are being bullies, but drawing from my experience with the AFM, the standard negotiating tactic of a union is to presume their labor is both 1) irreplaceable and 2) subject to sweatshop-level cruelties (unless the union comes in and saves the day). Since neither of those are true, the folks on the other side of the table frequently end up baffled by the antagonism and everything goes nowhere fast.

I sincerely hope this isn't true of SAG-AFTRA. And if they approve a strike, I hope it works and everyone can get back to work promptly. I certainly support the majority of what they're asking for.

 

[Brandon Strader]

This is a long thread that I should probably have read before commenting, but without the time to do so I'll just say a couple no-brainers..

 

Voice actors are lucky. The fact that they only hire 2 voice actors (Nolan North and Troy Baker) to voice every video game is a problem. If this strike leads to more popular VOs having less work and more people getting involved due to them being less demanding, then it could be a good thing. Spread the work around more instead of just hiring 2 guys. 

 

If it made it easier to get non-union voice work then that would be good too. 

[AngelCityOutlaw]

This is a long thread that I should probably have read before commenting, but without the time to do so I'll just say a couple no-brainers..

 

Voice actors are lucky. The fact that they only hire 2 voice actors (Nolan North and Troy Baker) to voice every video game is a problem. If this strike leads to more popular VOs having less work and more people getting involved due to them being less demanding, then it could be a good thing. Spread the work around more instead of just hiring 2 guys. 

 

If it made it easier to get non-union voice work then that would be good too. 

 

Dude, this thread isn't even two pages...

 

Anyway, while it's true that a positive outcome could be some fresh voices, it would also likely mean just more people being subject to crap working conditions and wouldn't exactly help future unionization of other people in game development. 

[Mirby]

Not potential anymore. They've authorized the strike. It's happening.

[Native Jovian]

They've authorized the strike but that doesn't mean the strike is going to happen.  The union is going back to the negotiating table with the authority to call a strike if they want to, which gives them additional leverage.  That by itself may be enough to get the deal they're happy with without actually needing to strike.

 

(Source)

[zazabar]

I can understand a few of the complaints the voice actors have.  But to ask for things like royalties in a market where game prices haven't risen in years to match inflation?  Where programmers/artists/musicians/etc don't get bonuses?  There are plenty of games that will work fine without a voice actor.  Let's see how far your game goes without a programmer or modeler though. 

 

If this goes through and other groups follow up with unions of their own, I forsee the cost of games rising or companies dropping out.  Games are sometimes on razor thin margins as it is nowadays.

[Nabeel Ansari]

Not potential anymore. They've authorized the strike. It's happening.

 

Authorization =/= execution

 

 

They've authorized the strike but that doesn't mean the strike is going to happen.  The union is going back to the negotiating table with the authority to call a strike if they want to, which gives them additional leverage.  That by itself may be enough to get the deal they're happy with without actually needing to strike.

 

(Source)

 

Well, not really, see my quote from Wintory. Union voice talent isn't really irreplaceable, and the residuals demand is ridiculous in the face of the rest of the industry.

 

Game publishers will see that one point and cut off the whole deal, because they don't want to pay. It's going to be the same deal as the AFM unless SAG-AFTRA drops the residuals demand and focuses on just fixing the working conditions.

 

If they can do that, they can set a precedent for being the first (successfully) unionized game talent, and then we'll start seeing more people organizing.

[Bleck]

I should probably have read before commenting, 

 

yes

[Brandon Strader]

If game prices go up game sales are gonna go down, it'll hurt voice actors more than anything if they make that deal

[AngelCityOutlaw]

If game prices go up game sales are gonna go down.

 

Not necessarily by any meaningful amount though. I worked in video game retail and honestly, when the Canadian dollar started to plunge last year and prices rose to the average of $70 instead of the decades-long standard of $60, all most people did was complain about it - they still paid for it, though. Used sales didn't increase much either since there was at best only a five to eight dollar difference. It's up to $75 average here now for just a ps3 controller, but EBGames is still makin' dough hand over fist.

 

Gamers will pay just about whatever price you throw at them and the industry knows it. When people are willing to pay over $100 for some stupid collector's edition that comes with a cheap plastic figure and some DLC codes, it's not a stretch for them to pay $75 for the regular game - Other people only buy one or two brand new games a year and don't care. There is a third demographic that I've noticed, specifically for Sony. Since the PS3 isn't region locked, a lot of foreign workers or tourists are more than happy to pay "just $75!" for a video game because the countries they come from (I knew a lot of Israelis) have huge import taxes on video games.