Gaming Voice Actor Strike?

Unions in a business like this is extremely important, voice actors especially have had a long road of fighting for basic job security and a living wage. Voice actors are essentially the main characters, often giving more life to them than the animators can. There may be the image that they just sit down in a booth and talk but actual vocal "magic" takes a lot of skill, talent and even physical ability. Motion capture and facial capture is often part of the package too.

And yeah, there is a big difference between the people driving a movie/tv show/video game and those people who are paid to handle the grunt work. If residuals were proportionally spread out among everyone involved it would render a residual bonus irrelevant. You have to prove your worth to get that kind of stuff, otherwise your getting the same 10 dollar bonus as the person running coffee.

edited 25th Sep '15 2:16:16 PM by KJMackley

So if SAG and the gaming companies do not reach an agreement, what would the alternative be for gaming companies?

It seems like SAG really only covers voice actors from LA, would this spur gaming companies to hire voice actors from New York, Texas, Canada or England? I heard Mike Mc Farland, a Texas based voice actor, supports the strike, but would most Texas based actors follow suit? There is not much SAG can do to dissuade voice actors from other English speaking countries from taking roles in video games, Canada and England are governed by different actor unions.

Or do you think more gaming companies would just have various staff members do the voice acting for games (which can have some bad results)?

edited 25th Sep '15 6:31:54 PM by Overlord

SAG-AFTRA is a national union. Actors in Texas and New York are more than likely members of it too.

The publishers don't have a lot of recourse in the event of a strike if they don't want to play ball. They could try going international, but international unions would probably have just as much of a problem with industry practices as American ones. They can go non-union, but after a non-union actor works a certain (rather small) amount, they're eligible to join the union, and 90% of performers are going to jump on that opportunity.

Actually Texas is a "right to work" state, so unions in general would have very little power there. Different unions also play by different rules, I don't know if ACTRA (the main Canadian actors union) is more or less likely to play ball with the gaming companies then SAG is.

edited 25th Sep '15 6:47:27 PM by Overlord

There's plenty of options. Other countries might offer better terms or cheaper pays (To compare with TV. There's a reason they film Non-Union in New Zealand).

That said most countries have actors unions.

edited 25th Sep '15 6:50:30 PM by CobraPrime

If the strike falls through (and it will) why would they bother?

I'd be quite surprised if a failed strike didn't have an influence on other voice acting ventures, especially since companies are ultimately more interested in turning a profit than having perceived "quality".

edited 25th Sep '15 6:55:16 PM by Grounder

Does New Zealand have a fairly big voice acting community?

It seems like traditional "hubs" for voice acting in the English speaking world are: LA, New York, Texas, Vancouver, Toronto and London. LA is obviously the biggest. New York and Texas are known for anime dubs (though there have been some games recorded in those markets). Vancouver and Toronto have had various anime dubs and American cartoons productions done there (not many games voiced in Canada though). I have seen a few games with a London voice cast: Dragon Quest 8, Fable, the Last Story for example. Outside of LA, SAG doesn't have much influence on these voice acting markets, though I'm not sure which be considered the "best" if LA is off the table (the vast majority of games seem to be done in LA).

You mean like American cartoons? I doubt that would change anything, the big media companies that make American cartoons have to deal with SAG actors for their their other projects, they are going to alienate them just to make a cheaper cartoon (though cartoons have had Canadian voice casts to save money in the past.) A lot of anime dubs are already done in non union studios.

Of all the gaming companies, I bet Disney and WB would be the most willing to deal with SAG, because they are used to dealing with them. Companies like EA who are not used to dealing with SAG, may plat hard ball.

edited 25th Sep '15 7:06:01 PM by Overlord

Hire scabs. They'd have to fall back on hiring non-union voice actors.

Well if they hire voice actors from Canada or England or any other English speaking country, those wouldn't be scabs though? SAG doesn't have influence in those countries, where actors are governed by different organizations, unless SAG can convince say ACTRA to help them with their strike.

That wouldn't be particularly difficult. I know a lot of people who are part of Equity or ACTRA who support SAG-AFTRA in this effort.

edited 25th Sep '15 7:38:09 PM by BadWolf21

But even if SAG gets support from other unions in other English speaking countries, there is still the non union voice actors from New York and Texas.

The only way this strike works, is if SAG manages to cuts off almost all quality voice actors from the gaming companies, forcing the game companies to choose between them and having Julie from Accounting do their voices for them. It is far more difficult to police the voice acting industry then it is to police the on camera acting industry.

Unions are not all powerful, their job is to look out for the interests of their particular community but they have very little legal leverage. They can't sue corporations for not using their people (excepting if they already have contracts with the union). Instead the power they wield lies in the size of the community they have. Strikes are one way they can negotiate but their biggest bargaining power is essentially in blacklisting, setting the rest of the business infrastructure against them. During strikes companies will pay non-union workers what seems to be more money to keep business going, but are actually saving money short term because they are not paying union employee benefits.

I think the only VA who does Video Games and Anime regularly is Sean Schemmel. Granted, that's because he's fucking Goku.

I thought Chi-chi was fucking Goku.

Does she know about this?

Goku always struck me as the kind of director who would cast on ability.

Shame.

There's also Steve Blum, though he's slowed down on the anime roles in recent years.

Laura Bailey and Yuri Lowenthal also tend to juggle both.

edited 30th Sep '15 5:27:01 AM by Lionheart0

Steve Blum I know for being Wolverine

edited 30th Sep '15 7:20:46 AM by powerpuffbats

Jim Sterling did a video on this.

The comments... well, they were youtube comments all right. It seems like only a handful of people care enough to support union action.

I dunno, I'm seeing some interesting discussions along with the usual internet 'experts'.

edited 30th Sep '15 8:17:52 AM by edvedd

That's because to a lot of people "union" translates to "group of assholes."

Which, fortunately, is irrelevant from the point of view of these negotiations, as the SAG-AFTRA folks only have to deal with video game executives, not hordes of Internet commenters. As rabid as fans can be, I can't see them boycotting games because the voice actors earn residuals and get reasonable working conditions.

edited 30th Sep '15 1:38:32 PM by Fighteer

It certainly doesn't seem to bother them for every other medium these performers work in.

Apparently, they voted yes.

Of course they would; for better or worse, unions run off of groupthink.

If they didn't, they'd never get anything done!

Good.