Videogame Performers' Union Hails New 80-Game Agreement as Preserving Human Creativity (apnews.com) 18
This week after striking for over a month, videogame performers reached agreements with 80 games this week, reports the Associated Press. "SAG-AFTRA announced the agreements with the 80 individual video games on Thursday. Performers impacted by the work stoppage can now work on those projects.
"The strike against other major video game publishers, including Disney and Warner Bros.' game companies and Electronic Arts Productions Inc., will continue." The interim agreement secures wage improvements, protections around "exploitative uses" of artificial intelligence and safety precautions that account for the strain of physical performances, as well as vocal stress. The tiered budget agreement aims to make working with union talent more feasible for independent game developers or smaller-budget projects while also providing performers the protections under the interim agreement.
Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG-AFTRA's national executive director and chief negotiator, said in a statement that companies signing the agreements are "helping to preserve the human art, ingenuity and creativity that fuels interactive storytelling."
"These agreements signal that the video game companies in the collective bargaining group do not represent the will of the larger video game industry," Crabtree-Ireland continued. "The many companies that are happy to agree to our AI terms prove that these terms are not only reasonable, but feasible and sustainable for businesses."
Deadline calls the agreement "a blow for major developers." As Deadline previously reported, AI is the one and only issue at the crux of this strike, as the union has managed to find common ground with the developers on every other provision. More specifically, the union has said that the sticking point in these negotiations is encompassing all performers in any AI provisions, without loopholes related to whether an actors' likeness is recognizable. In video games, similar to other forms of animated content, motion capture performers and voice actors are often performing as creatures or other non-human characters that make their voice and likeness unrecognizable.
"The strike against other major video game publishers, including Disney and Warner Bros.' game companies and Electronic Arts Productions Inc., will continue." The interim agreement secures wage improvements, protections around "exploitative uses" of artificial intelligence and safety precautions that account for the strain of physical performances, as well as vocal stress. The tiered budget agreement aims to make working with union talent more feasible for independent game developers or smaller-budget projects while also providing performers the protections under the interim agreement.
Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG-AFTRA's national executive director and chief negotiator, said in a statement that companies signing the agreements are "helping to preserve the human art, ingenuity and creativity that fuels interactive storytelling."
"These agreements signal that the video game companies in the collective bargaining group do not represent the will of the larger video game industry," Crabtree-Ireland continued. "The many companies that are happy to agree to our AI terms prove that these terms are not only reasonable, but feasible and sustainable for businesses."
Deadline calls the agreement "a blow for major developers." As Deadline previously reported, AI is the one and only issue at the crux of this strike, as the union has managed to find common ground with the developers on every other provision. More specifically, the union has said that the sticking point in these negotiations is encompassing all performers in any AI provisions, without loopholes related to whether an actors' likeness is recognizable. In video games, similar to other forms of animated content, motion capture performers and voice actors are often performing as creatures or other non-human characters that make their voice and likeness unrecognizable.
Doomed (Score:2)
Whoever augments their team with AI will have a massive financial advantage over other development teams, and there are far more potential devs out there than there are publishers.
Even if they won wholly and completed right now, somewhere someone trying to break into the industry would create a game using AI assistance and self-publish.
Trying to stop this is like trying to put a mushroom cloud back into a nuclear warhead.
Re: (Score:2)
Yup, just like programmers. AI will eventually supplant them. Someone will come along and develop software using only AI.
Trying to stop this is like trying to put a mushroom cloud back into a nuclear warhead.
Re: (Score:2)
It seems you are unaware of the definition of the word augment.
Hint: it is not a synonym for replace.
Re: (Score:2)
It's only a matter of time, hence GP's use of the word 'eventually'.
This SAG-AFTRA agreement is also only postponing execution. Even with it, there will be game devs who just use AI voices trained on no-name voice acting, or just a bunch of public domain data.
The AI voices will only get better. Initially there will be a bit of a lack of quality, but for many devs it will be good enough. At the same time it will also give these devs the advantage to dynamically generate all voice lines in real time in almost
Re: Doomed (Score:2)
The union is basically just waging a war against big publishers. Indie developers usually can't even afford professional actors to begin with. Whenever they figure out how to replace them with generative AI, the actors will just price themselves out of the market as the bigger publishers adapt to the smaller, more agile indie developers. If their contracts don't allow them to do this, then they just go out of business. Either way, consumers get richer game experiences without price increases.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see how the union is going to win here. Voice cloning is already amazing and runs on a toaster quality $250 laptop. We're only a couple years away from being able to talk to the cloned voice and coach it to say what you want, how you want. Voice acting won't ever fully go away, but it's effectively dead as a career option for new people entering the market as of January 1, 2024. Voice actors will all eventually age out and it'll be exceedingly rare by 2040.
Re: Doomed (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Most likely they were busy working in the typing pool listening to dictation machines and transcribing doctor's notes into forms with carbon paper.
Or working as a telephone operator manually connecting phone lines at a switchboard.
Or as a gas station attendant, pumping gas, checking the oil, tire pressure, and washing the wind screen for each customer.
Or as an elevator operator, ferrying people up and down to the correct floor and aligning the elevator to the floor evenly.
Or as a farrier, blacksmith, wheelw
Re: (Score:2)
> Imagine telling someone in 1999 that you worked on SEO for a new cloud storage company.
Imagine explaining to someone in 2030 that you used to parse your own search results
Re: (Score:1)
Luckily (Score:2)
Will not last. (Score:2)
What's going to happen is some small company is going to develop the tech using regular people rather than actors. As for the character, it will be a generated so it will not be modeled after anyone's specific likeness. That company is going to get bought and then it's endgame. This is a stall tactic at best.
Union vs non-union shops (Score:2)
using regular people rather than actors
And that's fine as long as you are willing to limit yourself to non SAG-AFTRA actors for all your projects. But if you decide that one specific project would really sell better with Scarlett Johansson's voice, you will have to sign _all_ of those "regular people" with the union. Or if it's a spin-off of a movie with known actors and you have to use or sample their voices, all of your sources will have to become union members. The studios (from whom you must negotiate rights) will insist. Because it's in the
Re: (Score:2)
Pff... oh please. Fame is fleeting.
The part they want is the tireless self-promotion and fandom. They can easily get these elements MUCH cheaper by using the likeness of trendy "influencers".
if you decide that one specific project would really sell better with Scarlett Johansson's voice...
then your product was shit to start with.
Re: (Score:2)
They really need the motion capture done with "actors" based in the US? Why not buy the already captured motion from a company overseas?
Artists SUPPRESSING creativity with their argument (Score:2)
These artists claiming AI will take their jobs do so because they want to own creativity--suppressing the the creativity of those who do not have the skills or talent to create a unique piece of art with their own hands. I am one such person who does not have the ability to sketch, draw or paint my creations, but I have the visions in my mind and can create the characters with prose. BUT... I want to see those creations with my own eyes, to every detail... which not even the BEST artists I've used have been
Congrats! (Score:2)
So new companies that use AI will dominate (Score:2)
So, what I can see from this is that these existing video game businesses will eventually have to go out of business because they pay for actual live human beings to do something that is easily replicated by an AI.
New businesses that grow up using AI exclusively will come to the front and eat their lunch due to the cost differences.