Hollywood’s video game performers voted to go on strike Thursday, throwing part of the entertainment industry into another work stoppage after talks for a new contract with major game studios broke down over artificial intelligence protections.
The strike — the second for video game voice actors and motion capture performers under the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists — will begin at 12:01 a.m. Friday. The move comes after nearly two years of negotiations with gaming giants, including divisions of Activision, Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Co., over a new interactive media agreement.
SAG-AFTRA negotiators say gains have been made over wages and job safety in the video game contract, but that the studios will not make a deal over the regulation of generative AI. Without guardrails, game companies could train AI to replicate an actor’s voice, or create a digital replica of their likeness without consent or fair compensation, the union said.
Decades ago, Hand drawn animators go on strike because computers make it faster and require less skill.
Making a simple scene requires the making of models and background or environment. The environment has to be made separately. A model requires the actual 3d models geometry, rigging (in order for the geometry to move), textures to give the model a surface, and an animator which blocks the movement frame by frame. Then you’d also need someone exclusively animating the camera, and depending on the production pipeline a different process of making special effects and shaders to treat the illumination and materials. Some of these parts can be made by the same person but usually, specially in high quality productions, a different highly trained specialist will handle each part separately. Each is an art form that requires lots of education, skills and hours of labor to make.
For instance, the most recent spider man animated film, Across the Spider-Verse, took roughly 5 years to produce. For contrast, Snow White, the first animated film took roughly 4 years to make. Just because something is computer animated doesn’t mean it was easier or took less time to make. Most computer animators receive training in classical 2d animation, as most basic skills and principles are transferrable. Also, most 3d animated films today include a lot of digital 2d work to achieve the artists desired vision.
Decades ago, Hand drawn animators go on strike
Decades hence, you will still messed up tense in your writing.
They deserve the best deals and pay, but I do hope ai is implemented in gaming. Massive RPGs would benefit so much from ai generated convos with NPCs and using ai to help make combat and encounters better. You can’t have a voice actor in a studio delivering unlimited dialogue anyways, so it’s not like putting ai in there to do that is a bad idea imo
Main voices and significant side characters of the story, I agree. But for some random NPCs that just add to the ambience of the environment, I think A.I can fill those roles. It just would be too cost prohibitive to hire actors for every single character voice. The developers would just not do it or they just repeat the same dialogue over and over again and that gets monotonous.
I say this as a writer who also used to work in videogames.
Next up writers being replaced by AI, because all that side content is just tedious and expensive to write for being just random stuff.
Good luck with that stance then.
I agree. That will also need to happen. It’s impossible for writers to write what will be needed in the future of gaming.
Imagine something like GTA where you are able to enter any building and any room within it and there will be NPCs in most of them. How are you going to write for all of that, never mind act?
Aren’t those minor roles exactly how people get their start in voice acting and start building up their resumes? Actors have to have a place to get their start, too.
I’m not talking about what is currently available. I’m talking about the future in gaming. Worlds are growing. You can’t have like 5,000 unique actors in a game world… nor dialogue being written for all of them. The amount of dialogue writers would have to come up with is astronomical.
There will be games where you’ll go to full restaurant and walk around various tables where they’re will be dialogue that means nothing to the story but adds to the environment. Or just random people walking down the street.
Then there will be times where a small side character you approach will give you a side mission… those are the ones you’ll want live actors for.
Game companies will lose money if they had to pay everyone for what the future holds.
Or the alternative would be… They just wouldn’t do it. Same amount of jobs are created. Probably fewer jobs as you wouldn’t need to test as much.
I’m not talking about what is currently available. I’m talking about the future in gaming.
So am I. Where are the future voice actors who wolud voice the major roles going to come from if the jobs they depend on to start out and get their foot in the door/build up their resumes at the beginning of their careers are gone?
It’s over for artists of all types saddly
I wonder how AI Bros will defend Hollywood in this instance.
What makes you think they would? I might be considered that by some and I don’t want AI used in place of real actors because human actors bring something unique to their performances an AI never could. If the actor agrees to allow an AI mimic due to scheduling problems for ADR or whatever, they should get paid every cent they would’ve been if they’d recorded it themselves.
Maybe I’m not AI Bro enough to be on the wrong side of this.
There are many types of AI Bros. They can be researchers who like to explore and develop the potential of AI, others who like to see AI-related research and like to explain how AI works to people who are not into the subject. Finally, there are those who say you can make money with a few steps or by doing nothing.
others who like to see AI-related research and like to explain how AI works to people who are not into the subject
This. And I’m fairly out of step with the zeitgeist as far as AI “plagerism” goes.
But I don’t think AI is a replacement for an actual human, nor do I think it should be. Or could be. It’s a toy. It’s a tool, but it is not a product because it is inherently unreliable and inferior, and given the limitations of the current technology I believe it always will be - at least until they build something completely different from the current technology.
