[HN Gopher] Sag-AFTRA votes unanimously to expand its strike to ...
___________________________________________________________________
Sag-AFTRA votes unanimously to expand its strike to include the
games industry
Author : czottmann
Score : 200 points
Date : 2023-09-03 13:17 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.eurogamer.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.eurogamer.net)
| polski-g wrote:
| I thought writers were using video game jobs as an income source
| during the movie strike. So how are they going to pay their rents
| with zero income, now?
| mistercow wrote:
| SAG-AFTRA is actors, not writers. You're thinking of WGA.
| orange_joe wrote:
| This is the actors union.
| aurizon wrote:
| A bridge too far for the catherds...
| pyrophane wrote:
| Like commercials, a lot of VA work is non-union, so the impact of
| this would most likely be felt by the absence of "stars" from the
| big AAA titles.
| davidg109 wrote:
| Sounds desperate on behalf of SAG-AFTRA. I call bullshit.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| I fully support people getting paid for their work, and these
| actors deserve it. However -- when it comes to video games I
| personally do not mind if there is no voice acting, and I often
| will play the game on silent with some other source of audio
| playing alongside. Unsure of the impact of this one.
| capableweb wrote:
| That's great, but do you think that's how the majority of
| people play video games? If all voice actors disappeared,
| people would just be "huh, oh well"?
| echelon wrote:
| TTS for dialogue will be high quality in a few short years.
|
| You'll be able to dial knobs for the voice itself - pitch,
| timbre, gender, age. Then adjust more knobs for emotional
| control (or infer it from other cues).
|
| This will allow for fully-dynamic storytelling where the
| characters know your name and can respond to your infinite
| array of actions.
| Ekaros wrote:
| May be not all. But certainly if those under SAG-AFTRA did
| certainly. I don't remember specific actor adding much to my
| experience ever. I don't even recognize their voices or
| names, so can't be bothered.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| What games do you like? The voice actors in games like
| Uncharted, Mass Effect, Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption,
| and God f War made a huge impact on the game and deserve
| credit, recognition, and financial reward. Games are in
| incredibly diverse medium though. I mostly play Hunt
| Showdown, and the only voice acting is the grunt of punch
| or cry why getting shot.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Those could have been done as well with other voice-
| actors. And be good enough in their jobs. Are you
| seriously telling me there is absolutely no as skilled
| people available outside SAG-AFTRA?
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Can I remind you what you claimed?
|
| _I don 't remember specific actor adding much to my
| experience ever._
|
| If that's true, maybe you've only played games without
| quality voice actors, and they should have tapped into
| some SAG-AFTRA talent. Because if you had played any of
| the games I mentioned, it would be absurd to claim that
| none of voice actors added much to the experience.
|
| To answer you new question, "Are you seriously telling me
| there is absolutely no as skilled people available
| outside SAG-AFTRA?"
|
| No, I never said anything at all like that. I am only
| saying voice actors can add value and be memorable.
|
| You could find a comparably talented person outside the
| SAG-AFTRA, who could do an amazing job. But that new
| person would also add to the experience, be memorable,
| and deserve recognition and remuneration.
| capableweb wrote:
| Again, fun to hear your personal experience, but you think
| this is how majority of people playing video games would
| react?
| Ekaros wrote:
| Yes absolutely. Majority could not care less about these
| actors. And no one should. Just find comparable or
| superior talent outside this pool.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If this were really a widely held opinion, the Halo
| series wouldn't have shilled out for Nathan Fillion.
| These orgs don't spend money on voice acting for the
| artistic purity of it.
| Ekaros wrote:
| As if executives really know what is truly good for their
| products.
|
| How much better did Patrick Stewart make Oblivion? How
| better was the game from him being part of it?
| doktrin wrote:
| After multiple rounds of doubling and tripling down on
| your dubiously representative stance you have now reached
| the "game development studios don't know how to make
| games" stage.
|
| Maybe stop and consider what led you here, and if this is
| really a position you sincerely believe and wish to
| defend.
| Ekaros wrote:
| And you have entirely failed to provide whatsoever any
| proof that SAG-AFTRA voice actors are at all needed in
| video games. Like there must be some research on this?
| That prove that they positively affect sales.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| You're not a party to the contract, so frankly, who cares.
|
| I doubt that the working actor who is in the background of
| you favorite TV show does much for your experience. But he
| still needs to get paid.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| This is a good point, others may have a strong preference for
| it. But I have found that most games, at least in the indie
| space, completely lack any voice acting or it is just done by
| the developers themselves.
| bluepod4 wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| > and I often will play the game on silent with some other
| source of audio playing alongside.
|
| GP doesn't listen to _any_ sounds coming from games. That
| means sound effects, background music, etc.
|
| That claim is so interesting to me. I don't doubt it. But
| following GP's logic, he must also think music composers for
| games aren't important either.
|
| Imagine Ocarina of Time being played without sound lol. Or
| even a music game being played without sound.
|
| Or even games like Overwatch. There might be accessibility
| modes but if you don't turn them on, you're going to be SOL
| when someone on the enemy team does an audio cue and is about
| to ult and you can't see them.
|
| _I do play games without sound sometimes. (For example, you
| don't really need audio cues for League and I won't listen to
| sound if my hair is drying and I don't want to put the
| headphones on.) But it depends on the game and the
| circumstances, of course. That's what I think a reasonable
| person would say lol_
|
| Back to specifically voice acting, I do recall the Overwatch
| voice actors having a huge fan base early on.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| This is a good point about the music, I do find it
| important.
|
| But I also pay for musical soundtracks separately if I am
| able (Bandcamp.com), those musicians can get money from me
| by making the album available for purchase and I do.
|
| But if I recall the musicians are not on strike and not the
| topic of the article that was shared.
| bluepod4 wrote:
| > But if I recall the musicians are not on strike and not
| the topic of the article that was shared.
|
| I know, but you said in general that you don't listen to
| _any_ sound. Maybe you shouldn't have _ended_ your
| original comment like that lol.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| I agree with the GP,
|
| When I play games I turn off Music, and skip cut scenes, I
| want to play a game not watch a movie. If i want a movie I
| watch a movie...
|
| the FPS I only leave on sounds required for the game, and
| most of the time I have my own music, youtube or some
| podcast on in the background as i am playing.
|
| For non-FPS games, I turn off the sound completely.
|
| I suspect my style of game play is more common that you
| would believe.
|
| If voice actors disappears from gaming, I would not notice
| at all.
| nottorp wrote:
| To add my 2 cents, when I play a text heavy game like a
| RPG and it has voice acting, I miss most of it because I
| skip the dialogue as soon as i finish reading it. If you
| make games please provide a skip button for those of us
| who can read.
|
| However our preferences aren't the point of the article.
| It's the actors being cloned by the generative stuff
| that's in fashion without compensation that is.
|
| As a gamer, based on the output of the image generators
| and chatgpt that i've seen, games making use of "AI"
| generated content will be borefests and I'll skip them
| anyway.
| samstave wrote:
| What I love about Baldurs gate 3 is how you can skip
| easily dialog and cut scenes, but what I love is just
| walking away from the game to do other random stuff and
| because it's turn based I don't have to pause and I just
| come back and play a bit whenever and so i take many
| frequent little breaks.
| bluepod4 wrote:
| > I want to play a game not watch a movie.
|
| But then you miss out on the story. (Also, cut scenes
| usually aren't that long lol.) I do sometimes speed up
| when NPCs speak because I can read faster. But when I do
| this too much, it actually begins to feel like the game
| is pointless.
|
| > I suspect my style of game play is more common that you
| would believe.
|
| Nope. If you read my original comment, I also
| acknowledged that I sometimes play games without sound. I
| also use YouTube while playing games.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>But then you miss out on the story.
|
| Very rarely do I care.. I am wanting to blow things up,
| shoot something, etc.
|
| if I want the story I can just go find the YT Video
| someone made of all the cut scenes played back to back...
|
| //for the record, I am the type that loves spoliers, and
| reads about the ending of a movie while I am watching
| it... it does not "spoil" it for me.
| bluepod4 wrote:
| I enjoy spoilers also. But if the game is _story-driven_
| , then I do feel skipping cutscenes makes me miss out on
| the story or become confused and start to care less about
| the game (e.g. Diablo IV)
|
| But yes, a point I made in my original comment is that
| this all depends on the specific game and your
| circumstances whether and how much sound you listen to.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > I suspect my style of game play is more common that you
| would believe.
|
| What % of people playing games do you think play it this
| way?
| aaomidi wrote:
| "I fully support people getting paid for their work, however"
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| If this does happen, I'm assuming Kojima Productions will attempt
| to get an exemption to work under the demanded terms, like a few
| A24 movies have in the film strike. (if that's even possible with
| how they do texture scanning/motion capture of so many people)
|
| I don't know of any other studios who include so many "big name"
| actors.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Despite this being clickbait, its a nice space to have this
| discussion
|
| I also find this to be a losing battle, and its kind of rich too,
| since Hollywood only grew by disregarding all the entrenched
| interested in NYC. To think the same won't happen to Hollywood or
| this current incarnation requires being stuck in every stage of
| grief, specifically bargaining and denial.
|
| Its not apathy if some of us can skip straight to acceptance of
| the terminal illness of being superceded.
| JCharante wrote:
| It's a free country, but I don't think most people care about
| voice actors. Lots of people skip cutscenes and turn down the
| dialogue volume.
| btown wrote:
| This is an incredibly editorialized headline that blurs the
| distinction between SAG-AFTRA leadership and membership, and the
| article itself contradicts the title in the very first paragraph:
|
| > In a statement posted to its official website, the union
| confirmed its board had "voted unanimously" to "send a strike
| authorisation vote to SAG-AFTRA members" in interactive media
| ahead of its "forthcoming bargaining dates with video game
| companies".
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/02/business/sag-aftra-strike-str...
| has more details that this is just one of multiple steps:
|
| > While a strike authorization does not launch a strike, it can
| be a useful tool at the bargaining table because it gives the
| union the ability to declare a strike if negotiations break down.
| Eligible SAG-AFTRA members will be able to vote on authorizing a
| strike until September 25 at 5 p.m. PT, the evening before
| discussions resume.
|
| If and when membership does authorize a strike, we would see
| language akin to this announcement: https://www.sagaftra.org/sag-
| aftra-members-approve-strike-au...
| smfugit wrote:
| The UN report on the Attention Economy says 0.5% of content
| produced is consumed.
|
| No other industry works like this. And thats without any AI
| involvement.
|
| In that context this entire fight between creators and content
| publishers/distributors is a gigantic farce.
|
| We are already drowning in an ever growing ocean of content.
| These people want to be rewarded without doing any single thing
| to reduce the size of that ocean. They think the ocean will
| alway expand. Its just as absurd to watch as the sub prime
| crisis.
| dwaite wrote:
| I don't understand this statistic - even a child's macaroni
| picture gets seen by their teachers and parents.
| sitkack wrote:
| But does it get savored?
| JambalayaJim wrote:
| What does 0.5% of content even mean? Are you referring to
| content people are actually paid to produce?
| jart wrote:
| I'd say that sounds accurate for open source projects.
| Calculate how many GitHub projects have a "used by"
| section.
| __loam wrote:
| He's right in that art consumption is an attention based
| economy. 0.5% would not surprise me. I think his conclusion
| is wrong though. He seems to question the need for a strike
| in the economic environment he described, but that
| environment is exactly why organized labor is important.
| Unions can make trying to pursue creative work
| professionally slightly more bearable.
| crazygringo wrote:
| If you're including every amateur unpaid artist, then
| sure maybe 0.5%.
|
| BUT if you're talking about paid professional TV and film
| production (the context of SAG-AFTRA), probably something
| like 95% of content that is written, shot and edited into
| a final product makes it to audiences. After all, that
| stuff is _expensive_.
|
| By the hour, most of that content is TV shows. Most of
| the unseen ~5% is produced pilot episodes that didn't get
| picked up for a full season. And a small amount will be
| films that halted production midway, or turned out to be
| so bad they weren't released.
| wolfgang42 wrote:
| Assuming this[1] is the report you're referring to:
|
| _> By the 2000s, so much information was being generated
| worldwide that only a small fraction (0.5% in 2015) of the
| digital_ data _generated was being_ analyzed _at all._
| [emphasis mine]
|
| Not only is it 'data analyzed' and not 'content consumed,'
| but I can't figure out what they mean by 'analyzed' either.
| Reading the rest of the paragraph makes me think that this is
| talking about things like clickstream data that businesses
| love to collect "so we can use big data to enhance user
| engagement" and then leave to pile up in their data warehouse
| once they discover that data analysis is hard; if so, this
| statistic is unrelated to the production:consumption ratio of
| "content" in the sense of things that people might want to
| look at on its own merits.
|
| [1]: https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/attention_econ
| omy_...
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Is this some thinly veiled comment against video gaming?
| crazygringo wrote:
| Calling it "incredibly editorialized" is generous.
|
| The headline is just flat-out 100% completely false.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| I'm surprised eurogamer would stoop so low for clicks, I
| thought they were a reputable publication...
| xtirpation wrote:
| For disclosures sake, I used to work in the games industry
| and don't anymore but I hold a huge bias against "games
| journalism" sites.
|
| At times like this I think it's good to remember Knoll's
| law, that other pieces you've read on Eurogamer are
| similarly flawed and inaccurate.
| local_person wrote:
| Please, please go on. I would love to hear about why you
| feel that way (I do as well, but it's just from reading
| Kotaku)
| klausa wrote:
| Yeah, it's scandalous that a site called _Euro_gamer does
| not have the expertise to understand the difference between
| an american labor union voting on a strike and an american
| labor union _board_ suggesting a vote on a strike.
| andybak wrote:
| Is American practice in this regard radically different
| to Europe?
| klausa wrote:
| Well, there's no unified legal frameworks for them across
| all of _Europe_, for starters.
|
| But in many places there's no need to get the members to
| authorize the strike, the union itself holds that power
| (I am at least 99% sure that's the case in Germany and
| France, at the very least.)
| Tomte wrote:
| In Germany members have to vote for a strike and also for
| ending a strike. The term is "Urabstimmung".
| klausa wrote:
| Right, yes, I oversimplified.
|
| You don't need a vote for ,,Warnstreik" (warning strike),
| which frequently is enough to make a point, which makes
| the ,,real"/open-ended strikes much more rare than
| otherwise.
|
| AFAICT all strikes I've ever seen happen here (the
| plethora of different train and airport unions) were
| technically warning strikes and not ,,real" ones; but
| they were enough to get the unions their wins.
| dvt wrote:
| I don't understand your point. It follows that if they
| don't have the expertise, than maybe they should not have
| published the article, no?
| klausa wrote:
| I think there's a world of difference between "someone
| misunderstood something and published an incorrect
| article" and "someone deliberately wrote misleading
| headline".
|
| My reading of GP disappointed post was that they were
| accusing them of the latter; which is, in my opinion,
| underserved here.
| dvt wrote:
| > I think there's a world of difference between "someone
| misunderstood something and published an incorrect
| article" and "someone deliberately wrote misleading
| headline".
|
| There's a difference, but I don't really see the "world"
| of difference. They both seem like fundamentally
| irresponsible journalism. Case (a) should never happen
| because there's an assumption of due diligence, and case
| (b) should never happen because there's an assumption of
| truth-seeking. Not doing due diligence is pretty close to
| ignoring (or at the very least not caring about) the
| truth.
| klausa wrote:
| I think in an ideal world you're basically right.
|
| In the world we're living in, with the incentives of
| modern journalism being what they are (and the state of
| gaming media industry specifically), I'm willing to cut
| more slack to people writing about things outside their
| comfort zone.
| kepler1 wrote:
| Last I heard, Hollywood actors and writers weren't being abused,
| deceived, or coerced into working in this industry. They're not
| working under hazardous conditions or agreeing to false terms of
| work. It seems that there are people who want to work for the
| wages that are offered, the group just isn't happy with what
| they're being paid.
|
| Aside from the consequences of their collective ability to
| withhold labor and ability to penalize those who don't join their
| union, can anyone explain why we should support them?
|
| Why should I be glad to see actors strike for more $, any more
| than I would be happy to see plumbers strike so that they can
| charge me even more for work?
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| Do it! Strike! Remove the worst 3 features of modern games:
| hollywood celebrities, motion capture, voice acting.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I wonder if a lot of the money issues could be fixed by the union
| implementing a better distribution of income. Seems like
| inequality in Hollywood is even worse than other industries.
| aaomidi wrote:
| That's what the union is seeking.
| dbish wrote:
| Shouldn't they start with the actors in their union then if
| that's what they really care about? Some of the people
| protesting make crazy amounts of money themselves, if they
| want to show equality matters to them, should they start by
| redistributing the big actors' income?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Exactly what I was getting at. Many of the people struggle
| and make very little. Then you have some A listers making
| obscene money.
| zenexer wrote:
| Some of them are at least giving back a little:
| https://archive.ph/CMpee
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| No, pitting members of the union against each other would
| be an absolutely stupid idea. The union is supposed to be
| working to benefit all of their members.
| ars wrote:
| They wouldn't have to "seek" it if their output was actually
| worth what they are asking for. It would simply be the
| competitive rate. The actual problem is there are way way way
| too many members in the union, so there's simply not enough
| work for all of them. Is it any surprise they make so little?
| jncfhnb wrote:
| The AI debate is pretty dumb imo. It's not a winnable fight.
| Background actors and stunt people and minor voice actors are
| ultimately fungible. The tech will soon arrive that such things
| are easily generated at an extent and quality that it's cheaper
| to do it with an all digital pipeline without models that are
| trained on these people or are perhaps trained on them in
| countries where any hard won battles here are ignored. You won't
| have 30 background actors. You'll have one digital artist with
| tools. You might have 30x as many movies if you're lucky.
| espadrine wrote:
| > _It's not a winnable fight. Background actors and stunt
| people and minor voice actors are ultimately fungible._
|
| Guessing the future is hard, but I'll try to change your mind
| by comparing future change to past change.
|
| AI came for chess. When it became superhuman, did chess
| professionals go out of a job? Not really; people come to the
| tournament for the story, for the human achievement. VAs are
| under the same scope: people want to see stars form, even when
| they are microcelebrities. I don't doubt that there will be an
| increase in AI-generated content and a paying public, just like
| there are people right now that pay to watch AIs play chess
| against each other. But it doesn't remove the genuine article.
|
| (Contrary to what many believe will happen, they weren't
| replaced by people that use AI either.)
|
| As a cherry on top, while the game AIs are policy-based RL and
| can become superhuman with no human data to bootstrap it, LLMs
| currently are effectively SL and need to feed off human data.
| If the production of the latter dropped, the results would
| decline.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| The existence of masters and stars are irrelevant to the
| minor voice actors and stunt actors and background actors I
| was referring to in the quote you responded to
| zinodaur wrote:
| I can't wait for the games that let you talk to NPCs in
| natural language, and have them respond in natural language.
| They might even be able to take limited actions based on the
| outcome of the conversation.
|
| I 100% support bleeding whatever you can out of the
| megacorps, but I don't know if I'd rely on VA careers long
| term
| gamblor956 wrote:
| You'll probably die before that happens...
|
| It's hard enough for humans to understand natural language
| spoken by other humans, and we have the biology for it.
|
| Current methods of "AI" or machine "learning" are not going
| to get us there; these methods (especially LLMs) are
| incapable of the understanding needed for natural language
| processing or actual AI.
| krisoft wrote:
| > You'll probably die before that happens...
|
| Why?
|
| "I can't wait for the games that let you talk to NPCs in
| natural language, and have them respond in natural
| language."
|
| That is as simple as popping together a speech-to-text
| model with an LLM and pipe the output to a text-to-speech
| module.
|
| We can have a demo by tomorrow, and something actually
| enjoyable in a week. The challenges are purely of
| engineering (to for example reduce the latency so the
| conversation flows, and to fit the models on the average
| consumer's hardware) and art direction (what do you want
| the npc to say?).
|
| To make the npc act on the conversation is a bit harder,
| but stil within weeks.
|
| > Current methods of "AI" or machine "learning" are not
| going to get us there
|
| Get us where? :) I think you are way overthinking it.
| What do you think is so unachiavable about what the
| commenter wrote?
| Avamander wrote:
| I'd say it's an obvious negotiation tactic.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I think you're misunderstanding the debate.
|
| This isn't mostly about background actors -- digital extras are
| already widely used for things like large crowd scenes. And
| it's far cheaper currently to hire an extra to be a bartender
| who hands the main character a drink, than to 3D render that --
| so it's not about that either.
|
| It's about studios wanting to own the likenesses and voices of
| every actor they hire for a project, so they can hire someone
| with a really unique look for a single episode, then be able to
| produce the rest of the season with a cheaper actor and use AI
| to do a face swap and voice swap.
|
| And that's unacceptable. Actors should be able to retain the
| rights to their likenesses, end of story. A standard contract
| shouldn't require that an actor signs over all rights to their
| likeness _for an entire series_ just in order to be paid _for a
| single episode_. That 's not right.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| This.
|
| This is exactly what the studios tried to demand in their
| original offer, and it's the reason why SAGAFTRA went on
| strike instead of negotiating.
| rhdunn wrote:
| But the other extreme of saying no AI ever is also untenable.
| If SAG-AFTRA get that demand, it then means productions like
| Rogue One (AI Leia and Moff Tarkin), The Mandalorian (AI
| Luke), and de-aged Professor Xavier and Magnito in the X-Men
| are not possible.
|
| It also prevents an aspiring writer from using AI tools to
| help with the writing process -- not do it all for them, but
| work co-operatively like copilot and other auto-complete
| tools do for programming.
|
| Even using tools like Photoshop, Blender, Unreal Engine (as
| used in shows like The Mandalorian) could be dicey as they
| incorporate AI models and techniques. -- Would things like
| NVidia's AI upscaling tech count for raytraced CGI? (I ask as
| it looks like SAG-AFTRA are after a blanket AI ban, not just
| around actor voice/image or writer text.)
|
| Another thing that the production companies could do is to
| use public domain audio, video, and scripts as SAG-AFTRA
| cannot ban the use if AI on those.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Nobody's saying no AI ever.
|
| The union is just saying that if you want the rights to use
| an actor's likeness without actually employing the actor to
| act, you have to pay separately for that, and pay what it's
| worth.
|
| Which makes perfect sense. In your example of a de-aged
| Luke Hammill in the Mandalorian, _Luke Hammill was paid $$$
| for that._ They didn 't get to cast him for free just
| because he was in previous Star Wars movies. Nor should
| they.
|
| That's all this is about. Go ahead and use AI, but _pay the
| actors for their likeness_. Don 't force them to give it
| away for free as a condition of doing a single episode.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| That's just insane though. People don't care about
| continuity in background actors or what they look like.
| Many background actors will be reused in different
| contexts as different people.
|
| If studios can apply their likeness to a cheaper actor,
| they can also apply a made up likeness to a cheaper
| actor. Or the likeness of a model. Or the likeness of a
| volunteer who thinks it'd be cool.
|
| The only case where this applies, maybe, is for
| characters with speaking roles that have enough positive
| reception that they have negotiating power for their cost
| to return for future works. But that's a tiny segment far
| removed from the majority of this guild. And if it's
| actually sensible to do this over hiring the actor then
| they could probably just do this from the beginning.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Why are you bringing up background actors?
|
| This isn't primarily about background actors (who usually
| aren't even members of SAG-AFTRA to begin with, because
| they usually don't even have acting training/experience
| or anything).
|
| This is primarily about working actors with lines but who
| aren't big stars able to negotiate their contracts --
| we're talking non-lead series regulars, guest stars,
| recurring guest stars, and the like. Because most actors
| are working for union minimums unless they're a series
| _lead_.
|
| In other words, the actors who make up 95% of the union.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Background actors are explicitly a main focus point of
| this. Read up on it more.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| No, that's stupid. Nobody cares about the likeness of nobody
| actors. They are completely fungible. And if the actors guild
| thinks this is the hill to die on then they may win the
| battle and lose the war by an enormous margin.
|
| the obvious near term future is that they don't even get the
| single episode.
|
| Your example is silly. Hire someone who is funny looking to
| be a bartender and then have someone cheaper do them later
| on? My dude, the funny looking bartender is already going to
| be as cheap as it gets because they're a nobody actor. And
| the barrier to face swapping a generated face that is just as
| good as the funny looking dude's onto a different nobody from
| the beginning is very small.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| If studios don't want to do it, then they should have no
| problem signing a contract saying they won't do it.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| I doubt this would be a major issue if this were the only
| demand. There are other demands that cost more money
| though.
|
| Glancing through them, these seem reasonable, but it is a
| difficult Union battle nonetheless.
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| I mostly agree, but the actors and all are worried that they
| will lose their bargaining power completely, and the studios
| are gonna do really crappy things like use their faces / bodies
| /voices with little to no compensation. It's not just about
| replacement, it's about wholesale theft of their persons.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| Reminds me of the Streamberry episode of Black Mirror
| https://black-mirror.fandom.com/wiki/Streamberry_Corporation
|
| Anyone know how Netflix agreed to air (and create a likeness
| to itsself) such an episode. I enjoyed the episode, and was
| impressed with Netflix's liberal stance on allowing this, and
| impressed with the cautionary tale it tells -- i'm surprised
| because it seems against Netflix's interests.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| The stupid part is the insistence that "their" faces are
| meaningful.
| deegles wrote:
| I just watched Oppenheimer, and I remember thinking how this
| would be much better as an HBO style multi season drama. But
| there's no way they'd be able to sign actors consistently for
| the many seasons it would take to cover all the material...
| using AI actors however, they would be able to keep consistent
| characters even as the actors switch out. Of course it's a race
| to the bottom, but think of all the talented actors who can't
| work because they don't have the right "look" and didn't get a
| lucky break.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| It's uncanny how much nuance and craftsmanship there is to
| Oppenheimer you need to just... discard in order to make it
| into an example of a property that would benefit from AI.
|
| If ever there was a movie that could only have been made by
| one person. If ever there was a movie that if it had been
| made by anyone else would have fallen along so much more
| standard and predictable lines.
|
| Ask an AI to create a talky 3 hour biopic with as few
| explosions as Oppenheimer, and people would flock to it at
| blockbuster levels. Go ahead. Keep clicking the generate
| button. Use the Nolan preset.
|
| There are so many movies you could argue wouldn't lose
| anything for being AI. I wouldn't even trade those for AI,
| but I acknowledge they exist. Marvel has about 30 alone.
|
| And if ever there was a technology more analogous to the bomb
| in terms of the need for their creators to have been more
| humble and prepared and less naive about their effect on the
| world before rather than after the invention, it's generative
| AI.
|
| Even if Murphy was a nepo baby, you're right there's
| unfairness in Hollywood, still we can't overlook how much we
| still need people and we can't be so naive as to think the
| same unfairness in human nature would just go away rather
| than simply start to benefit a different set of privileged
| people.
| hackermewz wrote:
| Did any actors or writers complain when a huge chunk of the
| studio and streaming tech work went overseas, native workers in
| the US lost jobs, and tech work got limited to a small sliver
| of connected individuals in south bay?
|
| Even today, if you are a white or black American it is very
| difficult to get jobs in the entertainment technology industry.
| You are told it is because the jobs are uber competitive and
| the workers are the best of the best...but then you see the
| workers that actually work there and they can barely speak
| articulate sentences.
| supertimor wrote:
| I mean, did the tech workers even complain when those jobs
| went overseas? Perhaps tech workers should try to unionize
| then. The only reason we are even talking about this is
| because the actor's and writer's unions give them a loud
| enough voice for the rest of the country to hear their
| complaints. Kind of disingenuous to put the blame on writer's
| and actor's not putting up a fuss when tech work got shipped
| overseas, when tech workers themselves didn't even bother to
| put up a fuss (or unionize).
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The AI debate is pretty dumb imo. It's not a winnable fight.
| Background actors and stunt people and minor voice actors are
| ultimately fungible.
|
| That is the power of solidarity: when the high profile actors
| say they'll go on strike to get AI banned, their voice will be
| heard. Almost all of those earning many millions of dollars now
| started as small scale actors or writers themselves, and while
| there are a few who got completely fucked over from affluenza,
| most still remember their roots and know who and what was
| responsible for _them_ being able to rise where they are.
|
| This is something that the IT industry could finally learn...
| for example, if the AWS Cloud engineers, support staff and all
| the other high paid employees went on strike in solidarity with
| their delivery workers who have to piss in bottles, guess how
| fast Amazon would clean up its act?
|
| There's a reason why so many of the richest people in the world
| made their riches in tech: because tech workers couldn't be
| arsed to engage in collective organization, instead preferring
| hyper-competition with everyone fighting for himself and only
| himself - while not realizing that they could have enjoyed far
| more of a share of the profits, had they collaborated!
| gruez wrote:
| >That is the power of solidarity
|
| Anything that relies on the generosity of others is bound to
| fail. Moreover, if AI generated background/voice actors are
| actually better than non-AI ones on net, then it stands to
| reason that studios that use that technology will outcompete
| studios that don't. The SAG might be able to force all
| american studios to not use it, but unless they can secure
| some sort of global agreement, that just means american
| studios will get out-competed by non-american studio that
| don't abide by the ban.
| komali2 wrote:
| > if AI generated background/voice actors are actually
| better than non-AI ones on net
|
| For now there's certainly no risk at all of that, unless
| you've seen something I haven't?
|
| I disagree with your OP, a union's power isn't derived by
| its most powerful members, it's derived by solidarity
| against a large amount of people. If it's strong enough you
| can force the industry into union only contracts which
| makes even the powerful members of your profession need to
| maintain solidarity - SAG-AFTRA is the perfect example.
|
| As for American studios outcompeted, I think that's an
| oversimplification of the videogame market. People buy
| terrible games all the time such as all the buggy AAA crap
| that's been coming out of certain American studios. Not to
| mention the awful mobile games industry which is worth
| billions... Quality of voice acting alone doesn't seem like
| something that could make or break an entire nation's game
| industry.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| > _For now there 's certainly no risk at all of that,
| unless you've seen something I haven't?_
|
| Most background "actors" are now all CGI. Imagine how
| it'll change in the next ten years. I imagine all actors
| will end up being CGI'd / AI generated.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I disagree with your OP, a union's power isn't derived
| by its most powerful members, it's derived by solidarity
| against a large amount of people.
|
| Large amounts of people yes, but it needs the high-
| skilled (or in case of the movie studios, the high-
| demand) people in the boat, those that a company can't
| replace on a whim. Walmart, Starbucks and the likes -
| corporate doesn't care even about closing down an entire
| location just because there's unionization talks. People
| dishing out coffees or stocking shelves can be replaced
| in an instant, corporate doesn't (need to) care.
|
| But the high-skilled labor? Finance, HR, admin in the
| corporate office... if _they_ were to strike in
| solidarity with the peasants, corporate would have a much
| more difficult time to replace them.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| > But the high-skilled labor? Finance, HR, admin in the
| corporate office... if they were to strike in solidarity
| with the peasants, corporate would have a much more
| difficult time to replace them.
|
| And they should, while their skills are "high-skilled".
|
| Every chance there's the generic executive looking to cut
| costs, and the hard to quantify losses like reputation;
| security; maintenance; and longevity get pushed aside.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > And they should, while their skills are "high-skilled".
|
| They won't however, as anti-union propaganda (and in IT,
| ungodly amounts of venture capital) has convinced them
| that they'd have a better chance at salary raises if they
| could have individual negotiations based on something
| they can control (i.e. work performance metrics) than if
| they were to collectively negotiate.
|
| Young generations thankfully don't drink the koolaid any
| more, as they see how _they_ live and how their parents
| lived at the same age.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| > Young generations thankfully don't drink the koolaid
| any more, as they see how they live and how their parents
| lived at the same age.
|
| I'll believe it when I see it.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Unions don't rely on the generosity of others, they rely on
| shared economic interest.
|
| In any supply chain whoever is able to consolidate and
| monopolize has economic power over their suppliers and
| customers. This sets off a chain reaction of consolidation
| as everyone else has to get bigger in order to protect
| their margins from being eaten by Amazon and Wal-Mart.
|
| Unions are no different. If your industry is two or three
| companies you can't leave for a better job. So you have to
| either collectively negotiate or not negotiate at all.
|
| While I disagree that AI is presently capable of replacing
| voice actors, I don't think it matters. We already have a
| global agreement that impacts AI, which is the copyright on
| the training data used in the models[0]. While you probably
| can't stop someone from training on public data
| entirely[1], you definitely can prohibit the use of derived
| models to generate work that competes in the same market
| using copyright.
|
| US businesses were able to break the backs of working-class
| unions like UAW using free trade agreements with countries
| that don't respect organized labor. Mexico and China[2] are
| hideously anti-union in ways that would be patently illegal
| in the US. I'm not entirely sure this process would work
| for creative talent. It would require Hollywood to
| completely undermine their cultural hegemony and shut down
| their own productions in favor of foreign cinema from Japan
| and the EU - countries that have explicitly been in favor
| of ML training on public data.
|
| [0] Unless you're worried about the North Korean film
| industry adopting AI, in which case...
|
| [1] There are some lawsuits attacking generative AI on this
| basis but I expect fair use to block those cases
|
| [2] Yes, _communist_ China, ironically enough
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Anything that relies on the generosity of others is bound
| to fail.
|
| Which is why it is backed and enforced by contracts. Unions
| in moviemaking, mining or construction have a long (and
| bloody) tradition... there's a reason why inane-seeming
| rules such as only members of a specific trade union being
| allowed to even touch something as a lighting rig, it's to
| prevent greedy studios from using staff with lower-paying
| jobs to undercut collective agreements.
|
| Think outside of the box and now you'll realize that as
| inane as it sounds, what it guarantees is that money ends
| up as wages in the pockets of the workers instead of profit
| for the bosses.
|
| > The SAG might be able to force all american studios to
| not use it, but unless they can secure some sort of global
| agreement, that just means american studios will get out-
| competed by non-american studio that don't abide by the
| ban.
|
| Western audiences generally want Western actors and
| stories, Hollywood is where the money, connections and
| expertise is. Many have tried to outcompete American
| studios and they all failed - it's either survival off of
| "national production quotas" for TV networks for them or
| domestic focused/otherwise niche content ("Bollywood",
| anime).
|
| This relatively simple power balance is what gives the SAG
| the leverage it has.
| GaggiX wrote:
| >niche content ("Bollywood", anime).
|
| Anime are huge, Japan has been winning on all fronts with
| entertainment.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Yeah but it's still niche in comparison. Out of the top
| 20 movies in 2022 [1], 18 were from Western studios, the
| two others were Chinese of which one was a domestic-only
| propaganda movie.
|
| [1] https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/world/2022/
| GaggiX wrote:
| Anime are way cheaper than anything on this list to
| produce and many of them are available on streaming
| platforms runned by ads, looking at the top 20 movies
| 2022 do not show how actually impactful anime are in the
| western world. Nowadays it's even sometimes hard to find
| an illustrator on Twitter that was not heavily influenced
| by anime.
|
| Edit: and of course the vast majority of anime are
| animated series, not movies.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| You don't really have a point though. If mega stars rallied
| to give you a cut of profits for some reason I'm sure they
| could win.
|
| My point is that actors with no value to their name or face
| are acting like their name and face are valuable assets.
|
| Being COPIED is a meaningless threat. Being REPLACED is the
| threat they face.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The thing is, when "background actors" get replaced by AI,
| how will acting get new actors? Or what protects even large
| actors from studios using their face metrics and voice data
| which they have from CGI work to just use these datasets to
| "recreate" the actors without their consent?
| jncfhnb wrote:
| > The thing is, when "background actors" get replaced by
| AI, how will acting get new actors?
|
| Actors don't break out by virtue of their stellar
| background acting work.
|
| > Or what protects even large actors from studios using
| their face metrics and voice data which they have from
| CGI work to just use these datasets to "recreate" the
| actors without their consent?
|
| Why would you bother recreating someone when you could
| generate someone better fit for the role?
| LapsangGuzzler wrote:
| Perhaps, but it's still wild to me how many people approach
| these topics with complete apathy and surrender, as if the AI
| takeover is inevitable and therefore we shouldn't try to fight
| it.
|
| Regardless of how you see the future playing out, it's pretty
| gross to characterize a people's fight for their livelihood as
| "dumb". Maybe it's dumb to you, but they've given their lives
| to their work so we can enjoy the content they have a hand in
| making.
|
| Imagine the day that your skills are completely replaceable
| with AI and your attempts to fight it are met with "that's
| dumb." What an impersonal and apathetic attitude to have.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| so your main problem is that they were able to reach a
| conclusion fast?
|
| is there an empathic approach that also accepts reality?
| komali2 wrote:
| We could start talking about what we should do in general
| when the value of human labor has dropped to pennies across
| multiple industries.
|
| Or we could talk about how we could leverage this new
| technology to the benefit of the voice actors, by reducing
| their working hours, improving their working conditions,
| and giving them a large cut of the new profits the new
| technology unlocks.
|
| Buuuut those conversations under this system have been DOA
| since the luddites. It seems profits and benefits for
| workers must be extracted at the gunpoint of government
| regulation and unionization. I agree that it'd be great if
| that wasn't necessary.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > how we could leverage this new technology to the
| benefit of the voice actors, by reducing
|
| everyone discussion has someone that's always like "it'll
| only _assist_ existing people of that profession "
|
| and here I am training on voices I have the rights to (by
| simply asking, and with a release form), adding it to
| media including games with no prior experience, either in
| some wav output, or rendering dynamically pretty quickly
| (not quick enough but its coming)
|
| I just don't see the basic economics that support the
| person with the voice for getting paid for that work at
| any analog to today's arrangements, and definitely not
| more. 4 year olds are going to be able to do what I'm
| doing. the supply will completely outstrip the demand.
|
| I can see studios with prior obligations being committed
| to giving some kind of royalty, but the history doesn't
| suggest that those studios will be the one that taps into
| the market. All of Hollywood exists because it routed
| around entrenched interests in New York City by going to
| the other side of the continent and ignoring the
| contracts, unions and industry cartels. What exactly
| suggests the same thing won't happen again? That's what
| I'm missing here. Where is the discussion that puts the
| feelings aside and doesn't act like they're ignoring that
| just for the sake of not feeling like they're
| surrendering.
|
| If I successfully offered something to the market and
| scaled it up, which I don't have ambitions to do but open
| to, but if I did and then it fulfills the entertainment
| register in people's minds and all of this stuff with
| SAG-AFTRA is moot. If it was procedurally generated
| trash, the same people that say "I just leave this on in
| the background" or "its a guilty pleasure" are going to
| be the same consumers. I just don't see the other
| outcome, the market is going to get filled with this
| stuff, and human only content is going to be a novelty
| for enthusiasts.
| LapsangGuzzler wrote:
| > It seems profits and benefits for workers must be
| extracted at the gunpoint of government regulation and
| unionization. I agree that it'd be great if that wasn't
| necessary.
|
| Yep. Those of us who've lived in the west have never seen
| massive worker uprisings, although they're present
| throughout history. A society that becomes so unequal
| that it can't provide opportunity for its people faces a
| reckoning.
|
| What's so damning about this is that the ultra wealthy
| know this and are planning for it.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| The dumb part is their argument.
|
| Imagine factory workers being replaced by replica androids,
| and the workers are upset because the androids are using
| their individual "likeness" rather than that the androids are
| taking their jobs.
|
| They are fighting the wrong fight. The vast majority of
| actors represented here do not lose anything more than the
| factory workers under the particular thing they're fighting
| against.
| philistine wrote:
| > Perhaps, but it's still wild to me how many people approach
| these topics with complete apathy and surrender, as if the AI
| takeover is inevitable and therefore we shouldn't try to
| fight it.
|
| Hey, we do need *a lot* of people for the piles of skulls the
| Terminators crush with their metal feet in our inevitable
| future.
| echelon wrote:
| This is a rerun of photographers complaining about digital
| photography and stock photo websites. Despite their worries,
| there's still plenty of work in shooting weddings and corporate
| events. Outside of folks like Roger Deakins, the person behind
| the lens has _always_ has been fungible, so any argument that
| AI removes the humanity is dishonest.
|
| In terms of acting, casting is a flexible talent sourcing
| process that has always cared less about the lowest rungs of
| talent: guest stars and co-stars. The production companies are
| struggling to adapt to less-lucrative streaming revenue models
| and dealing with the impact of covid on moviegoing. The
| industry is being forced to change and consolidate all at once.
| As much as I sympathize with the actors, they're arguing from a
| position of weakness, not strength. Their industry is
| struggling.
|
| AI is going to bring the costs of production down 100x or more,
| and we're all going to be the beneficiaries of that. Content
| will be faster and cheaper to make, cheaper to buy, and it will
| tailor to an increasingly long tail of interests that have
| never before been served.
|
| The task has always been storytelling, not location scouting,
| set decorating, lighting, electrical, blocking, capturing grids
| of photos, then splicing them together.
|
| Folks that couldn't dream of starting their own film studio
| will now realistically be able to power than endeavor from
| home, and that includes these actors and writers that are
| complaining. The YouTube-ization effect where small creators
| monetize will lead to Hollywood capital outflows and more money
| being spent to prop up individual and small team creators.
|
| Those at the bottom rungs are complaining about technology that
| will give them a bigger platform with more autonomy than
| they've ever had before. They won't need studio capital to
| execute on their dreams.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| One way to parse "Content will be faster and cheaper to make,
| cheaper to buy, and it will tailor to an increasingly long
| tail of interests that have never before been served," is
| that we will be adrift on a sea of garbage.
|
| If a person now alive pictures the state of "content" getting
| far worse, that's something profound to consider.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| I find that take absurd. Niche long tail interest stuff is
| the best. Would you really claim that the plethora of
| smaller groups on Spotify that can make it work are
| inferior to the mainstream radio acts that got almost all
| the attention previously?
| echelon wrote:
| > is that we will be adrift on a sea of garbage.
|
| Do you value content on YouTube?
|
| Has the internet brought you any kind of content of value?
|
| If the answer is yes, then this is just a filtering
| problem.
|
| ---
|
| edit: because of downvotes, I can't respond anymore. (Dang:
| you really need to fix this.)
|
| Here's my response to a child comment:
|
| > No thanks. I'd really rather take quality over quantity.
|
| The domestic market supports roughly 1,000 productions a
| year. Most of which you won't be the target demographic
| for. Most of it will suck. That's a very small pipeline for
| "quality" to fit through.
|
| Frankly, I don't like being limited to 1-2 "amazing" and
| 5-10 "good" things a year. We're not here for long, and we
| deserve so much more. Humanity has the capacity to do
| better than this.
|
| The creativity of youths on TikTok and other platforms is
| absolutely inspiring, and we have barely begun to tap into
| it.
|
| I've always seen more amazing content from indie creators
| and foreign markets than most big studios produce.
| Independent animation and web comics have been labors of
| love, and these new tools are going to empower those folks
| to do more than they've ever done before.
|
| The pipeline of creators is going to widen as people see
| how fun and accessible it is.
|
| There might be more noise, but there will be orders of
| magnitude more interesting content that fits the curvature
| of your interests like a fine glove. If you have a thing
| for space noir vampires, I'm sure someone will deliver it
| and do the concept justice.
|
| If we can suck people out of busywork jobs and put them
| into satisfying careers delighting the human spirit, that's
| a great and worthwhile thing to do.
| Avamander wrote:
| > If the answer is yes, then this is just a filtering
| problem.
|
| Which we have spectacularly won so far /s
|
| No thanks. I'd really rather take quality over quantity.
|
| *Especially* considering how immensely hard the spam
| problem is.
| ugh123 wrote:
| SAG leadership also wants to start including YouTube and other
| online creators in union membership.
|
| Is this really what we want? Maybe it's time for Hollywood to
| change and grow away from unions and not proliferate into other
| areas of creative production.
|
| https://deadline.com/2023/07/sag-aftra-making-moves-to-enlis...
| mjhay wrote:
| Why would SAG workers want to "grow away from unions" when
| management doing their best to screw them over and impoverish
| them? You do realize that their interests are not the same as
| managements, right?
| stevehawk wrote:
| It is what I want. Youtube has no value with content creators.
| But content creators have zero power and steer constantly
| bullied with DMCA requests for policy violations that are never
| explained to them.
| donatj wrote:
| Being a quite literal Luddite is never in your self interest long
| term. History has taught us that technology will and should
| replace jobs, and we are better for it. We should roll with it
| gracefully rather than trying to dig our heels in fighting the
| inevitable.
|
| Asking technology companies to not use AI in building their games
| is simply absurd.
|
| It's hilarious to me that people on HN whose literal job is to
| build things that replace menial jobs can't see this. How many of
| you are working on a SaaS that replaces hundreds of paper
| pushers?
| terminatornet wrote:
| The luddites were not against technology or progress.
|
| "They just wanted machines that made high-quality goods," says
| Binfield, "and they wanted these machines to be run by workers
| who had gone through an apprenticeship and got paid decent
| wages. Those were their only concerns."
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-rea...
|
| In a parallel here, the SAG-AFTRA actors are not against AI,
| per se. They're against their likenesses being scanned for 1
| days pay and then being used in perpetuity forever without
| their consent or further payment.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| > _they wanted these machines to be run by workers who had
| gone through an apprenticeship and got paid decent wages._
|
| Not sure why one would need to go through an apprenticeship
| to operate a machine as compared to needing to go through one
| in order to learn how to stitch well. The entire point of the
| machines was to cut down on labor costs and increase
| production, which the company could do with or without the
| Luddite workers; they simply brought in unskilled workers,
| because the machine didn't need all of the skill (and
| therefore higher labor cost) of Luddite craftspeople.
|
| The same will happen with AI here, if companies can cut down
| labor costs, what will the current laborers do? They are
| striking, yes, but just like the Luddites, if there comes a
| technology that can replace them with cheaper labor, then
| that's what companies will do, and I don't think the current
| laborers have any recourse (in the long term, not the short
| term, as I know Luddites tried to destroy the machines but in
| the end they were defeated).
| donatj wrote:
| One days pay for one days work seems fair. The electrician
| that wired the building did far more important work, their
| work is evident in every single frame of the film, but
| doesn't expect payment in perpetuity.
| terminatornet wrote:
| Do you think people go to movies to see a building or are
| they going to see an actor?
|
| Estimates show that movies may be losing up to 15% of
| potential revenue due to lack of promotion by actors.
|
| https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/box-
| offi...
|
| Something tells me having the electricians show up on the
| red carpet may not have recovered that loss
| donatj wrote:
| They go for the flashing lights and captivating sound far
| more than any actor. Without the electrician the movie
| would be two hours of darkness. Ticket sales would suffer
| far worse than 15%.
| terminatornet wrote:
| I don't think actors getting paid more is taking money
| away from electricians. Hollywood execs pay is up 53%
| from 2018. I suspect if actors get the deal they want,
| their increased pay might come from the $500 million a
| year paychecks from the executives and not the
| electrician.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/01/top-hollywood-exec-
| made-498-...
|
| Honestly, if you side with management, you're kind of a
| sucker.
| donatj wrote:
| You misstate my point either by accident or to build a
| strawman. The point I am making is that Electricians are
| fairly paid, unlike actors who already have a sweetheart
| deal.
|
| Siding with anti-technology rent-seekers seems far
| sillier.
| [deleted]
| terminatornet wrote:
| What sweetheart deal are you referring to?
|
| "According to SAG-AFTRA, only 14% of its members make at
| least $26,470 annually to qualify for SAG-AFTRA
| healthcare coverage"
|
| This doesn't seem like the majority of actors in the
| union are being paid well
|
| https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-
| features/act...
| bluescrn wrote:
| As somebody who's worked in games as a programmer, it's hard to
| have too much sympathy for voice actors, when all the (almost
| entirely non-unionised) artists, animators, programmers, QA, and
| more have put up with so much overwork ('crunch periods') and
| undercompensation, along with constant threat of sudden lay-offs
| (usually studio closures) since, well, before games had voice
| acting. A strike could be an additional threat to the projects
| and therefore jobs of those non-unionised workers.
|
| (Yes, maybe the rest of the industry should have unionised a long
| time ago, but it hasn't happened)
|
| Voice actors are important these days, but they aren't the 'movie
| stars' of gaming. The real stars of game development are usually
| unknown individuals developing internal tools and asset
| workflows, endlessly tweaking numbers to try and make a game
| 'feel' just right, doing CPU/GPU profiling and optimization, or
| doing tedious-but-essential QA work, tracking down those hard-to-
| replicate bugs.
|
| And not everyone is in agreement on the whole AI issue. The
| hype/fear bubble is likely to deflate, and IMHO, AI-based tools
| are more likely to empower creators than replace them.
| crazygringo wrote:
| You do realize that while the artists, animators, and
| programmers you're talking about actually make a liveable
| salary on that, the voice actors mostly don't?
|
| It's gig work that you're incredibly lucky to get a consistent
| amount of. And it takes a lot of training. A lot of these
| people are servers at a restaurant or drive for Uber to make
| ends meet. They're not making programming-level money on the
| side, nowhere even _close_.
|
| The union is trying to ensure that the _minimum_ payments for
| voice actors are reasonable, and that if you do get lucky
| enough to get a decent amount of work during the year, that it
| _is_ something you can live on. (And remember that you 'll
| probably audition for 50+ projects for every 1 project you
| land.)
| badwolf wrote:
| You should consider unionizing.
| vore wrote:
| I don't think the answer to mistreatment is for non-unionized
| workers to pull the unionized workers down into the crab pot
| with them -- at the end of the day, we are all labor (unless
| you control the capital), and infighting instead of solidarity
| only makes labor's bargaining position worse.
| edent wrote:
| Sounds like you should unionise then?
| komali2 wrote:
| Perhaps instead of anger at people trying to improve their
| material conditions, you could choose instead to ask the
| unionized people for helping setting up a union for your
| profession?
| _V_ wrote:
| Honestly I believe that Hollywood and film industry needs to
| change. The sooner the better.
|
| And I also don't really care about those people - most of them
| seem to lost any connection with outside world and passion for
| the craft. The only motivation for most of them is feeding their
| overgrown egos.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| I agree somewhat but is it any different from professional
| athletes? They are being paid a hundred million dollars for
| kicking a ball.
| _V_ wrote:
| I'd say there is a difference - even though they get paid
| millions for kicking a ball, they do what you would expect
| then to do.
|
| Writers/actors/directors are kind of different - I would
| expect them to take a source material and create a show that
| is true (as much as possible given the media format) to the
| original source. Ideally without showing contempt for said
| original material. Either that or create something _original_
| - something that has new and fresh ideas. And blindly
| replacing one sex for another or one color of person for
| another is not my idea of "new" or "fresh".
|
| To me it seems like they decided that these things don't
| matter anymore. So I don't mind if they go belly up.
| CM30 wrote:
| Not sure how well this will work compared to their strike against
| Hollywood and the film industry. Many video game developers don't
| work with union actors at all, with plenty of games either not
| having voice acting period or hiring whatever random staff they
| have around to fill those roles.
|
| For instance, many of Nintendo's games have very little voice
| acting, or have it done by random internal staff rather than
| professional actors. So most of the Mario, Kirby, Donkey Kong,
| Pikmin, Metroid, Animal Crossing, etc series could probably keep
| on going without any issues. And those franchises that did use
| voice acting recently (mostly Zelda) could probably just go
| release a few games in the old style where voices were limited to
| the odd grunt or yell and it wouldn't make much of a difference.
| Heck, Pokemon doesn't really have voice acting in its games even
| now, and that's the biggest media franchise in the world.
|
| Add that to how the industry worked fine up til about the
| N64/PlayStation era without any voice acting (or at best, very
| limited acting) and how a large percentage of lower budget and
| indie games don't have it at all, and it's a lot less important
| than acting is in the film or television industry. Hollywood
| actors go on strike and don't appear in films or TV shows? Those
| industry comes to a screeching halt, since the cast is an
| essential part of the medium. Actors don't appear in video games?
| Well, guess the number of silent protagonists goes up
| significantly this year.
|
| I do wish them the best of luck here and I do understand their
| concerns, it's just that games need actors a lot less than films
| do, and that gives them far less leverage as a result.
| philistine wrote:
| You do realize that you just said that Mario games have voices
| done by random internal staff, right?
|
| When everybody and their mothers know that Charles Martinet,
| professional voice actor, is the now-retired voice of Mario?
| CM30 wrote:
| Martinet is indeed the exception here, and one of the most
| well known voice actors ever.
|
| But there are plenty of other examples where my post holds
| true. The ghosts from Luigi's Mansion 3 are voiced by Next
| Level Games development and marketing staff, the voice for
| Yoshi is Nintendo composer Kazumi Totaka, Shy Guys are voiced
| by Nintendo of America localisation manager Nate Bihldorff,
| the WarioWare cast were voiced by Treehouse (localisation)
| staff until WarioWare Gold, Donkey Kong 64 had Rare's staff
| voicing characters (like composer Grant Kirkhope as DK
| himself), etc.
| philistine wrote:
| You're not wrong, but you're going a bit historical there
| with DK 64, which came out in the 90s. On top of that,
| British developers were notorious for picking employees for
| voice work.
|
| Nintendo still uses internal staff for incidental stuff,
| but you can see the trend of professionalization. Tears of
| the Kingdom came out on the same day around the world with
| a large professional voice cast for every supported
| language. That's where Nintendo is going.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Interesting I've been playing videogames games since 1998 and
| never knew that but I've also never played a Mario game.
| watwut wrote:
| I think that games that don't use voice actors at all are just
| not relevant to the issue. Just like banking software is not
| relevant.
|
| There are games that do require it, those are relevant.
| rhdunn wrote:
| So what will happen is that the games using SAG-AFTRA voice
| actors will be delayed/dropped from production, while the
| games using non-US union voice actors or not needing voices
| will be produced. Therefore, the SAG-AFTRA games and the
| associated companies will suffer but the industry will not.
|
| The situation is different for films and TV where no US-based
| TV show or film can be produced without the actors or
| writers. There are interim agreements that allow some TV
| shows and films to be produced. Even there, there are a lot
| of older or foreign TV shows and films that are slowly taking
| over.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Most of the games that 'require' voice acting actually don't,
| and could work with text. The reason they have voice acting
| is because mass audiences expect it, but consumer
| expectations are malleable and subject to change.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Sure, and Hollywood could stop recording audio and go back
| to silent movies because movies don't 'require' sound.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Basically correct, although it wouldn't actually happen
| unless sound in movies became cost prohibitive (which is
| what we're discussing.)
|
| However in video-games this is even more true. 'Talkies'
| crushed silent movies, out-competed them very rapidly in
| the span of a few years. But in video games this didn't
| happen, video games with voice acting have existed for
| roughly 30 years now but video games without voice acting
| still frequently find commercial success. In fact the
| most successful video game of all time, minecraft, has no
| voice acting despite competing against innumerable
| contemporary games with voice acting.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Personally I skip all voiced lines in games the moment I
| finish reading the subtitles.
|
| I could not care less if they were voiced or not.
|
| No disrespect to the actors, I just don't play games to
| sit and listen to them talk. I want to get back to
| gameplay as fast as possible
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Minecraft has no storyline or named characters though.
| It's not really "competing" against games with voice
| acting, as they're totally different genres. To me this
| feels like like saying movies don't need better CGI than
| Playstation 2 quality because of how's successful Paw
| Patrol and Baby Shark are.
| nirvdrum wrote:
| And some of the top grossing video games of all time have
| voice acting. The modern Rockstar and Naughty Dog games
| would be less attractive and have much less emotional
| impact without the characters coming to life via voice.
| Character models help sell games, too. Sure, voice acting
| isn't required for all genres and many don't need motion
| capture, but if they didn't add anything studios could
| save a ton of money by cutting it out. It turns out not
| everyone wants to play indie platformers or sandboxed
| builders.
|
| You could of course use non-union voice actors, but it's
| pretty easy to tell when games use random people to
| narrate or voice characters. It often harms the product.
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| Plenty of games can and do work fine with just text. But
| there's a hell of a lot of money in existing AAA franchises
| that have always had voice acting. If the next Halo or Far
| Cry or Call of Duty or GTA launched with text-only
| dialogue, fans would flip their shit, and the big studios
| know it.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Exactly. This is about games like GTAV and RDR2. These games
| don't exist without whole casts of talented actors, and
| they're SAG-AFTRA because every working actor at that level
| belongs to the union.
| neuromanser wrote:
| > Well, guess the number of silent protagonists goes up
| significantly this year.
|
| I don't know what games you were thinking of, but I immediately
| thought of Half-Life, those games have a silent protagonist and
| a _lot_ of voice acting.
| bombcar wrote:
| At least for me, if they can strike for about twenty years I
| might be able to get through my Steam backlog.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| One of the most popular add ins for World of Warcraft released
| in recent memory is one that adds voice acting to all of the
| quests that were previously text only. No voice actors were
| hired as part of its creation. I doubt a return to silent
| protagonists is what we will see in this space.
| [deleted]
| mcpackieh wrote:
| RPGs are ruined by traditional voice acting but naive consumers
| demand it anyway. The problem is that voice acting places
| practical constraints on the scope of dialogue in RPGs, rendering
| the RPGs shallow by necessity.
|
| I see three possible ways forward:
|
| 1) Generative AIs are used on the fly by games to create NPCs the
| player can truly roleplay with
|
| 2) VA strike re-calibrates consumer expectations so we can go
| back to RPGs with text dialogue only, possibly with LLMs instead
| of scripted conversations. Either way, an improvement over:
|
| 3) Continue with the status quo.
|
| Listed in order of preference. From an RPG gamer perspective, the
| worst outcome is that both human writers and human VAs keep their
| jobs.
| [deleted]
| sammyteee wrote:
| Isn't this similar to worries about machines taking over human
| jobs in other areas? Just like machines changed many industries
| and made people question the need for humans, why should acting
| be any different?
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| I wonder if this might backfire. In the age of ai when animated
| characters can be almost created wholly by ai, actors can be
| replaced by AI, the age of the movie star might be over. I think
| in the future live performances will be more sought after just to
| know you're actually watching a real person, at least until life
| like ai androids are indistinguishable from real humans.
|
| I'm saying this as someone in support of unions in general, but
| also in support of our ai future, if a little fearful of the
| Terminator scenario playing out.
|
| I don't think unions can stop ai from taking jobs, I think maybe
| all unions should ban together for a general strike to force a
| ubi vote, so that when ai does take jobs people can still eat and
| pay rent.
| c4mpute wrote:
| I guess it won't backfire because the AI revolution will come
| anyways. I rather think that this strike is a last-ditch effort
| to contain the AI revolution and squeeze out the last bucks
| before the flow of money dries up.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Like the self driving car revolution?
| Ekaros wrote:
| Difference is that AI can generate good-enough content most
| of the time. And that is often enough. It is not like what
| is sold now produced by humans is especially spectacular.
| c4mpute wrote:
| Exactly. Self-driving is a far more complex problem. The
| car has to get it right, right here on the road, little
| to no margin for error.
|
| The script-writing AI, voice AI, actor-image AI will be
| used to create a multitude of options, and all but one
| will be thrown away anyways. Perfection isn't necessary,
| realtime isn't necessary, and a human correcting things
| here and there is always still an option. Compute
| resources are also far less limited, it doesn't have to
| fit in a "car" form factor and power consumption.
| mcny wrote:
| > human correcting things here and there is always still
| an option
|
| Isn't that what we are asking for though? We know there
| will be fewer people working in the industry. We want to
| ensure those who will work will be paid fairly.
| c4mpute wrote:
| Asking to be paid fairly is of course possible and
| sensible. But I'm not sure that it will be successful.
| Fewer people working will create a huge overhang of
| qualified experts, at least initially, driving down
| prices.
| Edman274 wrote:
| No one gets killed by a car or sued by a pedestrian if an
| AI generated episode of "Love Death and Robots" underwhelms
| the 17 year olds that put it on while looking at something
| on their phone. This will spur studios to try to make it
| work even though it'll probably say no time and money and
| result in worse outcomes for their catalog of media.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| That is coming too. It may take a little longer than
| expected but it will come for sure.
| [deleted]
| couchand wrote:
| I'm still waiting on that sufficiently advanced compiler
| they've been talking about.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| What compiler? I'm out of the loop on what you're
| referring to.
| wolfgang42 wrote:
| A "sufficiently smart compiler" is a (frequently
| mythical) one that can implement some difficult
| optimization on its own, rather than needing hints from
| the programmer. (See e.g.
| https://prog21.dadgum.com/40.html?0 for some discussion
| on the topic.)
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Ah interesting. I wonder if LLMs can help solve that,
| although if they don't know the programmer's intent, they
| likely won't be able to optimize any better either.
| couchand wrote:
| /s?
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Only half
| zug_zug wrote:
| Maybe the AIs will take the studio's jobs before they take the
| artist's jobs (enabling much higher pay for creatives). After
| all the script is just 5% of the cost [1]. I'm sure there are
| pieces of the multi-hundred-million dollar movie-production
| process that are easier to automate that script writing and
| acting.
|
| [1] https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0611/why-
| movies-...
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>I'm sure there are pieces of the multi-hundred-million
| dollar movie-production process that are easier to automate
| that script writing and acting.
|
| You assume that is not already happening? How many physical
| effects people where displaced or had to find different
| things to do when CGI automated large amounts of physical
| effects?
|
| How much bigger would be budgets need to be to do physical
| effects instead of CGI?
|
| I am sure their are tons of other examples of automation and
| technology that allows a movie to be made with far less
| people.
|
| That is the natural progress of things.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| _I think maybe all unions should ban together for a general
| strike to force a ubi vote_
|
| The Trump checks/Biden checks caused too much inflation for
| that to be politically tenable.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| [flagged]
| pfranz wrote:
| > I wonder if this might backfire. In the age of ai when
| animated characters can be almost created wholly by ai, actors
| can be replaced by AI, the age of the movie star might be over.
|
| From what I've seen the conversation is a lot more nuanced.
| It's not "yes AI" vs "no AI." It's more around can you use my
| likeness, writing, or artwork to train AI with minimal to zero
| compensation (what studios want) or with compensation structure
| both sites negotiate (what unions what). Or can the result of
| AI be used to undermine labor. Currently, the output of AI
| isn't up to expected standards for much of anything. Studios
| are obviously trying to use that output to replace "writing
| credit" which has a historical structure with higher
| compensation. The person they pay to go "punch it up" won't get
| that. The resulting product would be mostly the same, but the
| person polishing and finishing it does a lot more work with
| less compensation.
|
| AI is also just a relatively minor part of what unions are
| trying to negotiate.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Good thing valve has made it clear that if you're using AI
| generated content that you don't have fully copyright over it
| they're not going to accept your game.
|
| UBI will not stop landlords from sweeping it all. UBI won't
| work until we either have rent control or abolish private
| ownership-for-rent of housing.
|
| When Microsoft increased their housing stipend for interns, all
| the surrounding temporary housing and Airbnbs went up by that
| amount a few months after.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _actors can be replaced by AI_
|
| Actors' _appearances_ can be replaced by AI. Their voices can
| be too.
|
| Actors' _performances_ cannot. Not now and not any time in the
| near future. Not vocally, not facially, not physically. AI can
| map one vocal performance to another voice. It can 't produce a
| vocal performance full of emotion that nails exactly what the
| scene is about, in the first place.
| dbish wrote:
| Why not?
| crazygringo wrote:
| I mean, why don't we have GAI?
|
| I don't know how to describe it except that performing a
| role in a fully believable way is akin to writing an
| engaging believable novel, which AI can't do, and is
| nowhere near doing, either.
|
| If you try taking a beginner's acting class at an acting
| studio in e.g. LA or NY, you'll quickly see how difficult
| and artistic good screen acting is. How hard it is to
| perform lines in a way that seems like real life, as
| opposed to seeming like bad acting (melodramatic exclaiming
| of lines).
|
| Of course, a lot of people don't understand just how
| difficult and skilled screen acting is, because the entire
| point is that you're not supposed to notice acting at all.
| You're supposed to be fooled into thinking these are
| somehow real characters.
| dbish wrote:
| Eh, I think anything that we have a lot of data on (ex:
| recorded acting) will and can be replicated in the very
| near future. Sure, you will have the occasional Oscar
| worthy actor that is some level of creativity that
| doesn't work, but vast majority of acting is not finding
| new ways to show something in a script, the creativity
| came from the writing and directing choices.
|
| Art was also thought to require human creativity until
| recently. We're not going to produce a new paradigm of
| art or Picasso level impact, but the median artist can be
| replaced today in most ways imho.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _but vast majority of acting is not finding new ways to
| show something in a script, the creativity came from the
| writing and directing choices._
|
| I'm sorry, but you have clearly never worked in film and
| television, and certainly never in casting. Because your
| impression of acting is simply wrong.
|
| Casting offices will audition literally hundreds of
| actors to find the one who can bring the right unique
| take to the role, that no other actor can. There are TV
| shows and plays that simply don't get made because they
| can't find an actor who can play the part with the needed
| charm and magnetism for the specific role. I'm not
| talking Oscars, I'm talking bread-and-butter network
| comedies and procedurals.
|
| People watch shows and movies for the story/script, but
| they also watch them for the unique spark and charisma
| that the actors bring just as much. AI is not replicating
| that in the "very near future", not even close.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| > _Actors ' performances cannot. Not now and not any time in
| the near future. Not vocally, not facially, not physically.
| AI can map one vocal performance to another voice. It can't
| produce a vocal performance full of emotion that nails
| exactly what the scene is about, in the first place._
|
| _Oh sure these computer programs can play chess, but can
| they beat a grandmaster? Not now and not any time in the near
| future!_ - some guy in the early 90s probably.
| scarab92 wrote:
| Sure, but competent actors are fungible.
|
| It is a skill set with way more supply than demand.
|
| Expecting to be one of the lucky ones employed in this
| creative field, and then also dictating the terms of that
| employment is not going to happen.
|
| If the actors unions become too overreaching the studios will
| just replace them with new non-union actors (or AI trained by
| non-union actors).
| jncfhnb wrote:
| > I think maybe all unions should ban together for a general
| strike to force a ubi vote, so that when ai does take jobs
| people can still eat and pay rent.
|
| Pit the old creatives against the young ones. Nice.
| kyriakos wrote:
| Most definitely it will backfire. As a gamer I care very little
| if a character in a game has the likeness or voice of a big
| name actor.
| terminatornet wrote:
| Not all unionized actors are "big name".
| Zigurd wrote:
| Indeed. The "big name" actors need the union the least. The
| fact they support the union indicates they know how tough
| it is for most actors.
| terminatornet wrote:
| Exactly, I think stories like this one might surprise
| people a bit
|
| https://ew.com/tv/mandy-moore-pennies-for-this-is-us-
| streami...
|
| tl;dr - Mandy Moore (a very big name celeb) talks about
| receiving residual checks of 81 cents for her show that
| streams on Hulu. I'm not interested whether or not she's
| rich and doesn't need the money, but if she's being paid
| fairly with regards to value she's providing.
|
| Personally, if my contributions were bringing my company
| an incredible amount of revenue, I would be annoyed if I
| wasn't being paid accordingly.
| samstave wrote:
| I may be in a minority, but could not care less of the strife of
| the Hollywood writers, but that's hypocritical of me because
| saying that all their current crops of movies are microplastics
| garbage, while also not caring about their strikes, detracts from
| the core of the problem, which is the metastasized cancer of
| American DNA ; greed.
|
| Keep Hollywood writers away from games.
|
| I have not been negatively impacted by this strike in any
| meaningful sense.
|
| But it is striking to see just how puppet-like every talking head
| on TV is, to the point they have nothing themselves to say unless
| they have a gaggle of writers pumping all the lines you hear.
|
| For a really good insight on just who becomes these writers, the
| documentary about the creation of national lampoon out of Harvard
| shows you all the smart nerds that truly write your content
| dharmab wrote:
| This story is about an actor's union, not a writer's union.
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