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VoiceGate: Videogame voice actors considering a strike, want to unionize

Havoc

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Greedy fucks taking over normal fucks, to get more fucking money. Nothing new.
 
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I don't know. How many AA and AAA games are currently in development?
VAs chose the worst possible time to go on strike. This is where the end of year sales are beginning, which means most games will be released, completed or not. They won't get the space they want/need, and I don't think they'll boycott the coming wave of new releases, considering it's very likely they all worked on them.

Bear in mind, they'd have chosen the timing to match the production schedules for tv, ads and film. Computer games isn't exactly a minor chunk of their work, but it's far smaller than tv and advertising. They'd have chosen a time when the next season of tv shows are going into production, so the loss of video game contracts doesn't hurt their income as badly. Again, you need to put this in the context of these people being independent contractors. It's more like using a trade embargo for leverage in contract negotiations, than what you'd ordinarily think of as a strike.
 

J1M

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I wonder how much a studio employee is paid for 1 hour of voice work. $0/hour? 1 coffee/hour?
 
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I can imagine Patton sort of just hanging out at them protests, getting inspired and shit.. whilst subtly recording the crowd, to sample it later and use it in a new mr.bungle album.

For context:
 

Adon

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May 8, 2015
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http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/10/08/video-game-voice-actors-vote-yes-on-potential-strike

The SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) union has today confirmed its strike referendum was a “resounding success” with over 96% of its members voting in favour of a potential strike.

SAG-AFTRA notes that this result does not mean its members are currently on strike, but it does give the union the authority to declare a strike if they remain unhappy with their ongoing negotiations with the video game industry.

The union’s list of demands includes residuals for games that sell over two million units, stunt pay for vocally stressful recording sessions, and a stunt coordinator on set during performance capture. These demands can be viewed in full on their website.

“With this result in hand, the Negotiating Committee will seek to return to the bargaining table and continue to press for a fair resolution on behalf of performers working in video games,” explained SAG-AFTRA in its statement.

The Interactive Media Agreement expired on December 31, 2014 but negotiations in February and June of this year have failed to produce a new agreement.

Members of the SAG-AFTRA acting union were called to vote on whether to authorise potential strike action back in September
 

Khorne

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Feb 11, 2015
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Modern syntethics will push these people out of the industry soon, unless they lobby hard and cut the funding to synth development projects.
I don't think they're in a position to demand anything, they will be lucky if they don't lose their jobs.
Some random quotes from the wiki :

Multiple companies offer TTS APIs to their customers to accelerate development of new applications utilizing TTS technology.
src

Depending on the application, TTS may be based on concatenation of pre-recorded material produced by voice professionals.
In more complex applications TTS will use more flexible techniques that accommodate large vocabularies and that allow the developer control over the character ("personality") of the system.
src
 

Gozma

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Making TTS crap act from scratch would be a waste of money. What I can imagine happening is that they get a small number of cheap, ugly actors that get paid a low middle class wage that they use as an "acting skeleton" for synth voices to go with the mocap acting skeletons for synth character models. Zero leverage for the actors at that point. Hollywood actors can negotiate because they become integral to branding.



Having to do VA for "data log" shit has got to be a nightmare. They're the most contrived things in the universe and no character would actually make them. Most of the data logs in SS2 aren't even given as much of a vaguely legitimate framing story as this guy's. I have no idea how you don't just let your eyes glaze and read the idiot writer's shit lines flat as a board

Nothing to do with this topic I guess
 

pippin

Guest
So what will happen if a big game is released without union voice actors?

A few "occupy something" kids will make a few tweets about it, but people who buy AAA games live beyond any kind of game magazine, podcast, twitter, etc. They just want one game for one system, and don't care about anything. These kind of problems are real for people who follow games regularly.
 

pippin

Guest
I mean more legal things. Will there be fines and stuff?

I don't know. Capitalism works in mysterious ways, just like God. I think they will find a way to ensure better treatment, but forbidding anyone who's not in the union from doing voice acting is ridiculous. The Hollywood Writers strike was more justified, because they do give a crucial element to that industry, but voice acting in games is more of a luxury than anything else.
 

Alienman

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Yeah, I agree. That what I find strange, how is this going to be enforced? Is it only going to effect AAA games or every single indie-game? It is just odd.
 

BelisariuS.F

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Mar 23, 2010
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:lol:

I didn't say people should be "forced" to buy anything, just that if they don't want to spend money the product quality is going to be shit. I am freely lambasting stupid people in this thread, shaming and mocking them for their idiotic opinions. The hope there is to get them to understand where value comes from and how to facilitate its growth rather than descend into the abyss of consumerist dystopia.

The butthurt is all yours, mon cherie.
It's you who should understand where value of a given product comes from. It comes from one place - human mind. Monetary value is just a concept that exists in human mind. It's not a natural property of an object. An object doesn't have value. Humans attribute value to an object. That's why you cannot hope that people will UNDERSTAND that the value comes from labor. You can only hope that people will agree to attribute value to a product based on labor, and not by their own standards. Good luck with that.
 

Higher Animal

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It's you who should understand where value of a given product comes from. It comes from one place - human mind. Monetary value is just a concept that exists in human mind. It's not a natural property of an object. An object doesn't have value. Humans attribute value to an object. That's why you cannot hope that people will UNDERSTAND that the value comes from labor. You can only hope that people will agree to attribute value to a product based on labor, and not by their own standards. Good luck with that.

The labor value of something created which has no social utility is zero.
 
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Labor theory of value always finds a way, even in the dullest of reactionaries.

No, it won't.

Robert Heinlein- Book: Starship Troopers said:
… He had been droning on about “value”, comparing the Marxist theory with the orthodox “use” theory. Mr. Dubois had said “Of course, the Marxian definition of value is ridiculous. All the work one cares to add will not turn a mud pie into an apple tart; it remains a mud pie, value zero. By corollary, un-skillful work can easily subtract value; an un-talented cook can turn wholesome dough and fresh green apples, valuable already, into an inedible mess, value zero. Conversely, a great chef can fashion of those same materials a confection of greater value than a commonplace apple tart, with no more effort than an ordinary cook uses to prepare an ordinary sweet.
"These kitchen illustrations demolish the Marxian theory of value–the fallacy from which the entire magnificent fraud of communism derives–and to illustrate the truth of the common-sense definition as measured in terms of use.
Dubois had waved his stump at us. "Nevertheless –wake up, back there!– nevertheless this disheveled old mystic of ‘Das Kapital’, turgid, tortured, confused, and neurotic, unscientific, illogical, this pompous fraud Karl Marx, NEVERTHELESS had a glimmering of a very important truth. If he possessed an analytical mind, he might have formulated the first adequate definition of value… and this planet might have been saved endless grief.
"Or might not,” he added. “You!”
I had sat up with a jerk.
“If you can’t listen, perhaps you can tell the class whether 'value’ is relative, or an absolute?”
I had been listening; I just didn’t see any reason not to listen with eyes closed and spine relaxed. But his question caught me out; I hadn’t read that day’s assignment, “An absolute,” I answered, guessing.
“Wrong,” he said coldly, “'Value’ has no meaning other than in relation to living beings. The value of a thing is always relative to a particular person, is completely personal and different in quantity for each living human–'market value’ is a fiction, merely a rough guess at the average of personal values, all of which must be quantitatively different or trade would be impossible.” (I had wondered what Father would have said if he had heard “market value” called a fiction–snort in disgust, probably.)
“This very personal relationship, 'value,’ has two factors for a human being: first, what he can do with that thing, its use to him… and second, what he must do to get it, its cost to him. There is an old song which asserts that 'the best things in life are free.’ Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted… and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears.
"Nothing of value is free. Even the breath and pain of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain.” He had been still looking at me and added, “If you boys and girls had to sweat for your toys the way a newly born baby has to struggle to live you would be happier… and much richer. As it is, with some of you, I pity the poverty of your wealth. You! I’ve just awarded you the prize for the hundred-meter dash. Does it make you happy?”
“Uh, I suppose it would.”
“No dodging, please. You have the prize–here, I’ll write out out: 'Grand prize for the championship, one hundred-meter sprint.’ ” He had actually come back to my seat and pinned it on my chest. “There! Are you happy? You value it– or don’t you?”
I was sore. First that dirty crack about rich kids–a typical sneer of those who haven’t got it–and now this farce. I ripped it off and chucked it at him.
Mr Dubois had looked surprised. “It doesn’t make you happy?”
“You know darn well I placed fourth!”
“Exactly! The prize for first place is worthless to you… Because you haven’t earned it. But you enjoy a modest satisfaction in placing fourth; you earned it. I trust that some of the somnambulists here understood this little morality play. I fancy that the poet who wrote that song meant to imply that the best things in life must be purchased other than with money–which is true–just as the literal meaning of his words is false. The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion… and the price demanded for the most precious of all things in life is life itself– ultimate cost for perfect value.”
 
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Unless you post that in text format I'm not going to waste my time on it. He talks at roughly 1/100th the speed I could probably read what he has to say.

Funnily enough, this response is pretty much proof of what the "mediocre libertarian science fiction writer" is saying. I'm sure he worked very hard on that video; but it's worth less to me because it takes far longer to listen to than it would to simply read. It's less useful to me.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
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I checked out the demands and everything they want is reasonable except residuals. That could very well be a pie-in-the-sky not-actually-serious item they put in so they could have something to take off the table in exchange for everything else. I hate negotiations. :M
 
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This explains your position nicely. The truth is inconvenient, so I'd rather not deal with it.

I wonder what you're like at the doctor's office:

"Hey doc, I get your opinion on the whole cancer in my ballsack thing, but actually I don't have it and all I need is ice cream."

Actually, this is almost exactly what another mediocre libertarian science fiction writer said before dying of lung cancer.

A completely nonsense comparison. I am stating that your shitty video is worth very little of my "chronological capital" regardless of the time spent producing it, and that a text version would be more suitable to my interests as a prospective consumer of your shitty Marxist opinions.

That has nothing to do with the truth being inconvenient because it's not even the truth in the first place. I watched a bit of it. It still doesn't disprove the theory of personal use. All it does is say Marx is interested in societies and not one guy buying a blueberry muffin off of another guy.
This "social labour" he's talking about is just the labour theory of value applied to a civilisation. I could just as easily disprove it with a theory of "social use." Things which do not fill a civilisation's "personal" definition of what is valuable to that civilisation will be less valuable than things which do, and so that civilisation will not be as likely to invest whatever capital is required to purchase/sustain those things (whether it be fiscal or in terms of manpower).
 

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