After nearly a year-long work stoppage, the group representing videogame voice actors has reached a tentative agreement with the 11 companies being boycotted to end the voice actors’ strike.
The announcement was made Sept. 23, the same weekend as the Tokyo Game Show, where many of the biggest games in the industry were put on display. The deal, which those in the industry hope will address some of the safety and pay concerns, is still waiting on approval from Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists’ national board, which will meet later in October to make a decision on the proposal.
“It is a good step for voice actors,” said Daniel Ramos, senior music major and sound lead for the Video Game Development Association at Cal State Long Beach. “But it might have a negative impact on consumers.”
The 340 day stoppage was the longest strike in Hollywood history, and included industry giants like Electronic Arts and Activision. The news of the contract came as a nice surprise to gamers, with some of the most popular titles over the last year being impacted by the dispute with iconic voices missing from major studio titles due to the strike that started last October.
Ashly Burch of “Life is Strange” and “Horizon Zero Dawn” fame had to give up her role as Chloe Price in the highly anticipated Strange sequel while the deal was being negotiated.
“I’m pretty heartbroken,” Burch told Kotaku in June. “It feels sort of like you were forced to put your kid up for adoption.”
The work stoppage officially began last October, but had been brewing for some time. In 2014, the original contract by Interactive Media Agreements from the ‘90s was set to expire. When negotiations didn’t result in a deal, the union actors agreed to keep working under the same rates for the time being in a “good faith” gesture.
The union has held on four major points of contention. First, they wanted to limit the amount of vocal stress being asked of actors in some settings by advocating for a reduction from the four-hour sessions currently standard in the industry down to two — without a reduction in pay. The new deal would split these into two sessions, but within a five hour time period.
“This is a big thing that needed to happen,” said Seth Leue, junior music performance major and member of the Video Game Development Association. “Voice acting is incredibly hard on you.”
Leue is the dialogue director for the association’s soon to be released title “Banish,” and has worked on a number of indie titles. He warned that the industry should protect this vital asset for actors, as it is the only way they can do their jobs.
The other medical concern for the union was due to a lack of stunt coordinators on-set. With the recent rise of motion capture technology in gaming, performers have been asked to do extreme and dangerous stunts without supervision in recording sessions.
The union mentions an unnamed actor who was asked to simulate being pulled by a rope with no prior warning or safety staff present. The actor was injured and had to miss a significant amount of time on the project, which union representatives say was unpaid.
So far, the new agreement doesn’t seem to have worked these issues out.
“We have a commitment from management to continue to work on this issue, and we invested a great deal of time and energy,” a union spokesperson told Mashable, an entertainment outlet.
Another potential win for the actors and actresses are the new “transparency rules.” Previously, performers could be working on a project entirely alone, with no awareness of even what title they were working on. The union claimed actors were being asked to simulate sex scenes and use racial slurs without warning.
“The new transparency provisions will enhance the bargaining power of our members’ representatives by requiring the companies to disclose the code name of project, its genre, whether the game is based on previously published intellectual property and whether the performer is reprising a prior role,” said Ray Rodriquez, the union’s chief contract officer, in a statement released about the proposed deal.
“If I go into a job, I want to know what I’m going to be making that will have my name on it,” Leue said.
Out of the four major points of conflict and the biggest for the gaming industry was secondary compensation, sometimes referred to as residuals. The union was asking for a bonus for every two million copies of a game sold, up to eight million, for performers. What was settled on was far from the system asked for originally, but one based on the amount of time put into a title.
Performers can be paid up to $75 for each voice recording session, making up to $2,100 in bonuses, due at the time of release. Success of the title will be irrelevant.
Overall, the reception to this announcement has been quiet. Not much has been made of it in the gaming press, and there’s been very little social media response from famous performers.