Hollywood’s video game performers voted to go on strike Thursday, throwing part of the entertainment industry into another work stoppage after talks for a new contract with major game studios broke down over artificial intelligence protections.
The strike — the second for video game voice actors and motion capture performers under the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists — will begin at 12:01 a.m. Friday. The move comes after nearly two years of negotiations with gaming giants, including divisions of Activision, Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Co., over a new interactive media agreement.
SAG-AFTRA negotiators say gains have been made over wages and job safety in the video game contract, but that the studios will not make a deal over the regulation of generative AI. Without guardrails, game companies could train AI to replicate an actor’s voice, or create a digital replica of their likeness without consent or fair compensation, the union said.
Main voices and significant side characters of the story, I agree. But for some random NPCs that just add to the ambience of the environment, I think A.I can fill those roles. It just would be too cost prohibitive to hire actors for every single character voice. The developers would just not do it or they just repeat the same dialogue over and over again and that gets monotonous.
I say this as a writer who also used to work in videogames.
Aren’t those minor roles exactly how people get their start in voice acting and start building up their resumes? Actors have to have a place to get their start, too.
I’m not talking about what is currently available. I’m talking about the future in gaming. Worlds are growing. You can’t have like 5,000 unique actors in a game world… nor dialogue being written for all of them. The amount of dialogue writers would have to come up with is astronomical.
There will be games where you’ll go to full restaurant and walk around various tables where they’re will be dialogue that means nothing to the story but adds to the environment. Or just random people walking down the street.
Then there will be times where a small side character you approach will give you a side mission… those are the ones you’ll want live actors for.
Game companies will lose money if they had to pay everyone for what the future holds.
Or the alternative would be… They just wouldn’t do it. Same amount of jobs are created. Probably fewer jobs as you wouldn’t need to test as much.
So am I. Where are the future voice actors who wolud voice the major roles going to come from if the jobs they depend on to start out and get their foot in the door/build up their resumes at the beginning of their careers are gone?
The same voice jobs they do now. I am not taking about those type of jobs. And actors should fight for those. I’m talking about where the future of video games are headed.
It will be impossible to do with actors. I don’t care how many voices they can do. It will be impossible to do with writers too. There will just be too much to write.
People just can’t say… AI = bad. It’s a losing battle.
No voice actors, no writers…the future you’re envisioning for gaming completely sucks.
At what point did I ever say no voice actors and no writers? In fact, I said the exact opposite.
The government could provide subsidies or tax exemptions to companies that do not use AI in films, series, audios and video games.
It seems likely that AI will become so ubiquitous that we’d have to start drawing arbitrary lines. Can I use a picture on a wall on a live set that was drawn by AI? Can I use AI to sync an actor’s lips to an ADR line change? How much AI crosses the line?
I’m just not sure this genie can be put back in the bottle. That said, human art is better. Human acting is better. Human writers are better. I feel like overuse of AI will show in the quality of the product.
The question is are Netflix and Bethesda going to fill their catalog with AI garbage because it’s cheap and audiences don’t care anyway? I go to the PS store and look at the human made garbage on there for $.50, and I think maybe. Maybe enough people don’t care about quality of the product if it’s cheap enough. But I don’t think so.
Actors can play multiple roles, you know, and often do
Yeah, and in oblivion hearing the same 6 voices from hundreds of characters really took away from the immersion
Really?
You’re not understanding me, but that’s okay.
I understand that you don’t know how video games are made. But that’s fine.
Next up writers being replaced by AI, because all that side content is just tedious and expensive to write for being just random stuff.
Good luck with that stance then.
I agree. That will also need to happen. It’s impossible for writers to write what will be needed in the future of gaming.
Imagine something like GTA where you are able to enter any building and any room within it and there will be NPCs in most of them. How are you going to write for all of that, never mind act?
I don’t see the need for that at all.