If you’ve been following the latest voiceover industry news, you’ve obviously heard about the SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) strike that’s been going on.
The guild is striking against none other than the behemoth video game industry. The strike came into effect on the night of 20th, this month after the deadline for changes requested by guild lapsed. The union instructed its members to stop offering their services until the strikes were called off.
However, just before the strike began, a spokesperson for the video game industry stated that there are no plans to resume talks.
Why is the Guild Striking
The SAG-AFTRA strike is one of the first strikes that’s taking place in the gaming industry, which is one of the relatively newer industries in the entertainment sector. The last time the guild went on strike was in 2000 and it was against the advertising industry. The strike of 2000 lasted around 6 months.
The latest strike is also the first to revolve mostly around a single term – “buyout”.
The guild demands that the industry start paying residuals to voice actors, which is a common practice in other industries such as TV and Film. However, the gaming industry has so far refused, stating that such a move would negatively impact its business model.
Currently, the list of companies that have been targeted by the SAG-AFTRA include Electronic Arts, Interactive Associates, Disney Character Voices, Insomniac Games, Formosa Interactive, WB Games, Blindlight, Take-Two Interactive Software, VoiceWorks Productions, and Corps of Discovery Films.
According to the guild, the strike will cover all of the games produced after the 17th of February, 2015 by the above mentioned companies.
The Gaming Industry Replies
In earlier discussions between the guild and the gaming industry, the latter had offered a 9% increase in wages, which would be in line with the 3% annual increase that the guild originally wanted. The industry was also willing to pay additional compensation of up to $950, upfront, for each game, dependent on the total sessions that the voice actor worked on for that production.
The gaming industry has also stated that offering residuals to voice actors would be unfair to developers and programmers, who put in far more work and aren’t compensated according to man-hours.
However, SAG-AFTRA states that asking for extra compensation based on sales volumes is perfectly in line with the bonuses that development teams receive for hitting particular milestones, most commonly meta critic scores and sales volumes. This refusal, the guild claims is simply an attempt by the industry to protect the status quo and avoiding requests to more fairly share its prosperity.
With no resolution currently in sight, it looks like this is going to be a long battle.
ABOUT ROBERTA –
Roberta is a Professional AND award Winning International Voiceover Actor, as well as an accomplished on-camera actress and spokesperson. She lives in the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area and is the owner of Roberta Kennedy Voice Talent and RK Productions, Inc.
She voices for companies around the world using her state of the art, broadcast quality studio. She’s hired for commercials, web demos and explainer videos, product infomercials, documentaries, promo/imaging, political ads, e-learning videos, podcasts, guided real estate tours, telephony/IVR projects, high profile corporate presentations, video games and character animation.
Her voice is described as: playful, contemporary, compelling, commanding, inviting, sultry and smooth. A hip edge with sophistication, bold, warm, interesting and engaging are also commonly used adjectives to describe her voice.
Her home studio is equipped with ipDTL, ISDN and phone patch capability with lightning fast turnaround times! A voiceover talent with over 20 years of voiceover acting experience, she offers a full range of voiceover services at highly competitive rates & will work with your budget to help you promote your business to new levels of excellence!
To request a personal quote or audition and/or to review more of her credits & demos, feel free to visit her website: www.robertakennedy.com – or mail her atroberta@robertakennedy.com. You can even give her a call on (408) 313-7202.