Video game actors are calling for better transparency around "disgusting" motion capture work that is not properly disclosed at the point of booking.
In an interview with the BBC, professional casting director Jessica Jefferies - who previously worked as a motion capture performer - recalled times she'd be called for a shoot with absolutely no information about what the work entailed, only to find out that it included "gratuitous" sex scenes.
"We'd get an email or a call from a studio saying we need you on these days for a shoot," she explained. "That was all the information we'd get.
Atsuko Tanaka – the Japanese voice behind iconic characters like Street Fighter's Chun-Li, Lara Croft, Bayonetta, and Tess in the Japanese version of The Last of Us – has died at the age of 61.
As well as extensive video game credits, which include Nier Replicant's Kaine, Tanaka also had notable roles in anime and other shows, including Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost of the Shell and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
Tanaka's death was revealed by her son, voice actor Hikaru Tanaka, who confirmed she died of an undisclosed illness earlier today (August 20).
It's a lot easier to get hired back (as a contractor or not) with a former employer with which you have a good and established relationship. The contractor already knows the dev team, already knows the kind of games they make, already has experience with the franchise, pipeline, tools, and workflow so there's very little ramp-up time. If the cost of contracting the leader's company for the work is reasonable and within the game's budget, there's little to be lost by hiring them on. This also helps establish legitimacy for the lead's contracting company - having a list of established and satisfied clients looks good to other potential clients, which makes it easier for the contracting company to get hired by other companies in the future.
Contracting at that level also pays a lot more than a salary job working for the studio. A lot of things are open for negotiation when it's company to company, including a percentage of the game's revenues. In many ways, it allows the contracting company to change the risk - reward ratio. The contractor can also take on more risk (e.g. less money paid up front) for more reward (a larger cut of the game revenue once it ships). Masahiro Sakurai of Sora Ltd. does this - he takes no money up front and gets paid entirely based on how well the game he contracted on sells.
Voice acting has a lot of associated costs. Specifically, getting the voice acting requires us to pay for:
The voice actor's time
The recording studio time
The voice director's time
The developer time
These can add up - we pay union voice actors about $2000 per day each according to the current [SAG-AFTRA interactive media contract rates], and we spend at least that much for studio time. We also need to factor in the time the developers are away from the development studio and are at the recording studio because they aren't doing their normal tasks while taking care of this. It isn't uncommon for voice recording to cost over $10,000 per day, all things considered.
In addition to this, voice actors are often quite busy. They often have many roles already scheduled that they have committed to. This means that they might have only one or two days they can commit to recording, then be unavailable for months after that. In such cases, it means that we can't make any modifications or changes to the script after the recording is done because the voice actor isn't available to do those lines anymore. For example, take a look at [Aleks Le's IMDB page]. He did a lot of voicework for games like Persona 3 Reload, Street Fighter 6, Octopath Traveler 2, etc. I count 18 separate projects he recorded for in 2023 alone. If he's one of my voices, I probably wouldn't be able to get him back in the recording studio for several months since his schedule is so packed.
SWTOR is especially difficult to record for because player voice lines need to be recorded once for each character class. That means aligning eight different actors schedules before a hard deadline, and that can be extraordinarily difficult. Anyone who's tried to schedule events knows this - things happen, people change, agreements fall through, things get pushed back. As such, it's a small miracle they're able to keep putting out fresh voiced content like they do.
US workers body SAG-AFTRA says its voice actors strike could still impact projects that have been in development for over a year, including games like GTA 6, despite the terms of its agreement stating they should be safe.
Initially, last week's shock announcement of strike action by video game actors over AI concerns was thought to have minimal impact on games expected to release later this year, as it did not include games that commenced production before August 2023.
Now, however, SAG-AFTRA says all "members who want to show solidarity with the union can elect voluntarily not to work", intimating that it believed the strike could be more disruptive than previously suspected and impact "non-struck" games.
US workers body SAG-AFTRA says its voice actors strike could still impact projects that have been in development for over a year, including games like GTA 6, despite the terms of its agreement stating they should be safe.
Initially, last week's shock announcement of strike action by video game actors over AI concerns was thought to have minimal impact on games expected to release later this year, as it did not include games that commenced production before August 2023.
Now, however, SAG-AFTRA says all "members who want to show solidarity with the union can elect voluntarily not to work", intimating that it believed the strike could be more disruptive than previously suspected and impact "non-struck" games.
Thousands of video game actors went on strike on July 26 for the first time since 2017. The fight is over AI protections and other issues in contract negotiations with some of the biggest studios and publishers, and will halt work from SAG-AFTRA members on future projects, as well as possibly keep them from promotion…
Here it is, Guardians: our first look – well, hear, technically – at Keith David's Commander Zavala in Destiny 2: The Final Shape.
We already knew that Bungie had no plans to remove Zavala from the Destiny 2 story given he was "central" to the upcoming The Final Shape expansion, but this is the first time we've heard Zavala voiced by David. Up until now, Zavala's voice work had been recorded in advance by his original voice actor, Lance Reddick, who sadly died last year.
The line is brief, yes – "I used to think I'd give anything to bring you back", is all he says – but it's especially powerful given the team had to unexpectedly recast the commander after Reddick, who was a committed and celebrated Destiny player himself, died.
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