Unhappily ever SAG-AFTRA, 01/08/2024
Video games go on strike; George goes to Australia
SAG-AFTRA goes on strike against 10 video games companies
Activision research shows skills based matchmaking pays the bills
Thank Goodness You're Here! is what I say to the only notable game out this week
G’day VGIM readers,
Thanks for tolerating my literally Big Book Announcement last week. I promise that I won’t talk about it incessantly, or demand that you register your interest in pre-ordering it, for the next eighteen months or so.
Anyway, I have some more good news to share with you all that, thankfully, can be contained within the introduction of the newsletter: Video Games Industry Memo is heading to Australia in October.
Yes, I’ve been fortunate enough to have been invited to attend Game Connect Asia Pacific in Melbourne and I’m ruddy well taking up the opportunity to do so.
This means I will be spending three weeks in the country from the very end of September, hopping from Melbourne, to Sydney and maybe New Zealand (locations TBC) before I fly back in late October.
As well as writing about what I discover down under, I’m also going to be taking meetings for The Book (see, I told you I’d barely mention it), hosting sessions at a variety of conferences and generally meeting and greeting the citizens of one of the world’s finest video games clusters.
If you want to meet when I’m in the land down under email me at george@videogamesindustrymemo.com and we’ll get something sorted.
And if you don’t want to meet me down there, why not contact me asking for a meeting at gamescom in Cologne instead on Wednesday 21st or Thursday 22nd August? I’ll be around for more book chat, more work meetings and more mini Kolschs than a man can handle if you want to say hello.
For now though, let’s head into the depths of a big read topped by an utterly atrocious, and mostly unjustified, pun.
The big read - Unhappily ever SAG-AFTRA
Strike! Yes, the Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) has authorised a strike against ten video games companies following the breakdown of negotiations over the terms of a refreshed version of Interactive Media Agreement (IMA) covering the contracts of thousands of video game performers.
Effective from a minute past midnight on Friday 26th July, SAG-AFTRA members will not be performing for *inhales* Activision Productions Inc, Blindlight LLC, Disney Character Voices International Inc, Electronic Arts Inc, Formosa Interactive LLC, Insomniac Games Inc, Llama Productions LLC, Take 2 Productions Inc, VoiceWorks Productions In and WB Games Inc *exhales* on projects commissioned after September 2023 until a deadlock over provisions designed to protect performers from the impact of artificial intelligence is broken.
The announcement has raised fears that the video games sector will be affected by industrial action in the manner of last year’s devastating 118 day long film and TV strike, which saw high profile productions delayed or cancelled - putting thousands of people out of work in the process.
Concern over the video game performers strike is real but it’s likely overstated. SAG-AFTRA’s action will impact the games businesses involved, creating the risk of some production headaches and having the potential to have deeper impact on companies in the long term if the dispute rolls on.
But the targeted nature of SAG-AFTRA’s concern over the terms of the IMA, the union’s limited influence over active projects managed by struck companies and its lesser influence over the production of video games in comparison to the other screen sectors diminishes its ability to bring the sector to its knees.
This means that the strike is less of an existential threat to the industry and more of an interesting test case for how it will handle the balance of human creativity and artificially created output in the years to come.
The Generative AI Game
As mentioned above, the main reason why SAG-AFTRA has gone on strike is a simple one: the possible impact of AI, and particularly generative AI, on its member’s livelihoods.
Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, National Executive Director at SAG-AFTRA and the authorised negotiator on behalf of the union, said that the talks collapsed because the video games companies on the other side of the table failed to offer performers “fair compensation and the right of informed consent for the AI use of their faces, voices, and bodies” within games projects.
In particular, the union is concerned that the refreshed terms of the IMA provided insufficient protections from the impact to all types of performers who work on games projects.
Ray Rodriguez, SAG-AFTRA’s Chief Contracts Officer, said to the Associated Press that video games companies “do not necessarily consider everyone who is rendering movement performance to be a performer that is covered by the collective bargaining agreement.”
In particular, non-speaking motion and stunt performers who do important animation reference work like throwing punches or sloping around like zombies are seemingly not currently covered by the provisions of the deal - something that SAG-AFTRA “cannot and will not accept” according to union committee member Andi Norris.
But why has what seems like a comparatively small disagreement over a definition transformed into a full blown strike? The answer is that the disagreement taps into a general fear amongst performers that if you give companies an inch regarding the use of their performances within AI tools, they will take miles out of the careers of performers across the world.
In further comments to the AP, Rodriguez went on to express concerns that a failure to cover all types of performers and performances with AI safeguards would turn bespoke creative output for a targeted purpose into generic “data” for generative tools.
This would mean that they run the risk of seeing one-off work on a project being used to generate multiple outputs across a range of projects - leaving them out of pocket, and potentially out of work, while companies plough onwards.
It’s a sensible position that the wider industry will be sympathetic to. As we saw in GDC’s State of the Industry survey earlier this year,
SAG-AFTRA’s worries over AI align closely with concerns amongst developers, artists and designers who have already seen companies like Activision Blizzard toying with generative AI tools in a way that risks turning their unique creative work into information to feed a generative model that has the power to erode their day-to-day livelihoods.
The question is whether SAG-AFTRA has the necessary power and influence to drive through a change to the IMA that can offer performers those protections - potentially indirectly supporting battles between workers and AI in other parts of the sector in the process.
Under the influence
On the face of it, the restrictions imposed by SAG-AFTRA on the ten companies it has struck against feel imposingly punitive to their performance needs.
Trade publication Backstage provided an extensive list of activities that SAG-AFTRA members cannot provide to projects managed by on strike companies, including delivering voice work, physical performances and even auditioning for work in the future.
Members found to breach the rules can be censured, while non-members who cross the line risk kissing goodbye to the prospect of SAG-AFTRA membership for good - creating a reason not to cross the picket line on affected projects.
When you read through the restrictions, it feels like the video games performer strike is similarly as powerful as the action which rocked the film and TV world last year. However, SAG-AFTRA’s ability to influence the video games performance landscape is limited for a few major reasons.
First, performers in video games simply have less power than their counterparts in film and TV to bring production to a halt.
SAG-AFTRA membership in film and TV covers the profession extensively. It contains a ‘who's who; of stars in film and television like Jennifer Lawrence, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jack Black, who have the clout to put bums on seats and get financiers backing projects.
But they’re the thin end of a much larger membership wedge which includes the jobbing actors, vocal performers and stunt artists who make productions tick.
When performers withdrew their labour last year, they were able to disrupt, delay and halt productions so effectively because the absence of performers attacked pretty much every part of both screen sectors.
This meant performers could directly hit their paymasters where it hurts, as evidenced indirectly by the estimated $6.5bn of damage that the strike caused to Los Angeles’ local economy.
Video game performers in comparison simply don’t have that ability to undermine the production process of most video game companies.
While great performances do make for amazing games, as seen in Baldur’s Gate 3, the impact of performers can be limited because games often don’t require them (e.g. a puzzle game), have limited need for them (e.g. a voice over for a strategy game tutorial) or that the need for performances is one final aspect of a much wider development process that often comes towards the end of a project.
This means that a performer strike is more likely to act as a limited drag on a handful of projects rather than forcing a total shutdown across the industry - reducing its effect on the sector in the process.
Second, the impact of the strike is diminished further because performers will not be striking against the vast number of projects that video games companies have underway already.
As mentioned earlier, the union’s strike does not affect projects and live service games that were commissioned or launched prior to September 2023.
Given that most Triple A video games will have started development the best part of half a decade ago (e.g. Grand Theft Auto VI) and that many popular live service games first entered the market a similarly long time ago (e.g. Call of Duty: Warzone, Apex Legends), companies anticipate that any strike action will have next to no impact on them immediately.
Andrew Wilson, EA’s CEO, said as much to investors on its quarterly earning call this week claiming that “we don’t expect any near-term disruption to any of the games we have in development or any of the live services we’re currently running” - suggesting limitations to the strike’s influence.
Finally, the influence of SAG-AFTRA’s action is restricted by the fact that its members are less plugged into the wider world of video games creation.
In film and TV, the union’s influence is truly global. It may be headquartered in LA and many of the dramatic photos it generated during last year’s performer strikes were taken when high profile performers joined picket lines local to Hollywood.
But SAG-AFTRA members were also able to impact productions being filmed thousands of miles from its heartland (e.g. pausing the UK based production of Deadpool 3) or disrupt the promotion of existing projects at global events to dramatic effect (e.g. the eerie sight of an almost starless Venice Film Festival during the height of the strike) because they were attached to projects commissioned by ‘struck’ companies headquartered in the US - making a ‘local’ dispute globally impactful.
In games, SAG-AFTRA simply doesn’t have a similar network to tap into. Production in the games industry is simultaneously more “global” in terms of where games businesses are funded and based (e.g. thriving scenes in China, Brazil and Poland) and more “local” in terms of accessing talent on the ground (e.g. clusters popping up around Melbourne, Leamington Spa and Espoo in Finland).
While companies may want to bring on board a SAG-AFTRA performer to help them with part of their game, companies who are based elsewhere - including outposts of some of the businesses SAG-AFTRA is striking against - can mostly sidestep the strike action by hiring talent closer to home who aren’t restricted in where they can work.
For example, the UK based performers union Equity put out a statement supporting the SAG-AFTRA strike earlier this week that threw its weight behind the action and expressed its support for the performers out on strike.
But once you’d got past the warm words and a misguided argument implying that performers should be paid more because games companies have claimed a lot of tax relief (tl;dr - if developers pay UK performers more then the amount of relief they claim will likely go up because it’s considered a core expense that can be claimed back), Equity makes it clear its members should “continue to work”, directly on projects and on wider promotional work where contracted to because the strike has no legal force outside the US or face the risk of sanction.
This guidance mirrored the approach taken by the union in response to last year’s film and TV strikes. But whereas in those shutdowns SAG-AFTRA members were able to spread the strike action elsewhere because they were integral to so many productions, the more geographically distributed nature of game development lessens the risk of a “contagion effect” - keeping the impact of the strike mostly on American shores.
Targeted strike
Despite being down on SAG-AFTRA’s ability to influence video games development in comparison to the worlds of film and TV, I still expect it to emerge with a deal that provides some landmark protections for video game performers regarding generative AI.
Chiefly, I think the reason why it’ll do so is that there doesn’t seem to be an enormous gap between both parties on the overall negotiation.
Even though the two have been locked in a painfully long dialogue for 18 months, SAG-AFTRA hasn’t disputed the claim of Audrey Cooling, a representative for games companies covered by the IMA, that AI is the one area out of 25 where there is still disagreement between the two parties.
This is less significant than the film and TV dispute, where fundamental arguments over other issues like the payment of residuals by streaming services to performers considerably upped the ante of the strike.
As a result, I think SAG-AFTRA’s relatively limited demands will be met in due course in an effort to minimise disruption.
My bet is that it is hoping that throwing heat and light on the situation in the short term through activities like picketing major games businesses will encourage a quick deal from companies, in the knowledge that the impact of a strike will increase if it rolls on as long as the video game voice actors strike did between 2016 and 2017.
But the interesting thing to watch will be to see whether a deal emerges, what the terms are around AI protections and whether it proves influential to both performer contracts in the global games sector and the wider terms under which other creatives in the sector work.
The issues raised by SAG-AFTRA in regards to the use of AI within creative work may be rooted in the world of performance but they’re shared by many professionals operating across the sector.
The outcome of this strike will be seen by many as a test case for the industry’s approach to AI in the future, meaning that this dispute will be keenly watched by the games business in the weeks and months to come.
News in brief
Mad (matchmaking) skills: Call of Duty players are 90% more likely to play less and 80% more likely to rage quit if the publisher ditched skills based matchmaking, according to an Activision Blizzard research paper. The findings are both a welcome example of how industry transparency can inform the public debate around video games AND a really great way to boil the piss of idiotic internet based teenage boys who claim to know better than literal professional video game developers. Well done, everybody!
Introductory Spiele: German video games players spent €9.97bn on video games hardware, software and online games services, according to German video games trade association Game. Mobile played a big part in that success, with 24.6m players spending over €2.9bn on game apps. If only they’d spent another €0.03bn to get the overall German total to a round €10bn eh…
Konvoying optimism: Konvoy’s Q2 2024 report exploring the financial landscape around the video games industry offers some room for optimism. While venture funding is down 20% quarter on quarter, Konvoy’s boffins have found that private funding into games in 2024 has exceeded the total popped into the sector through all of 2023 and that early stage VC cash is flowing back into games. Nice.
Booting Boosty: My Games has divested Boosty, its platform for supporting internet creators, after it emerged that it was being used to violate international sanctions against Russia. An investigative reporter at Dutch newspaper Nieuwsuur discovered that creators on the platform were asking for donations in crypto, which they then funneled onwards to help finance the country’s invasion of Ukraine. Not ideal, eh?
Playing the percentages: Epic Games has confirmed that it plans to charge developers just 12% to process payments on its store and 0% for third party payments, as it continues its battle against the hefty charges levied by other store fronts on developers of all stripes. It also separately announced that Fortnite is leaving Samsung Galaxy’s store after the company rolled out an update to block sideloading by default. The battle goes on and on and on...
Moving on
Friend of VGIM Cat Channon has started a new position as Senior Communications Consultant at Epic Games…Another friend of VGIM Samantha Ebelthite has been appointed as a member of the Advisory Board for Singer Studios…Macy Mills is the new Partner, Games Tech BD Lead for A16Z Games…Dan Barrett has been promoted to Director, Commercial and Business Strategy for Dungeons & Dragons at Wizards of the Coast…Wayne Emanuel brings a four and a half year stint at TikTok in the EMEA Gaming Partnerships team to an end...And Dylan Boyd has a new role at the Entertainment Software Association of Canada as Senior Manager, Digital Content…
Jobs ahoy
Enforce video games dominance over the other creative industries by taking the 12 month Head of Sales role at BAFTA…Sony Interactive Entertainment is hiring a new Director of Development Strategy and Support…dentsu is recruiting for a Team Coordination Lead to manage the eff out of its Gaming Agency…King is advertising its need for a Staff Data Analyst to “slice through petabytes of data”...And The National Football League is recruiting a Director, Video Game Licencing over in New York…
Events and conferences
GDL Indie Games Expo, London - 9th August
ChinaJoy, Shanghai - 26th-29th July
Serious Play Conference, Toronto - 12th-14th August
Gamescom, Cologne - 21st-25th August
PAX West, Seattle - 30th August-2nd September
Games of the week
Thank Goodness You’re Here! - London made but Barnsley bred title channels the spirit of Monty Python and Shooting Stars to offer an eccentrically British comedy experience.
Star Wars: Bounty Hunter - Perfectly serviceable third person Star Wars action game gets the remastered release treatment.
Tomba! Special Edition - And in further re-release news, the little remembered 2.5D game Tomba is also being put out (of its misery?) during the Summer games drought.
Before you go…
What would happen to you if you were hit in the face by a red shell moving at a Mario Kart accurate speed of circa 300mph?
According to this video from No Bitrate, the answer is ‘nothing pretty’.