Video game performers are on strike — and AI is the sticking point
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Voice actors breathe life into modern video games. They're heroes and villains, like in "Final Fantasy XVI"...
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO GAME, "FINAL FANTASY XVI")
ALEX LANIPEKUN: (As Hugo Kupka) You will pay for what you've done.
DETROW: ...Or criminals in "Grand Theft Auto."
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO GAME, "GRAND THEFT AUTO")
NED LUKE: (As Michael De Santa) We're going to move quick. And we're to going to keep cool.
STEVEN OGG: (As Trevor Philips) My job, my score...
DETROW: They're zombies like in Telltale's "The Walking Dead."
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As zombie, growling).
DETROW: They're all too human, like in "Red Dead Redemption 2."
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO GAME, "RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2")
ROGER CLARK: (As Arthur Morgan) I'm afraid.
IRENE DEBARI: (As Mother Superior Calderon) There is nothing to be afraid of, Mr. Morgan. Take a gamble that love exists, and do a loving act.
DETROW: And voice actors, like in "The Last Of Us 2," make combat scenes sound so lifelike, you might wince at how painful it sounds. Plus, motion-capture performers do the stunts and fights, which make all of these fantasy worlds look real.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO GAME, "THE LAST OF US 2")
ASHLEY JOHNSON: (As Ellie) Ah.
LAURA BAILEY: (As Abby Anderson) Ah.
DETROW: The video game industry made close to $185 billion last year. And some of the biggest game studios rely on voice and motion-capture actors, which is why they're all so worried about generative AI.
VERONICA TAYLOR: I have found my voice in voice banks where people can take my voice and make it say things I've never said, so that's already out there.
DETROW: Veronica Taylor is one of the many video game actors who are worried that the companies they work for could replace them with artificial intelligence or use their voices and motions in a way they haven't consented to. That is a big part of why many video game actors are currently on strike. Here's motion-capture actor Andi Norris, who's on the union's negotiating committee.
ANDI NORRIS: What they are saying is that some of these performances, specifically for movement, is just data. I can crawl all over the floor and the walls as this - as, you know, such and such creature. And they will argue that that is not performance, and so that is not subject to their AI protections.
DETROW: The last time many of these actors were on strike was in 2016. That strike lasted a year, and AI has made leaps and bounds since then. Here's voice actor Zeke Alton, who's also on the negotiating committee.
ZEKE ALTON: Are they going to use this new emergent technology as tools for creatives and for workers to create efficiency, or is this tool going to be used by executives to remove the worker?
DETROW: CONSIDER THIS - video game voice and motion actors whose human performances become computer data are especially vulnerable to being replaced by generative AI, and their collective bargaining right now will inform the ways that we think about how we use this technology going forward.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DETROW: From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DETROW: It's CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. If you're not a big gamer, you might not realize just how much real actors have to do with modern video games.
AMANDA COTE: So actually about one-quarter of the video games that are made today use voice actors that specifically fall within the SAG-AFTRA union, and about 2,500 to about 6,000 actors work on those projects every year.
DETROW: Michigan State University professor Amanda Cote studies the industry and culture of gaming. And when she says SAG-AFTRA, she means the union that also represented Hollywood actors in their strike last summer. And we should mention, it also represents many NPR journalists, though we are on a different contract, and we are not on strike.
Cote says there's been a wave of labor organizing among video game workers as their industry has grown. Just in July, over 500 people who design, engineer and test "World Of Warcraft" decided to unionize under the Communications Workers of America, as did workers at Bethesda Game Studios, known for games like "Fallout" and "Starfield."
Like during the screen actors strike, the use of AI has been a sticking point in negotiations. So to better understand that, I asked Amanda Cote what kinds of work goes into video game acting?
COTE: This can be everything from a small job where you might just record a few lines of dialogue for a non-player character, a character that the player runs into in the game but is not central to the story, to recording hundreds or even thousands of lines of dialogue with very different emotional resonances. So really storyline-driven games...
DETROW: Yeah.
COTE: ...Something like "Mass Effect" or a "Far Cry" - this is recording potentially different endings, different storyline arcs, making sure that those all stay coherent with how your character might develop along those different lines.
DETROW: Yeah. We saw big strikes in Hollywood in recent years - actors, writers - mostly having to do with AI coming fast into the entertainment industry and big questions about what that meant for union employees. Are those the similar dynamics that have led to this moment in the video game industry? What else is going on that led to this?
COTE: It's important to recognize that current union negotiations for the Screen Actors Guild's voice actors and motion-capture actors is not just about generative AI. So performers are seeking things like clearer safety and protection measures, such as receiving a five-minute break per hour of on-camera work or having an onset medic present when they're performing stunts. But it does appear that the union and video game producers have found good terms on most of those issues, and generative AI remains the sticking point.
When we look at something like AI in live-action settings, we run into the issue of the uncanny valley, where the face of an AI character looks just a little bit odd to us. But when we're thinking about industries like voice acting or motion capture, the work that performers do in that context is then attached to digital avatars and animation. And so this may make the use of generative AI easier in games than other industries, which is why it's such a sticking point for the union right now.
DETROW: Are there any prominent examples of generative AI being used in high-profile video games already?
COTE: Game actors aren't arguing that AI can never or should never be used in games. What they're really interested in is making sure that uses of AI are clear, understandable and compensated. So the very popular game "Cyberpunk 2077" recently used AI to help replicate an actor's voice after the person who created the character and voiced him originally passed away.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO GAME, "CYBERPUNK 2077")
MICHAEL GREGORY: (As Viktor Vektor) I miss her.
MILOGOST RECZEK: (As Viktor Vektor) Hope things work out for her. Hope they work out for all of us.
COTE: So they received permission from his family to recreate his voice and then hired a voice actor who could speak in kind of similar patterns, using AI to then smooth out the new actor's performance and make it sound like the original actor. And so this is a moment where the use of AI was compensated. A person was still given a job in this context, and the family of the man who had passed away gave their permission. So a lot of people are holding this up as an example of how AI could be used in a positive, clear and compensated way.
DETROW: And my understanding is that voice actors already have been offered some of these protections, right? Can you walk me through that?
COTE: Yes, that's correct. So a sticking point for the union right now is less about voice acting. The union and video game producers seem to have come to some agreement on that point. The sticking point right now is really motion capture. And so there's an argument about if motion capture counts as performance, which is what SAG-AFTRA is arguing, or if it counts as data, kind of background information generated for the game, that therefore wouldn't fall under the same protections as acting.
DETROW: That's interesting. I feel like it's been established, like, pretty clearly that it's performance when it comes to movies and TV, right?
COTE: Yes. I was also really surprised to see that motion capture was the sticking point here because motion capture is acting. You know, you're moving your body. You're moving your face. You're embodying the character that you're meant to portray in a lot of very physical and dynamic ways. And there's actually even whole programs that will do extra actor training on motion capture specifically. So this is a specialized skill set.
DETROW: I think I was using performing and acting a little interchangeably, but actually, that terminology is also a sticking point here, right?
COTE: Yes, that's correct. So the question of who counts as a performer is one of the issues in the ongoing negotiations. And one of the reasons why SAG-AFTRA has gone on the strike. While we talk about motion capture, we usually do use terms like actor or performer. But if they're not technically classified as performers in contract negotiations, they're not eligible for some of the AI protections that the union and video game producers have been discussing. And so it is kind of important to be clear about terminology there and clear that motion capture is acting and is performance rather than just a generator of background data.
DETROW: When it comes to video games, the culture of the gaming community gets a lot of attention. I think that's a fair way to say it. What have you seen? Have you seen any trends from how gamers are responding to all of this?
COTE: Yeah, so my research team and I have actually been collecting quite a bit of information about the contract negotiations SAG-AFTRA is doing right now since they first authorized a strike in September. From our preliminary pass, I can tell you that things appear to be really split. You know, there is a contingent of gamers who embody that negative gamer culture you just alluded to, who really just want the games they want as soon as possible and don't necessarily worry about the people who are producing those.
But it also seems like there's a growing contingent of people who do care about the conditions under which games are produced, and they do want the people who make their games - from developers, to voice actors, to motion capture artists - to be supported in the industry. And a lot of them have, you know, game interested reasons for that.
DETROW: Yeah.
COTE: They want people to be able to produce games for longer so that they can continue to enjoy their products. But some people also just recognize that an industry that might have negative impacts on one's health or work-life balance is not something they want to support.
DETROW: Is there any conversation about the fact that, I imagine, video game actors probably have a lot less public leverage than movie and TV actors do when you look at the public leverage and persuasion that was a part of the Screen Actor Guild strike last year?
COTE: Historically, video game voice actors are less well known than, for instance, A-list Hollywood celebrities. They tend to be behind the screen, and so people don't necessarily recognize their faces or their names. But in recent years, that has started to shift a little bit. Video games are expensive to make. They're big budget, high risk enterprises. Well-known screen actors like Giancarlo Esposito, for instance, have recently made appearances as voice actors in games or have even had their motions or their faces modeled for that game as part of their character.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO GAME, "FAR CRY 6")
GIANCARLO ESPOSITO: (As Anton Castillo) They are addicted to their selfish perversions, chaos, lies - like wild dogs. But dogs can be broken.
COTE: So this is a moment where we see video game voice actors having more name recognition and more cultural cachet than they've had during previous negotiations. I think that's going to be something that we really see the union using to help get public opinion on their side.
DETROW: That was Michigan State University professor, Amanda Cote. A spokesperson for the video game companies involved in the negotiations released a statement saying the video game companies and the union have already found common ground on 24 of 25 proposals, and they say they're disappointed the union has chosen to walk away when they're so close to a deal. The video game companies say they are prepared to resume negotiations.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DETROW: This episode was produced by Brianna Scott. It was edited by Patrick Jarenwattananon and Clare Lombardo. NPR arts correspondent Mandalit del Barco contributed reporting, and our executive producer is Sami Yenigun. Thank you to our CONSIDER THIS+ listeners who support the work of NPR journalists and help keep public radio strong. Supporters also hear every episode without messages from sponsors, and you can learn more at plus.npr.org.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DETROW: It's CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.
Copyright © 2024 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.