Strike Strike Revolution

July 30, 2024 3:28 PM

As of Friday, SAG-AFTRA performers involved in the video game industry are on strike as they seek a replacement for the Interactive Media Agreement that expired in November 2022.

What this means - Covered performers cannot: Act, sing, dance, motion capture, audition, test or promote any struck game. (This does not cover games that were in flight prior to Sept 2023)

What the union is seeking: improved wages, rest time and set safety and the big remaining sticking point - controls over the use of AI in replicating or creating performances.

This can be seen as part of the ongoing trend of increased union presence in the industry

posted by drewbage1847 (10 comments total)

Solidarity.

There is as yet no strike fund that I'm aware. I'll be keeping an eye out.
posted by humbug at 5:15 PM on July 30 [3 favorites]

Globally, games are a USD $180 billion dollar industry. Four times the size of movies and music combined.

Studios have the money. They should pay and improve the conditions for the people that make the games what they are - both the actors and the developers. And fuck'em if they don't.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:50 PM on July 30 [11 favorites]

Thinking about His thoughts were red thoughts's comment and, really not trying to be incendiary, but i do wonder what the avg cost per employee is for video games vs movies. My gut says games are more expensive simply due to my perceived notions of number of people involved (and thus lower per employee cost) and longer development times, but i'd love to be proven wrong. If it games are, genuinely, more costly to produce than movies, is it really a fair comparison to say their industry is X times the size?

All that said, i'm still in favor of unionization as it can be such a massive benefit to so many employees who haven't had a (powerful) voice before.
posted by sedimentflux at 6:13 PM on July 30 [1 favorite]

Is there a way I can find out which games are struck, so as not to support them or their devs/publishers/etc until the resolution.
posted by panhopticon at 6:57 PM on July 30 [1 favorite]

Not games, but studios are according to Variety: "Along with EA, the struck companies include Activision, Blindlight, Disney Character Voices, Formosa Interactive, Insomniac Games, Llama Productions, Take 2 Productions, VoiceWorks Productions and WB Games."
posted by drewbage1847 at 7:00 PM on July 30 [2 favorites]

If it games are, genuinely, more costly to produce than movies, is it really a fair comparison to say their industry is X times the size?

That figure is revenue, not production cost.

But let's take an example.

In 2023, the Barbie movie was the highest grossing Hollywood film. It made USD $1.5 billion worldwide, and had a production cost of USD $151 million.

The biggest game in of 2023 was Hogwarts Legacy, with over USD $1 billion in sales and an estimated production budget of about $150 million. Comparable in terms of profit margin.

They have the money.

[I am not promoting Hogwarts Legacy, fuck JK Rowling and all her TERF works]
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 7:04 PM on July 30 [8 favorites]

Thanks for crunching the ##'s His thoughts. I'm genuinely surprised movies and games are that comparable. Whether that holds across the industry, it certainly points (if not insists) towards a more equitable model. Curious, but are there A or even AA publishers that engage in better profit sharing? Meaning, is this a distinguishing factor between "indie" publishers and the big guys, or a crap shoot, or, even worse, just genuinely terrible for the vast majority of employees?
posted by sedimentflux at 7:28 PM on July 30

Curious, but are there A or even AA publishers that engage in better profit sharing?

Plenty.

For example, Supergiant Games made Hades, which sold over 1 million copies on Steam, and made about USD $250 million.

They employ about 25 people, and the claimed secret to their success is that they're nice to them.

"The studio has made changes over time to ensure that everybody takes care of themselves. For example, Supergiant began as a company with unlimited time off. But, Rao explained, this created an “invisible pressure” to never stop working, because developers always had endless vacation time in their back pockets. These days, Supergiant still offers unlimited time off, but employees are required to take at least 20 days off per year. “This is us saving us from ourselves,” Rao said. “That changes our psychology to ‘How do I spend this minimum? Where do I put it? Am I doing a summer break, or am I doing every Friday for a little while?’”
...
"Rao repeatedly emphasized that, when it comes to company culture, little things add up. As another example, he pointed to Supergiant’s approach to emails on the weekend—namely, that there shouldn’t be any after 5 PM on Friday, even if somebody’s really excited about a new feature or idea, because that risks roping other people into work on the weekend. “It doesn’t mean someone can’t get really excited about something and do something if they want to,” said Rao. “It means the company is not going to ask you to, and you shouldn’t accidentally pull more people into a process that they didn’t necessarily intend to do.”
...
"Even in these moments, however, team members try to temper each others’ more self-destructive impulses. “Not everyone hollers if they’re overburdened by work,” said Kasavin. “We try to look out for each other and say, ‘Hey, is this too much? Can we alleviate some of the burden here?’ Sometimes it’s not even a question, right? It’s like, ‘No, you’re doing too much.’”

It’s been a learning process, Rao and Kasavin agreed—one that’s resulted in a place where people can come into work whenever they want and make time to have friends and families outside it. It might not work for a more literally super-giant 5,000-person company, said Kasavin, but it works for Supergiant."

posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 7:54 PM on July 30 [7 favorites]

Supergiant is a particularly impressive case study here because they're small, they only put out one game every 3-4 years—they've made 4 games total, and a fifth, Hades II, is currently being actively worked on (it's available via Early Access on Steam and is slated to release sometime next year)—and every single one of their games is fun as hell and critically acclaimed.
posted by adrienneleigh at 10:17 PM on July 30 [4 favorites]

I built an entire tech support benefit system for them and tried to get in touch with their union and they sent me a canned response and closed the ticket. I can't with these people. If you are a member of SAG-AFTRA and want to check this out, I'd love to talk.
posted by lextex at 11:29 AM on July 31