As of today, the voice actor strike has been ongoing for 98 days. That makes it the second longest strike for the screen actors guild passing the 95-day mark from a strike in the 1980s. For those who haven't been paying attention, the SAG-ATRA strike started back on October 21st against what they are calling the video game companies and has been in full swing ever since. While deals were negotiated between the union and SAG-ATRA for 19 months they ultimately fell apart in the end.

Prominent voice actors like Jennifer Hale, David Hayter, and Elias Toufexis and others have sought out to strike against 11 video game companies. Some of these companies are big triple a companies like EA, Activision, Insomniac, Disney, and Warner Brothers. Why are they striking you ask? Well, one of the demands they are asking for is residuals for they games they work on. They want this because no matter how well a game sells they get no secondary compensation for it. What they are asking for is a performance bonus every time a game sells 2 million copies or downloads, or reaches 2 million unique subscribers, with a cap at 8 million. This is important for people who work on a freelance basis and go from job to job like voice actors do and the fact that voice acting is also very stressful on your vocal cords. Having to go out into a booth and scream and yell for four hours straight and basically perform a one-man can impact your performance on other jobs. Jennifer Hale even stated that a friend of hers was even going through vocal surgery because of the stressful work that voice acting brings. Many other voice actors also do work for commercials which are a big money maker for them said he had to cancel on a commercial shoot because they couldn't speak for a week losing out on that payday. Stunt coordinators are also wanted for when they have to do mo-cap for a character. While movies and tv may have them video games don't get this luxury and they believe it could help with learning how to perform better and making games more realistic overall. They also ant less transparency when it comes to what they are working on. Background of the character and what they are like would help in portraying that character.

On the side of the video game industry, they believe that voice actors only make up a tenth of one percent of the work that goes into making a video game. We know video games cost millions of dollars to make already so anytime they can save money the better. Another belief is that most video gamers don't care enough about the voice actors for them to receive a pay raise in any way. A statement that I personally don't believe in, but I understand I am an anomaly when it comes to how closely I follow video games. Nolan North even had some words for the voice actors who are on strike while he received his award at the video game awards. “Performance matters,” mimicking the hashtag the actors on strike use to promote the strike on twitter, “The performance of every designer, every programmer, of every hard working and talented person who works at that office. That performance is so important. Their performance matters more than mine. That’s important in this day and age, with all this talk going back and forth. Without their performance, my performance wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t even exist.” Nolan North may have a different experience being he is the most recognizable name in video games today and he even acknowledged that in an interview with Polygon. Some of the big video game companies even called out the union for its lack of communication with the actors on what they are willing to negotiate, and forcing a strike in the first place.

This is a very interesting thing I wanted to look into and see how it affects the video game industry as a whole. With the fact that only 25% of video game companies use voice actors in the union in the first place I don't think this have a big impact on the industry at all. There are so many people who are inspiring voice actors who will do anything just to get a job performing for a game. How do you feel about the voice actor strike and who's side are you on in this? I personally side more with the video game industry, but that doesn't mean I dismiss the hard work voice actors put into games. Thank you for reading and have a wonderful day.