Natasha Blasick joins the kick-off picket line for the SAG-AFTRA video game strike at Warner Bros. headquarters. Games, Thursday, August 1, 2024, in Burbank, California | Photo credit: Chris Pizzallo
More than 300 video game players and Hollywood actors picketed in front of the Warner Bros. building. Studios on Thursday to protest against what it called the reluctance of top game companies to protect unionized voice actors and motion capture workers similar to the unregulated use of artificial intelligence. .
Standing before the crowd, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, national executive director of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, said AI has been the most challenging issue in many union negotiations.
“We have made deals with studios and streamers. We have made no-strike deals with major record labels and with countless other employers, which give consent and fair compensation to our members,” he said. The Associated Press. “But, for some reason, the video game companies refused to do it and that’s what they’re going to undo.”
The protest is the first major labor action since SAG-AFTRA game workers voted to strike last week. The work stoppage comes after more than 18 months of negotiations with the game giants, including the Activision division, Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Co., over a new interactive media agreement stalled over protection around the use of AI. Warner Bros. Games is the publisher behind games including “Hogwarts Legacy” and “Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.”
Masked activists during the SAG-AFTRA Video Game Strike kick-off picket outside Warner Bros. Games in Burbank, California, USA, August 1, 2024. | Photo Credit: MARIO ANZUONI
“Sign up, game down, LA is a union city,” the crowd chanted Thursday morning, many holding signs emblazoned with fists holding video game controllers. A man, wearing a skull mask like a “Call of Duty” character named Ghost, waved a poster that read, “Don’t ghost us for AI. It’s your job to pay the actors. The first-person shooter game is published by Activision.
Members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and the Writers Guild of America also joined the protest in solidarity.
Union leaders have declared AI an existential crisis for players. Game voice actors and motion capture artists, they say, can be imitated by AI and used without consent and fair compensation. The unregulated use of AI, the union said, poses “an equal or greater threat” to players in the video game industry than in film and television because of the cheap and easy capacity to create highly convincing digital replicas of players’ voices. available.
Concerns about AI helped fuel last year’s film and television strike by unions, which lasted four months.
On the picket line, Konstantine Anthony says most people want humans — not AI — to be storytellers. “Many of the algorithms that we see in the most advanced video games have been around for decades. It’s just becoming more and more advanced to recreate, likeness – that’s really what they’re trying to do so they don’t have to use us anymore,” said Anthony, Burbank city council and SAG-AFTRA members. “That’s why we’re here: asking them to just pay for their stories.”
Seth Allyn Austin, a motion capture artist, said involvement in the union has increased as negotiations have continued over the past year and a half.
“To come here and be supported by my fellow artists, knowing that you are all in this fight together, they are all monuments standing behind me. It’s great,” said Austin, who has worked on games such as “Horizon Forbidden West” and “God of War Ragnarok.”
Audrey Cooling, a spokeswoman for the video game producer, said the company is offering AI protections as well as “significant wage increases for SAG-AFTRA-represented players in video games.”
SAG-AFTRA member and video game actor Zachary Luna joined the kick-off picket line for the SAG-AFTRA video game strike at Warner Bros. headquarters. Games, Thursday, August 1, 2024, in Burbank, California | Photo Credit: Chris Pizzallo
“We have worked hard to submit proposals with reasonable requirements that protect the rights of players while ensuring that we can continue to use the most advanced technology to create a great game experience for fans,” said Cooling. “We have proposed terms that provide consent and fair compensation to anyone working on (the contract) if AI reproductions or digital replicas of performance are used in games.”
The SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee asserted that the studio’s definition of what constitutes a “player” is key to understanding the issue of who will be protected.
“The industry has told us that they don’t have to consider everyone who gives a movement performance to be a performer covered by the collective bargaining agreement,” said SAG-AFTRA Chief Contracts Officer Ray Rodriguez at a press conference last week, adding that some physical performances are considered ” data.”
The union has been negotiating with an industry bargaining group that includes signatory video game companies. The companies are Activision Productions Inc., Blindlight LLC, Disney Character Voices Inc., Electronic Arts Productions Inc., Formosa Interactive LLC, Insomniac Games Inc., Llama Productions LLC, Take 2 Productions Inc., VoiceWorks Productions Inc. and WB Games Inc. .
The global video game industry will generate nearly $184 billion in 2023, according to Newzoo’s game market forecast, with revenues expected to reach $207 billion in 2026.
“We are at the table because we want to include SAG-AFTRA-represented players in our production, and we will continue to be able to resolve the remaining issues in this negotiation,” Cooling said. “Our goal is to reach an agreement with the union that will end this strike.”
