The Screen Actors Guild's national board of directors have sent the video game contract back to union members for yet another vote. Last month, the national executive committee threw out the agreement that their members had voted to accept.

Last week I received an interesting email from someone who's been in the video game voice acting business for more than a decade.

The letter does a lot to shed some light on the growing frustration of the membership over a guild leadership that increasingly fails to represent their members, according to the letter's author. It also shows a keen insight into the inner machinations of the video game production world. Voice actors know their voices aren't what's selling games, but they also know bad acting can hurt a game.
I am leaving off the name of the writer, to shield the person from any possible repercussions in their profession.

The union interactive agreement (for voice actors) was recently signed by AFTRA and rejected by SAG even though SAG was the one proposing the changes in the first place. It was really a stupid first attempt to get residuals off of online subscriptions, game sales etc, and even the new agreement is limiting the number of voices to 3 per actor which is ridiculous. Not practical with so many minor characters in most games.

I am encouraging all union actors to go financial core (they write a letter to their unions declaring that they are doing this effective immediately) and now they are allowed to work both union and non union. They continue to pay dues, but don't vote on union issues, which is pointless anyway as they send out ballots and then don't act on the vote but decide they're going to negotiate on their own.

Anyone can get a union card if they pay a lot of money to join and there are different requirements for SAG than AFTRA, but since a union card does not in ANY WAY guarantee that the cardholder has an ounce of talent, and since the union admits they need "an overhaul" it's time for the game industry to join the agents who have not resigned their SAG franchise contracts (because they are so fed up with the union) and everyone should stop being SAG signatories and bring the union to a reality check or to its knees.

Marketing depts of game companies still think that if they pay over $100,000 to get a "star" to do voices in their game, it will bring them press, which will sell the game better.
But the moment you use one union talent, you have to do the whole project union.

Charleton Heston who used to head the union is financial core, and people like Julia Roberts have totally done away with their agents because of all the BS. Game play is what sells more games. Grand Theft Auto had people talking about how you could beat up prostitutes, not that there were celeb voices in the game.

So I continue to say that, for the most part, gamers don't care about hearing celebrities in the games. They often turn off the sound completely. A lot of stars have bad attitudes, are not the best voice actors and to go union drives up the costs over 50% extra, making it hard for smaller developers to compete.

We've done tons of sound-alikes for the stars and we will continue to give the best acting by actors who are both union and non union, but everyone should know about financial core, because it won't hurt the talent, agents don't care if their talent is fi-core, and even though the union doesn't like the idea, the union is now going after the animation industry for more money etc. So instead of trying to be an easier entity to deal with and help clients and talent, the union is like a starving wild dog, trying to grab whatever it can to stay alive.

There, I've spoken my piece. Thanks for listening.

SAG Eyes Video Game Pact [Backstage]

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