I wish them all the best and hopefully a strike doesn't actually happen. Last time SAG went on strike for a brief stint , game companies just got all their stuff dubbed outside of the US by actors in other unions or even non-union actors.
Reading into this whole debacle , it's easy to get clouded judgement because everyone wants more money here but the rest of the points presented by SAG-AFTRA are all valid I think. Not to say they don't deserve a better paycheque if a videogame is very successful but that shouldn't be a guarantee , it should be worked out the same way residual cheques happen in radio/commercial/tv/movies. It should also be based on profitability of the product itself rather than just sales success. Not every game that sells 2 million units is actually profitable. But having a stunt co-ordinator or safety consultant on set when doing extensive motion capture work to avoid injury ? that doesn't sound so bad. An actor having the chance to see a general synopsis of the product in question so they know if they object for moral or other reasons to the work ? That sounds reasonable. Also, the point about "vocally stressful" recording sessions (IE- screaming into the mic pretending to be injured)being limited to 2 hours instead of 4 sounds acceptable. Voice actors aren't just working on your game after all and screaming for 4 hours is basically the equivalent of going to a rock concert so they need to either limit the session or extend an offer of hazard pay. Likewise, the suggestions by game publishers are pretty absurd - fining an actor 50% of their pay (at the publishers discretion) for being inattentive or failing to preform adequately(again, in the eyes of the publisher) shouldn't be a thing. If you don't like a voice over actor, find out about that during the audition phase , not while in the booth. You've already agreed to a contract to pay this person, you shouldn't have the ability to not pay them if their performance failed to live up to the expectations you had during an audition. As well, the idea that a game publisher thinks they have a right to black list a casting agency if they don't forward all potential work to all of their clients is absolutely absurd.
So basically, if the big name game publishers rescind all of their idiotic offers and give in to the demands of everything outside of the pay increase , well I think that's basically just treating professional acting in a video game the same as it is almost everywhere else. That's a good thing.
Even the residual based payment is something that could be smoothed over. Give an actor a choice - take scale pay for the work in question (whatever that happens to be worth) and get a 1 time lump sum bonus upon the shipment of the finished game based on total number of lines recorded/characters used in the final product and pre-order totals OR get the same scale pay with no lump sum bonus but a residual amount per copy sold based on how much of the game relies upon your performance. For example - if you're Nolan North and the game is Uncharted - and perhaps there are 1.5 million pre-orders you get to choose between a 1 time 15,000$ payment (based on 2 hours of utilized performance capture, facial capture and a 300 page script with 900 lines of recorded dialog and 200 quips , 100 reaction noises) OR you can opt in to a quarterly residual payment where for the lifetime(where lifetime is deemed a period not exceeding 60 months) of that version of the product every physical or digital copy sold earns you a tiny amount of money. In this scenario , I think it would be fair that the lump sum payment is worth 2-3 times as much per copy as the residuals. But for certain games the residual payment might give someone a steady source of income for a longer period of time. Take 15,000$ up front for 1.5 million pre-orders in a game you did a lot for as an actor (1 cent per copy pre-sold) OR 1 cent for every 3 copies sold in residuals. So the first 3 months , maybe 2.5 million copies sell - great you get an 8000$ residual cheque in the mail. The next 3 months only 500,000 copies sell, hey that's still 2000$. 3 more months go by and 100,000 copies sell, okay so you get a 300$ cheque. Draw this out over 4 more years and 3 months , a total of 17 cheques that might amount to another 1000$. Obviously this scenario of mine is hypothetical but I don't see residuals being very high per copy sold even if actors do get them and in most cases, unlike tv/movies - there isn't as much of a market after a couple years so simply paying them more money in the first place would probably be a better option. I also think that voice over work that's simply just the recording with no mo-cap or facial capture isn't worth as much money and might not even be eligible for a deal like this.
Really, the only game where residual payments might give you a decent bit of money is something like grand theft auto 5. 50 million copies sold, let's say you've got yourself even just 1 cent per copy sold from 2013 through to 2018 on all platforms- that's 500,000$ extra money! , even if it was just a third of a cent per copy sold you'd still have around 150K extra but how many games sell like GTA ? None. It's really not worth fighting for a big industry standard like residuals when only 1 game every 5 years will give an actor any kind of real money for it. And at that, only if they were a main character.
For those wondering- residuals work great for TV, especially when something hits syndication because you then get paid anytime your performance is witnessed anywhere on tv. I once heard a story about the voice actress for Wilma Flinstone , every other cast member on that show set up a residual agreement but she took a lump sum payment to sign those rights away. A few years after the show finished airing , it was massively syndicated which meant that all the voice actors kept getting a steady stream of income from the show but she got nothing. It's a gamble though because these kinds of contracts are usually set up very early on , if the show in question doesn't make syndication ? well it probably won't be seen after it's initial run but that's the gamble- a choice that an actor is afforded. So really with games , it's currently a choice they don't have so I suppose at least offering something would be better than nothing if only to say "hey here's what you could get IF the game is hugely successful".
