Video Game Voices on Strike

In the last few weeks I've been reading and seeing coverage of the SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) strike.  SAG-AFTRA is a union that represents a wide variety of acting related professions including video game voice actors.  It seems that not everything in the video game industry is working as intended and actors have some gripes.  This may not sound very interesting, and I honestly know very little about how actors are compensated for work on games, but there are some thought provoking issues related to gaming all wrapped up in the myriad complaints.

So what are the actual complaints?  One of the biggest issues that the actors seem to be pushing for is for higher pay (not surprising--money tends to be at the center of most strikes).  Voice actors get paid a flat rate for recording sessions but receive no other compensation beyond this.  The union is pushing for a type of bonus pay based on how many units a game sells--for example, if a game was a blockbuster that sold millions of copies then the actors would get extra pay.  Since not every game is a blockbuster these bonuses wouldn't be happening all the time.

Seems reasonable, right?  Good voice acting can take a game to the next level and it's those unique voices that make our favorite characters all that more memorable.  Interestingly enough, one of the people mentioned as part of the strike was Jennifer Hale--the voice of my favorite femShep--and a very prolific video game voice actress.  Remember how awesome femShep was acted compared to the male version?  Yeah, voice acting is pretty important.  But is it more important than good writing?  Or great environmental art?  Or level-design?  That's one of the difficult issues--if you reward voice actors for the work they do, shouldn't you reward everyone when a game turns into a multi-million unit selling blockbuster?  At first glance you want to root for the actors (I am!) but once you read about the issues things get considerably murkier.

One of the other complaints that surprised me was the fact that most voice actors have no idea what game they are acting for when they are hired.  Maintaining the secrecy of a major game series puts voice actors at a serious disadvantage when it comes to negotiating pay.  The actors are demanding that they be informed about what they are auditioning for.

Besides the money issues there are also some "unsafe working condition" type of complaints.  According to the complaints issued by the union, stunt and motion capture actors are frequently forced to perform stunts with inadequate safety supervision.  To me, this seems like a pretty legitimate complaint.  They also claim that voice actors are expected to perform vocally demanding tasks--think of all the acting for weird sounds like getting shot, or falling, or being punched in the face--that could put their voices at risk.

But we all know the big question looming in the back of all our minds...will this delay impact the release of any upcoming games?  I don't know that there is a really clear answer for that one.  Depending on how long the strike goes on it looks like a possibility.  The majority of the striking seems to be targeted toward the big studios (Disney, Activision, EA, etc.) so, maybe?  According to this article only 25% of voice actors are actually members of the union...so maybe not?

Keep your eyes peeled and your fingers crossed that this issue gets resolved soon.  (I'm rooting for the actors, but I understand that the issue of raising their pay is complicated).

If you want to read more about the union demands here is a helpful document from SAG-AFTRA:

SAG-AFTRA Strike

The developers have also fired back with their own website to lay out their side of the story:

http://sagaftravideogames.com/

Oh-oh-oh-oh Olgierd!

A while back I wrote about how I decided to play The Witcher 3 for the fourteenth time (that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it's definitely more than I should have played it).  Throughout my current game I have tried to make some choices that are slightly different than the choices in my previous games.  I've managed to discover a few fun moments that I had missed in the previous games  For example, I decided to ride around the map a bit in Velen before I started completing quests.  I met an NPC on the road who was hauling a wagon full of corpses and being attacked by a pack of ghouls.  After you rescue him from the ghouls he reveals that he is hauling plague corpses.  Geralt, of course, informs him that this is most likely a bad choice and advises him to burn the cart where it currently stands and run the heck away.  Later on you run into the guy and he's not doing so well.  I've never had that encounter before.  I also discovered that you can rescue a mage who you witness being burned at the stake.  He's the douchey one from the party with Triss so you might decide that it's better for him to be barbequed.  You'll have to fight off a large retinue of guards, so be prepared.

Olgierd von Everec

But I didn't want to actually write about any of that...too late now, I suppose.  I've reached the point in my current game where I am venturing into the realm of the two DLC's.  The map has unfurled and I am venturing out to the northern part of the Novigrad/Velen map.  The main questline has introduced me to one of the characters who I have to admit that I really enjoy--Olgierd von Everec.

Olgierd is another great example of the amazingly well-written characters in The Witcher 3.  When Geralt first encounters him he seems oddly likable.  He's a bit of a rogue, but the kind of charming rogue that you'd want to follow.  As the story in Heart of Stone gets more complicated he becomes much harder to like.  What kind of idiot chooses his own pride over true love?  The kind of idiot that is Olgierd.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again--CD Projekt Red has some phenomenal writers who know how to make amazing characters.  I love the characters in The Witcher 3 because they are complex, relatable, and more human-like than those in other games.  There are so very few characters that you can chalk up as simply "good" or "bad" and they all have their share of flaws.  I've written about the Bloody Baron (now I can't find it) and how he's another one of those great characters.

One of my different Olgierd experiences from previous games was that I decided to fight him to save the life of a guy that his lackeys were going to kill.  In the past I've just had Geralt weakly argue and allowed the poor NPC to get his head lopped off.  I've been playing on the "Death March" difficulty and fighting Olgierd took about thirty minutes of dodging and hacking (he's very resilient and hits hard).  I have to say I enjoy the end of the fight and the scene where Olgierd's immortality is revealed much more than the option where the manor lady stabs him.  If you opt to fight and then defeat Olgierd, Geralt stabs him and then goes for the full decapitation.  Olgierd's head tips off his body at an awkward angle and then he just does this sort of ironic clap as it's revealed that he can't be killed.

Go back and play it.  You'll find Olgierd to be the same lovable yet hateable rogue that he was the first time you played.

Lamenting My Bad Choices

In another stroke of pure impulsivity I have found myself purchasing a bundle of games that fall on the outskirts of the whole "genres I enjoy" category.  These bad choices are usually the results of some sort of Steam mega-sale and the latest spate is no exception.  It's not that I bought a bad game, it's that I bought a game that I'm horrible at and totally don't understand.  Tip for others:  understand exactly what you're buying and don't be dense!

What did I buy?  A bundle of Endless Legend games and DLC.  They're not the newest games, but they got really good reviews so I decided the sale price was probably worth it.  "But they're great games!"  I've never really understood the complex, hexagonal, super-strategic games that fall into the 4X genre--and yet I just bought a bunch.

So far I am seeing some things that I like.  The factions in Endless Legend have an interesting mix of sci-fi and fantasy inspired traits.  There is a race of insect-like creatures, some bizarrely creepy stone...things, a sublimely awesome floating lady-mage, mechanical magic monster mashups, and several others ranging from the traditional humanoid-like to the completely strange.  The choices are fabulous, but actually choosing is the hard part.

The Mezari.  I'm slowly killing them with my incompetence.

Once you've chosen your faction you are treated to a short introductory cut-scene that explains the origins of that specific faction.  I chose an outer-spacey humanoid race (for the sole reason that I liked their hair--a very strategic decision) that seems to lean toward more scientific-based options.  They left their world to live on the surface of the planet and with me at the helm they are doomed to a short, sad existence getting stomped into muck by the neighboring faction of bug creatures....but I digress....

Another feature that I am enjoying is that there are some RPG-like elements in the game.  As you explore and meet other factions you have the ability to complete quests.  Each faction has their own unique hero units that can either accompany troops on the battlefield or can be located in a city as a governor.  This hero unit has an equippable inventory and can be improved through spending resources to create new items or receiving items as quest rewards.  Your hero and your troops level up as you battle and explore.  Hero skill points can be used to unlock abilities that either make the individual unit stronger or allow for army-wide perks when locked in battle.

I have absolutely no clue what I am supposed to be doing.  The tutorial pounded it into my head that I should be constantly researching and building.  My small army roams around looking for ruins to explore and has the occasional tangle with roaming troops from other minor factions.  I've encountered a few of the major enemy factions and they are mostly indifferent--should I be attacking them?  Or making peace with them?  They seem to have plentiful resources and armies that vastly outnumber my own.

In the past I very briefly dipped my toes into the epic Civilization V pool before deciding that it was too complicated and slow paced for me.  Endless Legend seems like a slightly more complex pool filled with even more intricacies that I am trying to grasp.  Maybe 4X isn't for me?  I'm going to give it another go and see if I can make some progress toward victory. 

Does Age Make Gamers Less Competitive?

I hate to admit that I'm getting older and that I qualify as a non-typical/"older gamer."  The reality is that I'm no longer a teenager mashing buttons and screaming at the screen (actually I never really was.  We only had dial-up and I grew up in the still pre-historic Internet days of the 1990's.)  As an "older gamer" a couple of different articles about a study caught my eye.  The study isn't extremely recent and was published earlier this year but seems to be getting a lot of commentary and analysis.  If you want to see the actual article and the data attached to it you can read it here: "As Gamers Age" Study.

There are some interesting tidbits to pull from this study.  Here's a list:  (I love lists)

1.) According to the ESA (the fun-folks that do things like run the rating system for games) the average age of gamers is 35.  Yessss!!!!  I guess that means that I'm not old...I'm average!  This was surprising because I have a stereotypical view of gamers--teenagers or college age people who tend to be mostly male.  It's nice to know that the average gamer could be someone like me--working full time and gaming on the side.

MarioKart remains one of my favorite competitive games.

2.) Younger gamers prefer games that are more competitive and males tend to prefer them more than females.  This piece of information makes sense to me.  I loved to play competitive games when I was in college.  Not that I really played anything that was really all that competitive--mostly MarioKart.  Maybe there's something about identity formation and finding something that you're good at.  Or maybe it's just the urge to crush someone and prove that you're superior.  But.....

3.) The desire to play competitive games decreases as gamers get older.  For some reason this discovery seemed to really steam some people.  It's a study that uses a random sample....that doesn't mean that the findings apply to everyone!  Speaking solely for myself, I would agree with this finding.  I used to really enjoy playing competitive games like Team Fortress 2 or Half-Life 2:  Deathmatch.  Not that I made the leaderboard very often or had some sort of winning record.  It was more about the thrill of competing and trying to win.

Now that I'm average, I just want to come home and relax.  I don't want to listen to some irate, crazy yelling because they lost a game or yelling just to be obnoxious.  The games I seek out are the kind that I can play how I want without having to deal with other nutbags.  I like Eurotruck-ing and listening to the radio or cleaning up a level of Viscera Cleanup Detail to unwind.

I tend to agree with the findings in this study but saw a lot of people strongly disagreeing with the findings.

One other cool feature on their website is the ability to build a "gamer profile" where you fill out a short survey and it tells you where you fit in with other gamers who are close to your age.  Check it out and see if you're like other gamers or in a league of your own.