Remember when all the writers went on strike? It sucked. Television seasons were cut short and my television stopped being fun when I wasn’t playing videogames. What if that happened to videogames, but instead of writers it was the voice actors? We’d have no more voice acting in our games or at least very low quality voice acting. Every game would either sound like Zelda or the original dialog track of Resident Evil. That is not a world I want to live in, friends. What in God’s name would Kojima do (WWKD)?
Thankfully a massive strike on videogame voice acting will not be happening any time soon as the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists have reached a tentative agreement on new contracts with the videogame industry. You can all breathe that sigh of relief you had built up over the last paragraph, since I’m sure most of you had no idea contract talks were even going on. Well, they were and some stuff that doesn’t affect you has changed. For instance SAG and AFTRA are now in parity, meaning the two unions’ members will be getting paid the same standard amount. Also they’ll be getting paid more. Also, actors must now be warned of vocally stressful work beforehand or the developer will be fined $100. This be cereal business, people.
Don’t sit too easy though! The end of voice acting could still be near as these contracts only run until March 30 of 2011. The s–t could hit the fan then, let me tell you.
