Today, SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) is conducting a strike in protest to the unsuccessful negotiations for a new contract that would allow for residuals for successful games, safer working conditions, and transparency with voice actors for the projects that they’d be working on.
Along with the strike today, SAG-AFTRA released a list of around 200 games that would be struck against. The entire list can be found on SAG-AFTRA’s website.
Looking through the list shows many titles that are clearly project names without official titles, but the list does hold some pretty big titles that are supposed to be very anticipated in the next few years. This includes games such as Injustice 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, the Crash Bandicoot remaster announced at E3 this year, and Kingdom Hearts 2.8. The list also has some titles that are already released, such as Team Fortress 2 and Shadowrun: Hong Kong.
Those titles that are just represented with project names are also interesting to see. Certain titles that I found intriguing were a couple from Formosa Interactive called “Blood Dragon” and Brothers in Arms. Other project titles of note are from EA titled “American Football ’17 and ’18” and “Hockey ’17 and ’18.” I think it’s safe to assume that those are the next installments in the Madden and NHL series, respectively.
Now if this strike goes on for an extended period of time, we could very easily see some delays from these games. The issue I foresee is the companies just hiring someone new to do the voice work. SAG-AFTRA only represents about 25% of voice actors today, so finding someone who isn’t part of the union probably wouldn’t be hard for the companies being struck against.
Whatever happens to these games, SAG-AFTRA is going to fight for this new contract. Their previous contract was written back in the 90’s and hasn’t been updated to reflect the current culture of video games.
Which games are you surprised to see? Leave a comment and let me know!
