It's easy to forget that video game voice actors have been on strike since October 21, 2016. Big budget video games take years to produce, so there's a long delay between the period of time when a voice actor records their role the the game hitting the market. So far, video game fans have not really seen the strike impact their favorite video games.However, at E3 this week the public finally got to see the rubber meet the road as a voice actor announced she wasn't able to reprise her role of a beloved video game character due to the strike.
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Ashly Burch, a video game voice actor who voiced Chloe in 2015's Life Is Strange, tweeted that she wasn't able to reprise that role in the upcoming prequel Life Is Strange: Before the Storm due to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike.This is an especially unfortunate case for fans of the game, developer Dontnod, and Burch. Unlike a lot of video games that focus on action, Life Is Strange is a narrative and character-driven game that was praised for its writing and voice acting. It's not like the latest Call of Duty that people buy to play online with their friends. It's a game people loved in part because they loved characters like Chloe."Chloe means a lot to me," Burch tweeted. "Grateful for the opportunity to consult on her character."As I've previously reported, video game voice actors are on strike because of unforgiving working conditions and opaque contracts that sometimes don't even tell them which characters they're playing, but primarily because they want secondary payments for performances in games that sell millions of copies. These are similar to the secondary payments SAG-AFTRA has negotiated for its members working in TV and film.The compensation they are asking for is insignificant when compared to the revenue those video games make, but video game companies seem to be fighting SAG-AFTRA's demand as a matter of principle. The video game industry is rife with labor issues, and as labor experts have told me before, capitulating to a union could have a domino effect, causing other workers in the industry to organize and fight for better working conditions.The strike prevents SAG-AFTRA members from working with about a dozen video game companies. Those companies can of course still hire non-union actors, and SAG-AFTRA members can still work with other companies. Behind the scenes, a member of SAG-AFTRA's negotiating committee told me, an increasing number of video game companies that the union is not striking have agreed to SAG-AFTRA's demands.Just last week, video game companies and SAG-AFTRA said that they were ready to talk again.