{"id":2075,"date":"2015-09-30T18:07:12","date_gmt":"2015-09-30T18:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/?p=2075"},"modified":"2015-09-30T18:07:12","modified_gmt":"2015-09-30T18:07:12","slug":"on-actors-and-game-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/2015\/09\/on-actors-and-game-development\/","title":{"rendered":"On actors and game development"},"content":{"rendered":"


Bad voice acting has been part of games for so long.<\/em><\/p>\n

First off, we need to get rid of the Creative VS Technical debate. In gamedev both are equally important and usually dealt with by people who are both creative and technical. That\u2019s the default state. <\/p>\n

No, your motion capture performance ain\u2019t shit until someone spends hours cleaning it up and integrating \u201cyour animation\u201d in the game engine. Your voice acting performance ain\u2019t shit until someone picks the best take, minimizes your mouth noise, makes it sound like you\u2019re in space and integrates it in game.<\/p>\n

Do not create classes. We\u2019re all in this together. Flatten that stupid pyramid, please.<\/p>\n

Second, union VS non-union and how game developers to this day don\u2019t have any, like VFX houses. Two factors:<\/p>\n

   – People are drowning in work and don\u2019t bother dealing with this. We all work insanely hard \u2013we all do but bear with me- at finding solutions to problems that didn\u2019t exist before<\/strong>. People completely forget that: game development really is Research & Development. TV or movie technicians or actors, they swim in a pool of \u201cbeen there done that\u201d<\/em>, we are not. Even when things look the same and that we think that we can use an old proven method to do something, it turns out that we still have to write some new code, maybe change an entire wall. It\u2019s fucking nuts, I\u2019m not exaggerating. VFX houses do the same, creating 3D that you have never seen before, dealing with mad constraints etc.<\/p>\n

I stand by this distinction: we all work hard in the entertainment industry, but game development is the craziest. Look at cycles: 2, 4, 5+ years of development. Hollywood can churn out a massive Marvel movie employing 1,000 people every 1.5 years. So no time \u2013and by that I mean brain time- for game developers to negotiate and meet with companies which will not help to establish unions, not their interests. Which brings us to the second factor:<\/p>\n

   – Not enough older people. In TV and movie production in Hollywood where unions are very powerful you see people of all ages, early 20s to late 60s all the time. We all age and we need more security and less snacks, that\u2019s how it is. But the game industry really enjoys people from 20 to 35. Especially before 30. Obviously young people will never care about unions. In TV you\u2019d BETTER have your union card to get good work so when you start, you don\u2019t see it as a thing that drags you down but as an opportunity to be treated fairly (yeah unions bring socialism all over the place, job stability, nice healthcare etc).<\/p>\n

That is a weird thing: if game development is so much R&D, why would you not create a pool of veterans and use them to mitigate risks? Because they could unionized and sort of demand stuff? That might be one of the answer. Unions in Hollywood can shut down any production at the blink of an eye, I\u2019m sure most big game companies are not looking forward to that.<\/p>\n

But yeah as a veteran game audio designer who can barely use his skills outside game development, I feel so overwhelmed by the work (sound design, implementation, new tech showing up etc) that unions \u2013despite looking good on paper- are so not in my head. To be fair in a game studio with a good reputation, salaries are usually good and relationships are flat enough that there\u2019s no need for unions VS bosses.<\/p>\n

I tend to think that\u2019s progress. I wish it was expanding and that game culture wasn\u2019t so stubbornly aimed at the youngest, things would change in developers\u2019 favor more probably.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bad voice acting has been part of games for so long. First off, we need to get rid of the Creative VS Technical debate. In gamedev both are equally important and usually dealt with by people who are both creative and technical. That\u2019s the default state. No, your motion capture performance ain\u2019t shit until someone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2075"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2075"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2076,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2075\/revisions\/2076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}