Future of work in gaming

Good Morning. It’s a quiet Monday and we hope that you’re reading this from the comfort of a long weekend. While Labor Day is celebrated by many as the last hoorah before the end of summer, it has its roots in being part of the unionization movement — something that’s becoming more and more relevant with the rise of AI.

Just in the last month alone we’ve written several pieces on the impact of AI on gaming work — LoL’s AI generated promo videos, VFX unionization efforts at Marvel, and the possibility of training NPC voices from celebrities just to name a few.

Where will we go from here? Stay tuned to find out. We’ll keep you in the know.

— Jason Liu, Derek Neville, Tim Rhyne

HEADLINES

Hollywood strikes knocking on gaming’s door. SAG-AFTRA’s National Board is seeking permission from its members to strike against some of the biggest developers in the industry. The vote for a strike authorization would give SAG-AFTRA (The Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) more leverage as they return to negotiations later in the month. Two central points of negotiations that the sides have yet to agree upon are wage increases and protections against AI. The companies currently negotiating with the union include Activision, Disney, Epic Games, and WB Games. What does the SAG-AFTRA have to do with gaming? Mostly motion capture and voice over.

No smurfing allowed. Valve started the month off showcasing its commitment to the player experience across all skill levels by banning 90,000 Dota smurf accounts. They didn’t act against the main accounts this time but have warned that they have connected all the smurfs back to the respective main accounts and will take a “wide range of punishments” in future cases.

Green wall is back. Optic Gaming comes out on top at the Halo Championship Series in Fort Worth, Texas. The double-elimination tournament saw Optic’s first loss going 0-4 in the first Grand Finals series against Spacestation Gaming. The grand final’s reset went to game 7 with Optic delivering a dominating 50-33 slayer performance. Both teams will go to Seattle for the Halo World Championship in October to compete for their portion of the $1 million prize pool. Optic Gaming will be looking to defend their 2022 title.

HUD

• 📺 Viewers have already wracked up 14M hours of Starfield on Twitch. The game also peaked at 245K concurrent users on Steam during early access.

• 🎮 Xbox released its new Xbox Series S - 1TB. The new edition of the console features the same performance as the original Series S but with double the storage and the same Carbon Black coloring as the Series X.

• 👍 Frank Azor of AMD Gaming said that Bethesda has the company’s “full support” to turn on DLSS in Starfield and that while AMD requires partners to prioritize support for AMD’s FSR, they do not demand exclusivity.

MAJOR W

• 💻 In a video message posted on X, Final Fantasy XVI producer Naoki Yoshida confirmed that work has begun to bring the game to PC. However, it most likely will not be available by the end of 2023.

• 🛠 There’s already a Starfield mod that enables Nvidia DLSS to get around the game’s sole support of AMD FSR.

• 👨‍⚕️ Bethesda publishing head writes boilerplate ‘doctor’s note’ for Starfield players.

F IN THE CHAT

• 🔍 Apparently, space isn’t very inclusive. Starfield caught lacking when it comes to accessibility.

• 🕵️‍♀️ MrBeast’s new Creator League seems to be hiding crypto/NFT linkage and the talent is not happy about it.

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