Karasu Another big piece of this that I’ll foolishly suggest some random people on the internet should remember is that absolutely no one who hasn’t been involved in making a game like Bayonetta has any idea how much any of this stuff costs.
Or makes, really. The first thing to trip my bullshit detecting alarm was how Taylor opened her video by saying that the Bayonetta franchise has made $450 million or whatever. Really came off like napkin math of gross sales figures I would expect to see in a really puffed up Statement of Claim rather than a remotely serious estimate of what the development studio has available to pay voice actors. As I understand sales of a game or game series is at best something companies will put out press releases for when they can lie about it well enough that it isn’t easily falsifiable, so, you know. Opening on that made me feel like Taylor wanted to give the impression PG have a vault of Bayonetta Bucks that Kamiya swims around in like Scrooge McDuck. Which isn’t to say that the Bayonetta franchise isn’t profitable, the newest entry might even be a passion project for Platinum but it certainly isn’t for Nintendo. Just that something about Taylor’s actions didn’t really line up with her stated motivations.
pasquinelli as for the labor politics of it, there are none. she’s one worker negotiating for herself.
This is an extremely important distinction to make. Schreier’s reporting (and Totilo apparently corroborating this with their own sources, plus some other guy from an outlet I’ve never heard of), seems to credibly claim that Taylor was deliberately misrepresenting the circumstances of what she had been offered. I would assume someone doing this out of principled and well thought out class solidarity with other workers in their demonstrably underappreciated profession would not so disingenuously accept there is a contradiction in the fact that voice actors are not paid enough, even if she personally was potentially being paid more than others, even on the same project. Schreier has explicitly said the documentation provided by his source(s) show that Taylor was offered at least $15,000 in compensation, which was, not sure if this was laid out in the document or not, for either 16 or 20 hours of work. If another part of Schreier’s piece is to be believed, that is significantly more than the $900+bonuses that would be standard for the rest of the unionized cast.
I mean, Taylor probably isn’t a labor organizer or socialist or anything, so I can see why one might feel they would be hypocrites for calling their paycheque an injustice when it’s potentially triple the amount of her colleagues’ pay, but isn’t the obvious labor stance here that this is still precarious and overall undercompensated work, even if sometimes it’s compensated better than other times? I guess there’s an unrelated reason why pinkos often do not find themselves in high paying work in general, but like, the most principled line here is that a rising tide lifting all ships is not an idiom often reflected in reality, and the tide is still the problem, not that your ship didn’t get lifted as much as you wanted it to.
NGL… even if Taylor’s position is largely morally correct in general, I could not help but feel really skeeved out by her recorded statements on Twitter, and now even less after seeing her responses to the press. I don’t understand why you would position yourself as being concerned about wider labor conditions in your profession, while also deliberately misrepresenting your own individual position in that regard, also potentially omitting the gulf between you and your own colleagues. Especially because her position is not so extravagantly superior that it would make her a hypocrite to have done this in a more principled manner.
Also ngl the fact she even mentioned she was “not afraid of the non disclosure agreement”… like… that’s a weird thing to say. For one, what NDA?? Some reports seem to have taken this statement by her uncritically and imply that she was saying that she was knowingly violating an NDA… but as far as I can tell that is not something she said, she said that she’s not afraid of “the NDA,” which could mean a whole lot of things. I mean, if she’s not currently under contract with Platinum, why would she sign something that would bind her to not disclose contract negotiations that broke down?? I mean, I know companies out there draft some truly outrageously far reaching NDAs (that are likely largely unenforceable even if most companies obviously have an interest in giving the impression they are) so it’s possible she’s referring to an NDA she’s signed with Platinum in the past. Or maybe they did pressure her into signing one to even enter into negotiations at all, or intimidated her into signing one after negotiations broke down. Maybe she said she wasn’t afraid of it because she spoke to a lawyer who could determine her statement either didn’t violate it, or that it was likely unenforceable, or obviously not in PG’s interests to enforce anyway. Anyway, idk, it kinda comes off as a line meant to mislead the audience, knowing that most people have a hazy if not often just largely incorrect perception of how contracts work. Like… if you’re a lone individual breaking the enforceable sections of an NDA you signed with a company who you just earlier claimed was rich, you absolutely should be afraid of it! NDAs are so often abused by powerful individuals and corporations to intimidate people into thinking they’re under a gag order that would absolutely not be enforceable in court, but like, if the resources are there, a wealthy corporation or private individual is gonna file a defamation lawsuit against a lone individual whether it’s a losing one or not, because they likely have the resources to bleed the average individual dry ten times over before discovery is even a twinkle in anyone’s eye. As much as I’m loathe to admit it, it goes both ways here–in an environment where NDAs are standard practice for better or worse (actually almost only for worse but never mind), having signed one does not in of itself lend credibility to a narrative of an offer of employment being insulting because it wasn’t what you thought you deserved.
And, I mean, that even assumes she’s violating one at all, and if she was, Platinum likely aren’t stupid enough to take the bait and do anything forceful about it. At least, not within a launch window of a major release. If Platinum are gonna go that way–and they might–they can bide their time until it’s all been out of the news cycle for a bit and then file a lawsuit. I mean, they don’t have anything to prove damages without the sales figures right? Although I think even if Platinum have the worst intentions they are best suited by keeping their mouths shut, perhaps unless there is some sort of concerted effort to boycott them (an extraordinarily unlikely outcome as far as Gamers are concerned).
Idk. It’s a shitty situation all around, and, at least from a labor perspective, no one is really advocated for in her statements other than herself. And, actually, that would be fine if she was open about that, but the emotional appeals to exploited workers more generally did not to me feel motivated by a collective interest, beyond in the most abstract sense. If I were to give in to my most cynical inclinations, I would note that if her Twitter follows of some of the most rancid idelogues out there in the UK TERF crowd are a valid thing to judge her actions by, she will absolutely be aware of ways in which people (let’s be real, not coincidentally often white women) are able to weaponize performing victimhood on a public platform, real and/or imagined, for personal gain. I know she talked about nurses in the UK being unable to afford the cost of living, but like, that’s not incompatible with right wing populism anymore either, you just have to stick around long enough for them to continue with “…and that’s why we need to privatize healthcare!”
That’s, I think, an overly cynical viewpoint, though. What’s more likely is she’s some kind of bigotry leaning enlightened centrist who for whatever reason thinks this was a good course of action for furthering the plight of the working poor, which, honestly, it will most likely prove not to be at all. Maybe this is also cynical but perhaps most Gamers are maybe not even aware of any of this, and even if they are made aware of it by the time it’s GamerTime on launch day, it will have passed through too many grapevines already, and they’ll only have a garbled jumble of half truths and misrepresentations to make a judgement on anyway.
Anyway as always the views expressed in this post are my own, and if I said anything questionable, it might be because I’ve been writing this off an on for a few hours, so, let me know if I’ve accidentally said anything seemingly stupid and/or vile on accident.
