How a Tiny Indie Game Managed to Recruit a Star-Studded Cast Featuring the Voices of Arthur Morgan and More
Francisco Gonzalez’s upcoming point-and-click adventure game, Rosewater, features a star-studded voice cast. It includes Greg Chun (Yu Nanba in Yakuza: Like a Dragon and Infinite Wealth, Ike in multiple Fire Emblem games), Roger Clark (Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption 2), Cam Clarke (Leonardo in 1987’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Liquid Snake in Metal Gear), Dave Fennoy (Lee in The Walking Dead), Cissy Jones (Katjaa in The Walking Dead, Delilah in Firewatch)...the list goes on and on.
It sounds like a roster for the latest AAA blockbuster. But it’s not. Gonzalez was able to wrangle this cast despite being a mostly-solo indie developer working on a game with a budget under $50,000. How did he do it?
Gonzalez is one of a number of indie developers who have signed an agreement with the Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), allowing them to use union labor in their productions at reduced, indie-friendly rates in return for a number of protections for the actors themselves.
The agreement also includes a new provision that regulates how studios can use actors’ voices in training AI models, which means that projects signed under it are exempt from the current SAG-AFTRA video game actor strike. As a result, projects like Rosewater have access to some of the industry’s most famous actors, while most AAA games do not.
Gonzalez has been making games since 2001. Inspired by classic adventure games, many of which had voice acting, Gonazalez has often used voice actors in his projects over the years. At first, this meant working with non-union actors, many of whom were working on their first-ever video game projects. Gonzalez says he had a good experience with all of these actors, many of whom went on to join SAG-ATRA. But more recently, he’s felt drawn to support union labor.
At first, Gonzalez didn’t think he’d be able to make Rosewater a union project. He did some math on his previous game, Lamplight City, which had 70
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