Actors’ strike will likely have no impact on your favorite actual play series

The Hollywood actors’ strike will likely have little to no impact on the most popular actual feature series currently in production. Polygon reached out to several companies, including Critical Role and Glass Cannon Network, and while some talent crosses over with the high-profile actor’s guild, streaming shows, video-on-demand archives, and related podcasts won’t be affected.

The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, better known by its acronym SAG-AFTRA, is the union representing working actors in Hollywood and elsewhere in the United States. The strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) began at midnight on July 14 over issues such as residuals and the use of artificial intelligence. It will effectively halt the production of hundreds of film and television projects around the world.

Real play, which has grown in popularity long before the pandemic, has often attracted Hollywood types to fill seats at the table. But neither SAG-AFTRA nor AMPTP are regularly involved in these productions and therefore they will not be affected.

“We fully support the strike and stand in solidarity with our fellow players,” Critical Role told Polygon in an email Friday morning. “Currently, our release schedule is unaffected by the strike, but we will continue to evaluate and take necessary steps should it be affected in the future.”

Troy Lavalee, CEO of Glass Cannon, gave a slightly more measured answer:

We are immensely grateful that actual podcast playback and streaming is not within anyone’s purview as of yet, and hopefully it will remain that way forever. There are enough rules in RPGs that the last thing we need is outside forces coming in to try and regulate how we come together to play games. At the end of the day, we are all gamers who want to share our love of gaming with others. It’s a miracle we’ve been able to turn that passion into a business and we’re proud that independent organizations like ours, operating on much smaller budgets and shorter timelines than mainstream media companies, can provide dignified and equitable spaces for gamers who also happen to be artists, writers and producers, to express their passion and creativity in the still nascent art form that is true play entertainment. With a small but growing group of full-time employees who depend on the success of our content to survive and access healthcare, there’s nothing the content creation machine we’ve been working on could ever do. stop or slow down. to be so difficult.

Polygon has reached out to other groups and will update this article with their response.