Will there be a videogame actors strike?

It's looking unlikely, since AFTRA, one of the two major unions that represents TV and movie actors, has agreed to extend its contract with videogame publishers by one year, to the end of 2009, with just a modest 3% raise in minimum fees and .5% increase in health and pension benefits, as my colleage Dave McNary reports in tomorrow's Daily Variety.

However, as Hollywood watchers know, the other actors union, the Screen Actors Guild, tends to be more militant than AFTRA. Three years ago, it was SAG that led a charge to almost strike against the videogame industry (details here). SAG's current contract, which has the exact same terms as AFTRA's, also expires at the end of this year.

SAG's national director Doug Allen would only tell Daily Variety that the union will launch talks "in the near future."

One of the big problems for the unions when it comes to videogames is that they only cover a small portion of all the voiceover work done in the business, about 10-15% according to Dave. On the other hand, they cover some of the biggest franchises, like "Madden NFL" and "Halo." And a lot of videogame publishers still like getting movie and TV stars to do voices, particularly for licenses. If you want an actor with TV and/or movie credits working on your videogame, you probably need to do it under a SAG or AFTRA contract.