Asmongold TV - Voice actor shares the truth about VAs.. | Asmongold TV

Episode Date: July 31, 2025

Voice actor shares the truth about VAs.. Asmongold show for all of his stream highlights, competitions, reactions & more. ------------------- ------------- Keywords: online gaming, gaming opinions, gaming drama, streamer podcast, gaming news, gaming podcast, pc gaming, streaming highlights Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AI will destroy voice actors and gamers will cheer. Yeah, it's about right. How's it going, everybody? I'm Gary. I'm a voice actor, I'm a gamer, and I'm a PhD and AI voice stuff. Today I wanted to talk about the thing that every voice actor is absolutely terrified of. That is actually understanding why AI is predicted to completely obliterate the voiceover industry. And in order to understand this, we actually have to understand something that is seemingly unrelated. So, wait a minute.

So the guy that has industry experience as a PhD and also plays video games thinks that the obvious thing is going to happen? Huh. Wow. What a surprise. ...to AI. The social side of the voiceover industry. As I'm sure many of you know, there's been a massive controversy with the video game voiceover strike and the Genschen impact strike. My voiceover mentor, Joe Zisha, who I greatly respect, recently released a video on this topic. So the video got a bit of a mixed reception. And if you asked me, the release of the video was really poorly timed. A lot of people thought the video was biased in favor of the union. And while I don't necessarily agree, I completely understand why they think that. Mostly because while he covered a lot of information about the voiceover union,

what it means to go Ficor and what a Taffed Hartley is, he chooses not to talk about any social aspects of the industry. Taffed Hartley is the act where they can compel you to go back to work, even if you're on strike and they have to do it within like a, and you have to work for a certain period of time. Act he even admits it in his own video. And that brings me to the. the real tricky part, the social side of things.

It's complex. Understand that I'm not getting to this here because this is not measurable. It is a feeling. So when we start asking questions like, why doesn't everyone just go FICOR or are people being blacklisted for working on non-union games during the strike? These really deal with non-measurable social feelings. I'm not sure he intended this, but the fact that he chose not to talk about these things may have been more informative than if he had actually talked about them.

Because it highlights one specific point. voice actors cannot speak about the social aspects of the industry, and they will never talk about blacklists. Now, just to clarify, there may be some people who aren't familiar with the entertainment industry lingo who think that a blacklist is a literal list of names. It's not, not really. As Joe said, I don't know about that. I heard I was on one of those. The blacklist is mostly just a feeling. If you are on the blacklist, it just means that people will refuse to work with you for any possible reason. and outside of the merit of your own product.

Yeah. There are plenty of industry leaders who will deny that the blacklist exists, so you won't find very many news articles about it, but you don't need to look very hard to see that. It's, it doesn't need to, it's not a death note. It's just a group of people that are just widely accepted to be ostracized from the greater group of whatever commercial thing is happening. The blacklist clearly does exist.

For example, let's just take a look at what started the Hulk Engine Impact. fiasco. When voice actor Jacob Takanashi was cast in a role that some other voice actors thought he shouldn't be cast in, they just started blacklisting him immediately. Voice actor Sharra Kirby just blatantly said it. You'll never work another job again. Kaley... Wait, what? This is going to be... Oh, it's on blue sky. Oh, well, I mean, of course. Yeah, duh. This has got to be the most classless thing I've seen with everything. So this guy makes an announcement that he's going to work on Genshin, And have fun with Genschen, you'll never work on anything else, LMAO.

What a great mindset to have. Agree with us and abide by our rules, or we're going to collectively make it to where you can't have a career. I wonder why people don't like them. Kaylee Mills publicized Jacob's financial information. This is one small job for him, not his full-time work. It's Karina's Bread and Butter. He's done so very little voiceover work that it isn't what he's relying on to pay the works. For all we know, his wife's the breadwinner.

Either way, they bought a house recently, so I doubt this was a necessary job for survival. It's so funny that these people think that some random man on the internet has to explain to them and fucking tell them why it's okay that he tried to get a job. Who the fuck are you? Tempt to justify the bullying that Jacob received. Voice actor June Yun, who is a prominent voice acting veteran, went out of his way to,

ridiculed Jacob by publicly stating that he's blacklisting Jacob from his casting. Honestly, actually... Jesus, bro. What a bunch of nasty fucks. This is great. And these are the ones, these are the people, they're called professionals. Isn't this sad? Why, though?

Because he didn't want to play game. He didn't want to do what they wanted them to do. They're so deep into their own bubbles. Yeah, I guess so. Why do they all hate Jacob? I'm out of the loop? Because he took a job with the company that, they were striking against the same time.

And so they tried to, because they didn't want him to do that, they are trying to like collectively destroy his career. Seeing June do this was really upsetting to me because up until that point, June was actually one of my idols. Never meet your heroes, right? Within moments of announcing his voice. Here a striking actor. Yeah.

Well, the industry started cutting all ties with Jacob. This happens all the time in the industry. In Jacob's case, it was because he had the wrong opinions or did something that people didn't like. But it might just be because you said something mean to someone or you criticize their work or maybe they just think you're ugly. There's virtually no way to stop a blacklist from happening. And it's actually an indicator of a much larger problem in the industry. The voiceover industry has no standards. And my standards, I don't mean like a girl doesn't have standards for her deadbeat biker boyfriend. I mean that the industry doesn't have a clear metric to evaluate a good

voiceover performance from a bad voiceover performance. We can look at the field of engineering for Well, I think the reason why is because they don't care about that and they don't want standards, because standards could put them at a disadvantage. So a lot of these people don't like standards. You know who hates meritocracy and standards and quantitative measuring? People that would lose because of it. That's the reason why. For a perfect contrast to this.

Let's say two people are building a rocket. One flies 20 feet before crashing. The other flies 50 feet before crashing. That in and of itself is a metric for evaluation. It is. Now, it might not be the perfect metric or the metric that you need to evaluate the effectiveness of a rocket, but at the very least, the metric exists. More importantly, it's possible that the guy who built the better rocket is a complete

jerk. Now, you can say you don't want to work with the guy because he's a jerk and he's terrible to work with, but you cannot deny that he built the better rocket. All this is just thrown out in the voiceover industry. Their metrics are like which performance is more emotional, which one is more nuanced, which performance is more real or grounded. These things... Sounds like a bunch of, you know, we just make this shit up as we go.

You know, like, yeah, we're gonna just... Just make up some bullshit. Aren't really metrics because they're all opinionated. Voice directors or voice actors or casting directors. They're eating each other in those purity tests. Yeah, of course. It's what these people always do. We'll always claim that they can just hear a performance and know that's the best performance

and that's the right one for the job. Put a pin on that claim. We'll come back to that later. But the truth is, one casting director might like one performance, one casting director might like another performance, and you cannot argue which one is better. It happens all the time. And this lack of standards, this conveniently flexible interpretation of what is good and what is bad, is exactly why blacklisting happens.

Any casting director could just argue that they weren't the right fit for the job, and there is no way to argue against it. And unfortunately, the most important social aspect of the industry is evaluation in casting. Hugh Klitsky, an amazing voiceover coach who I really respect, summarized it really well in a bit of a comedic LinkedIn post. He said this, you didn't get the job, here's why. You sounded like the producer's mom. You sounded like the director's ex. You sounded happy, but not the right kind of happy. You sounded too tall or too blonde or too much like everyone else, and so on.

If you read through the entire post, you notice that there is a reason that is... Yeah, it just the reason why is because I just decided why. That's it. ...is missing from that list. Yep. someone else is better than you. Because as an industry veteran, he knows that the industry doesn't have those metrics, at least not in a way that actually matters.

Because if you look at the metrics that the voice directors use, nuanced, emotional, grounded, real. You'll also notice that there's one metric that the voice acting industry generally doesn't use. And it's probably the most important metric of all. Whether or not the audience likes it. And that's the only... Isn't that crazy? And this is the problem that a lot of these games have, is that they're so stuck in their own professional bubbles.

They forgot what being a professional means. It means that you're selling a product. So the moment that you're not focusing on what the actual customers want and you're just focusing on like your own invented, like you've created these criteria lists and now you have everybody accommodating them and listening to them, it's insane. Yeah, like, okay, that's great. But like this isn't really going to resonate.

this isn't going to guarantee that people are going to like this. The only metric that actually matters. Anyone who's been paying attention to AAA video games the past few years knows that the industry or... It's actually pathetic to look at Assassin's Creed Shadows. Assassin's Creed Shadows with Expedition 33. It's not even remotely close. It's like looking at like a tech space adventure game

and comparing it to The Witcher 3. At least the video game industry at large tends to use metrics that are inversely correlated with what the audience likes. Often you'll see that the games the industry claims are high quality end up actually being the worst games when rated by the gamers. And unfortunately, the video game voiceover industry is starting to go down the same path. They've used up all their remaining goodwill with the SAG after video game strike. And now they're starting to deny that the audience...

Well, the problem is that there is a general lack of empathy for people working in entertainment that have problems with how they're being paid and being treated. because people view entertainment as a luxury profession. So anybody who's complaining about it is just not thankful enough for what they have. That's the reason why it happens. This is even relevant to the industry's success at all. But when the industry stops caring about how an audience evaluates their product, it always predicts the industry's failure and worse predicts their...

What a shock. So this guy, so let me get it straight. The PhD guy has come to the conclusion. that if you don't care about what the audience wants, you're going to start losing money. See, I knew he was smart. What a fucking wizard! Take over by AI.

But if you don't believe me and you want evidence, you can look at another industry that's been just completely demolished by AI. Ferry arts. So when I first started my undergraduate and engineering approximately like 15 years ago, I tried to convince every single one of my artist's friends that AI was a legitimate threat to art. And of course, they didn't believe me because art is the human endeavor. But I pointed to one very specific thing.

Since the 20th century, the art... You know what's really funny about it? Is that... Do you remember, like, there was that one quote from I Am Legend where it was like, yeah, but can a human write a symphony and like, you know, draw this, this art and do all this stuff? And then the robot was like, yeah, can you? That actually was so fucking telling.

Not, yeah, I robot, not A, I, robot. not I Am Legend. I was another Will Smith movie. Yeah, it was I Robot. And yeah, I Am Legend was like a few years after that. Like, I think that was very telling. And nobody even realized it. Y'all triggered? Yeah.

His heart is fuck. Yeah, it was, I remember watching it. I was like, damn, he got you there. Industry had lost all standards. We were in the era of Jackson Pollock, who was famous for randomly throwing paint onto a canvas. One of artists, Kazimir Malik. Oh, my God.

my mom would be she my mom by the way like knows like knew all kinds of art stuff she taught me all about art about every fucking famous painting uh fucking everything about it and she was a fan of jackson pollock and she got like i always thought jackson pollock was just a bunch of fucking bullshit and even now i understand like so cody's a big fan and so she had a few painting from Jackson Pollock, like obviously prints. And I gave them all the Cody. I was like, you know what, Cody, you can have these. This is your guy.

This is not my guy. I never understood this. You know, like that was it. Like, yeah, they're all Cody's now. They're funded by the CIA? Yeah. Expressionism. Yeah, I could never get into it.

ovich's most famous paintings from 1915 was literally a black square. In 2010, a sculptor named Marcel Waldorf won an award for his sculpture of a woman urinating. Essentially, the idea that artistic beauty is in the eye of the beholder is kind of the prevailing theory right now. You couldn't just evaluate art and just say whether or not it was good or bad. This allowed artists to do just about anything and make up a reason for why it's art.

But the moment AI art exploded onto the scene, the artists faced a major problem. And that problem actually had nothing to do with artistic skill and it had nothing to do with technology. It was actually a philosophical problem. If artistic beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it is actually impossible to just that human art is any better than AI art.

Essentially they... Fucking exactly, bro. Fucking exactly. People just make this shit up. Exactly. There it is. Yep. They had no way to justify their own existence because they gave up their standards over a hundred years ago.

And the lack of standards that allowed their artistic industry to exist was now being reinterpreted to justify that human artists were... Christie's AI art sale defies controversy surpasses X- expectations. Draws big money bids and thousands of protest signatures. Thousands of protest signatures. Oh no. Really? Oh no. No longer necessary. Because without standards, AI art is just as good as anything else. This led to a lot of panicking artists turning to really poorly thought out metrics. Things like AI art had no soul or AI art had no art. AI art has no soul. Okay. well I guess was Assassin's Creed shadows made with AI art?

What about Dragon Age the Vail Guard? This whole idea of this abstract concept of soul, I think that the soul has left video games much longer than AI. I wanted to see how valid these metrics really were. So I conducted a bit of an experiment-ish interview with a lot of the detractors of AI art, specifically about Jackson Pollock and his work. The experiment was really simple.

I showed them two images. One of them was an AI-generated painting. Usually I chose some sort of fantasy landscape painting like this. The other one is one of Jackson Pollock's paintings. And I asked a very simple question. Do you truly believe that this painting has artistic value? And this painting doesn't. And they always said yes.

So the natural follow-up was always, please explain why. And this is where they started stumbling over their words. Oh, boy, because you see fucking a you like, because old back there was. But you can't, okay, oh, you have to understand a fucking, uh, dude. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. He said things like, there's clear purpose behind the Pollock painting. The Pollock painting actually has like a human soul.

You can clearly see the intent behind the Pollock painting and all these. You're just making some shit up, huh? You're just riffing. Just talking out bullshit. And even as they stumble over their words, I always gave them the chance to take back what they said. Something like if you can't come up with a reason, you can just take it back and just say the two paintings are equal or something like that. But for like the hundred people I interviewed, they never took it back. They always claimed that the Pollock painting clearly had intent and value and was more interesting.

And AI art simply wasn't. So you can just imagine their panic. You know what I think would be an even better one? Get AI art of Jackson Pollock paintings because AI can recreate other facsimiles of paintings that would be identical. to his, and then have somebody pick out, if you can really tell the difference, give them 10 AI and 10 real ones, pick out the 10 real ones. That's what I would do. I revealed to them that that Pollock painting they just gassed up was made by AI.

Oh, man. Oh, man. Wow. Oh, shit. That's what I, that's, oh, I love it. They're so cooked. Yep, I know. So yeah, I generated that image a couple years back using chat TPT specifically to run this experiment.

This is not even a new one. And you can believe me, the backpedaling that they tried to do was absolutely. And from here, I asked them a very simple question. Based on what you know now, will you admit that AI art has real artistic value? And like half of them just stormed out before they even had a chance to answer because they knew they couldn't answer without destroying their beliefs. If they answered yes, they had to admit that AI art was actually valuable. Yeah, of course.

answered no, they had to admit that they lied. They were told that an image, in this case, the AI Pollock image, was valuable simply because Jackson Pollock made it. And from there, they just reverse engineered. It's valuable because it's valuable. Great. Okay. Yeah, I can see why they're getting replaced. Any reason they wanted to justify why the image was valuable. Hmm, that sounds familiar. Maybe like a casting director who listens to a voice actor he's friends with and just so happens to hear that he's the best. But everyone knows it's just the- the emperor's new clothes. You know that story of the emperor dancing around his underwear and everyone has to pretend he's wearing pretty clothes because they don't want to get beheaded? We look

upon a picture of paint thrown on a wall and the artist's demand that you pretend it's valuable. But when you show a coal miner, a picture of a black square and tell him that it's more valuable than his entire career of mining for... Look, all famous art is, it's just NFT, for rich people. That's all. They're NFTs for rich people, and it's not even money laundering.

The reason why they have value is because they are perceived to have value, and they are perceived to have value because people want them to have value. That's it. Do you own any art? Yeah, sure. I mean, like, I don't own any, like, myself. I mean, like, I... Like, I...

I'm not really... into it, but my mom was, obviously, like, she was an artist herself. And so, uh, you know, like, there's paintings all around the house. Cool. When you tell a nine to five office worker that he's uncultured and uncivilized because he doesn't respect the artistic value of a painting of literally nothing when you stop considering what the common man thinks is good and demand that your art... See, here's the, there's something, this is another, like, this guy is a prim and proper PhD student. so he would never look at it this way, right? But I would.

So if AI art can make something that you can jerk off to, does that not pass the biological Turing test? I feel like it does. I mean, at that point, if it can elicit the most biological response that is innate to humanity, do you want to pregnate AI? Some of them. Not all of them.

I'm telling you guys. It's big. Be respected through either nonsensical standards or even just blatant lies. Do not be surprised when the common man cheers for your destruction. And unfortunately, this is where the voice acting industry finds themselves now. We've used up all our goodwill in the SAG a AfroStrike. We've stopped using the same metrics that the audience uses to decide what is a good product. We've blatantly attacked.

Is it really that much different? Damn, that's crazy, right? What the hell? Wow. And disregarded the gamers. So do not be surprised when the gamers cheer as AI destroys the entire voiceover industry that has been built on a lie. And by the way, for the few voice actors that are still watching out there, I'm not even saying that casting directors are bad at their jobs. Many casting directors I know are actually amazing at their jobs. But what I am- Of course. Yeah, and this is always the reality. It's that the majority, of voice actors casting directors and people that are working in this industry are hardworking,

good-hearted people that will be displaced by technology. And I think that's, it's sad. It is. It's sad that's going to happen. I mean, it is, it is the natural progression of technology, of, you know, like human perception of things. So it's not like it's a terrible thing, but it's, it's sad but inevitable, basically, yeah. But I can empathize with them and I can understand like, yeah, man, that must really suck for that to happen to you. I'm saying is that if you cast someone for a job, you better be able to justify it to the audience. Because casting is effectively deciding who gets to represent your product. So if you end up casting someone who attacks the gamers is a bully, is threatening or is just blatantly hostile, I guarantee you.

See, that's the issue is that like if you hire people that people don't like, that's going to be a bad thing. Like that Rachel Ziegorg girl, like everybody hates her now. Like she's done. She's cooked. Like, who's going to hire her to do anything? Snow White. Yeah, look at that. Yeah.

And it's like, that's really it. When you let AI take over Asmingold? Oh, about three months ago. You won't be able to justify that. Now, since we've talked a lot about Blacklist, I just wanted to leave something with the gamers that is actually really important and can help you take back their games. from some of the more malicious players of the industry. The real blacklist belongs to the gamers. This is really-

That's fucking right. God damn, that's fucking right. That is it. Because this is what I love about people that are like, I don't know, but I really like it. Let me think a good way to say this. So, I always feel good whenever I have viewpoints

that are in alignment with people that I think are smart, and people that are in like good positions. And I think this is one of those examples. And it's like, yes, okay, I'm not crazy. Because I have all these random idiots that will come out and say this stuff to me. And I'll be like, no, you're wrong. You don't know what you're talking about. And then finally it'll be like somebody that like really knows that they're talking about.

Like, well, actually, yeah, that's it. Like, I remember I had the same thing happen. I went to like this one event and like the guy that owned, the guy that ran all the IT for the event and the guy that owned the same. like massive building, both of them, or like, bro, we love you. You're great. This is awesome. And like, that was like, they didn't even know the other people I was with.

But like, they knew me. So I was like, yeah, that's, of course. Important to understand because as a collective, you gamers have a blacklist that is far more powerful than anything else than the industry. Somebody says, what do you gain by going after the actors and the artists? Well, like, for example, like

if a person who is making content is making statements and doing things that you don't agree with and pushing an ideology that you think is reductive or bad or is just rude and you don't like them. I think that exercising your commercial freedom to choose not to consume content with them involved, I think that's part of your rights as a customer. And so like, yeah, you get better products. Exactly. And so like, why do you want to have to deal with that? Better games? What else? Well, that's it. That's what matters. discourage retard behavior?

Yeah, exactly. People don't want to reward retard behavior. As a collective, you gamers have a blacklist that is far more powerful than anything else than the industry. And it's actually really easy to use. So say there's a voice actor that you think doesn't represent what you want the gaming industry to be. You simply need to take two very easy steps. Step one, don't buy their games. What?

Super easy, right? If they're in a game and you don't want them to represent the industry, just simply refuse to buy their games. The companies will notice. What? Frankly, you guys have done a great job of that in the past. We have. We have. We've been sending them all back to McDonald's. They're all going back to DoorDash. And that's it. And it will take time. It's not going to happen overnight. But it will take time. And it will happen. A whole bunch of games that you all fell to. Not really what you wanted. Honestly, it's kind of scary. How good you guys are at that. Step two. Let's there's room to improve. There's lots of room to improve. the companies know why you're not buying their games.

When a company announces their game on Twitter, for example, simply make a straightforward and simple statement. Something like, due to how this person bullies their fellow voice actors, I will no longer be buying games that feature them. Or I believe that this person does not represent what I want from the gaming industry, and I will no longer be buying games that feature. Well, what really matters, like, you know, talk is cheap, right? A lot of people say this.

Like, do you remember all the times that, like, somebody would make, like, even I did this or like a lot of people did this? Like, they would complain about the game constantly and then they just go right back to playing it. The real thing and what really matters is if you actually act on these impulses and you simply actually stop buying it. But the next part is really important. Do not be lulled into a bad faith conversation. If someone responds to your post with insults or hatred. Never, never play a game on somebody else's rules. Don't do it.

They're going to set you up to lose. Simply ignore them. Do not turn your statements into bullying and definitely do not turn them into threats, doxing, or harassment. The arts industries are really good at ignoring criticism. Like am I in a competition with Little Kerbo to get the most death threats from Insol Miho fans because if so, I want out, I have had death threats every. day since I announced that I became being the sense I announced being the voice of Pymond.

Well, I mean, I guess Karina today must be a really good day for her, right? Because now she's not going to voice the character anymore and she won't be getting any more death threats. I think this is a win-win situation. The players win and she wins. Everybody's happy. This is a huge W. It's insane if people have nothing better to do that harassings and death threats.

How much do you want to bet if you cook on this person's profile? They've been harassing people. and like making like contributing the harassment of somebody else every time if they can turn it into something worse do not give them an excuse to ignore your criticism simply make the straightforward statement with no bullying and no insults and walk away i guarantee you that's the reason why i never make fun of people's appearance and it's the reason why i never make fun of like immutable characteristics and i'm i don't bully people it's because i my goal it's not because I don't want to.

Of course I want to call people fat. Of course. My goal is to make whatever I want to have happen happen. That's what I care about. I want to, I want fat. No, I do. Like, I do. Like, if you look, go back, I hardly ever make any of those.

Come on, let's be honest. When was the last time I made fun to somebody for the way they look? Today? When? When? That's right. So I don't. Chat's projecting hard?

Yeah. bro, you call everyone hogs, my dude? No, you see, like, I call, I make fun of fat people in general, but I don't call people fat specifically. Did you guys ever notice that? Like, I talk about hogs in a general sense, but I rarely refer to individuals as hogs. Think about, think about it.

Semantics, yes. Companies will notice, because at the end of the day, you guys are the ones paying them. And if you guys stop paying them, you bet they will fix things immediately. Yeah, that's pretty much all I have to say. Get out there and go change the industry for the better in the way that only you gamers can. Wherever you are in the world, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, or good night.

I bet people are really mad about this video. Next time. This guy was fucking based. Holy shit. God damn. Wow. The Jackson Pollock reverse Uno Among Us play? Man, that was a good one.

That was a fucking good one. This guy's only got 169 subs. He's like a really small creator. And the same thing has been posted on. I read it a few times. I think people have really wanted me to look at it and get his insight. I think he really, you know, he put together a really great video. And he dropped a nuke on him.

He did. That was a really good one. So yeah, give it a like. And it's funny because like a lot of people dislike this video too. Like I think it's probably a hose mad situation in this case, definitely a hos mad situation. But yeah, glad you finally watched it. No, no, I really support it. I'm going to give him a sub my stuff.

myself, Gary. And there it is. So yeah, there's his channel. And I totally support what he's saying. And I think, again, if you antagonize the players, the players are going to antagonize you. Imagine that. For me, one question matters. Is it good? If it is, the companies will use it and the companies won't care. And then he knows that pretty much sums it up. Actors and artists care about the process and creativity of art, but at the end of the day, the public cares about whether or not it's good. I'm glad you posted this because your sentiment is exactly what I'm trying to get the VAs to realize. It is impossible to have a man understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it. I think this is an upton-inclair quote. I'm not sure exactly who it was.

But yeah, this is a very, this predates AI. This predates all of this stuff. Shit, true. Yeah, this is a very common sentiment. It's been going on for years, years, years, hundreds of years, probably they don't want to understand it that's it i will never insult your customers on twitter executives know this yep there we go the for two big reasons why i refuse to buy any product that comes with AI yeah i'm not going to read any of that but anyway um so yeah i totally agree with this video for sure and uh i think AI is going to become more popular in general