I want to say something real quick: I loved Resident Evil Requiem. It’s everything I love about the Resident Evil series, achieving an amazing balance of both the puzzle solving of the early entries and the run and gun action of the later ones. Grace is an extremely compelling character with an interesting backstory and personality, and Leon is more Leon than we have ever seen him before. Additionally, revisiting Raccoon City post-nuke served as an incredible throwback to the game that got many of us into the series: Resident Evil 2. Simply put, I loved it.
But, I probably shouldn’t have played it.
In March, Benjamin Diskin, the voice actor who had voiced Mega Man in the recent Mega Man games, posted that he would not be voicing the Blue Bomber in the upcoming Mega Man: Dual Override, because Capcom had insisted on using non-union voice actors. While it wasn’t made clear, Diskin alluded to the idea that Capcom wasn’t using union VAs, because they didn’t want to abide by SAG-AFTRA’s policy on training AI on union VAs work. Diskin left the project, and SAG-AFTRA issued a do not work order. Essentially, Mega Man: Dual Override has become a project that is off-limits for union members and any non-members who hope to one day become a union member.
Now, to be clear, neither Diskin, nor SAG-AFTRA, called for a consumer boycot of the game or Capcom in general. Still, as a person who supports unions whole-heartedly, I don’t like to support companies that create scab work. I would rather my money go to companies that don’t shit on their employees, and hiring non-union, because you don’t like contract terms that protect the workers, is shitting on them.
So, I started a personal boycot on Capcom. I didn’t play Pragmata, despite being super interested in it. I didn’t buy the Onimusha 2 remaster, and I took the new Onimusha off my wishlist. But the Resident Evil Requiem damage was already done. I had bought the game a few weeks before all of this came out, and I was well into my first playthrough of it. I probably should have seen this coming, though. This wasn’t the first time Capcom has done this.
In 2017, while we were waiting for the Resident Evil 2 remake, Alyson Court, the original voice of Claire Redfield, and Matthew Mercer, the voice of Leon S. Kennedy from Resident Evil 6, announced that they would not be voicing their respective characters in the remake. What was worse was that, at least in Court’s case, Capcom had reached out to her to offer her the job early in development, but then bid out the voice and motion capture work to a company that uses non-union actors. As Court said, “if Capcom wants to make a change for the betterment of the property, then that is great. But, if they make that change for the sole purpose of saving money, then that’s shit.”
While I don’t remember these circumstances directly, I’m sure I heard about them. And while I was not as vocally pro-union in 2017, as I am now, I still refused to cross picket lines. Solidarity with all workers was an important life philosophy to me, even before I became the insufferable union curmudgeon that I am now. I still played Resident Evil 2 Remake. And Resident Evil 3 Remake. And Resident Evil Village. And Resident Evil 4 Remake. And now Resident Evil Requiem.
But, that does have me asking myself a simple question: where’s the line?
Why was I okay playing all of the Resident Evil games after the shit they did to Alyson Court, but their actions against Benjamin Diskin has pushed me to the point of questioning if I ever want to play another Capcom game? Where’s the line?
If I take a step back and look at the both issues side by side, I see two main differences. The first is time. I’m much older, and I’ve learned a lot more about labor, and I’m much more pro-union and pro-worker than I was 10-ish years ago. But more importantly, I think, is the introduction of AI into the conversation.
I don’t like what they did to Alyson Court, but in the end, a voice actor still got to do work. We can discuss whether or not the non-union voice actor was a “scab” in taking the job. Personally, I would say no, because there was no formal strike or action declared by the union after Capcom made their decision. Was it shitty how they handled it? Sure. Was it shitty that it was likely just to save money? Sure. But a creative human still got paid for their labor.
With the Mega Man decision, though, Capcom has made it very clear. They want the right to use whoever voices Mega Man to train an AI to eventually take jobs from human creators. That crosses a major line for me, and I’m not sure I can come back from that.
Like many creatives online, I don’t like AI. I don’t like to consume content that has been created by AI. I have friends that have fun creating silly songs with Suno, or inserting themselves into movie posters with Gemini, and I get the appeal. But, it’s not for me, and I’ve said as much. They still send me the jokes, and I still check them out and laugh. But, i have no desire to sit down with chatGPT and ask it to write a blog post for me. I would rather the shitty words on this fucking website exist solely because I’m a shitty writer, not because chatGPT wrote shitty words.
So, when I read stories like the one regarding Capcom and Diskin, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I feel the same way when I read things like the post from Warhorse designer Daniel Vavra, where he says that AI appeals to him because he’s 50 and he has so many games he wants to create, but so little time left to create them. While I sympathize with Vavra, I feel like both cases are looking at the end product as just that, a product.
What I think gets lost in that idea is that the end product is the result of the act of creation, which I believe is both fun and frustrating, but also incredibly human. I am typing this post in a coffee shop, while I drink coffee and listen to a Twitch streamer play Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask in my headphones. This is a first draft. It’s messy, and it’s gross, and I ramble, and stop and start thoughts. My paragraphs are rambly, and my sentence structure and rhythm feels jagged and uneven. I will have to sit with this piece and edit it multiple times before I post it. And while I may not feel like doing it, I will still do it. Because I am creating something and sending it out to the world, and the act of creation is easily as awe-some as the final product.
I don’t often get overly romantic about art. There’s a stereotype of artists as these dreamers with their heads in the clouds waiting for inspiration to strike. I worked as a professional writer for ten years. Sometimes, you don’t have time to dream or wait for inspiration, you just have to write. That said, this is probably a place I will look at the process in a romantic way. While I don’t believe that there is some transcendental force somewhere in the universe that compels me to write, and that I write “because I have to or I will die,” or whatever weird pseudo-aphorism currently spouted by the guy scrolling Bluesky instead of working on his Great American Novel, I do believe that the act of creating is something bigger than you or me. It is something separates us from other species on this Earth, and we have done it consistently since early human drew buffalo on cave walls, and then the guy next to him wrote a review of said buffalo paintings, calling them nice, but uninspired. We have written stories, and songs, and poems, and paintings, and drawings for thousands of years, because we as humans desire for creation. And sometimes people love that creation, and sometimes they don’t. Oftentimes, no one will even see that creation. And that’s okay too, because creation in itself is a worthy pursuit.
There is something beautiful in that, and it’s something that Gemini will never be able to replicate.
So, when I see AI touted as a new tool that will deliver results faster, I get sad. Because I don’t want the results delivered faster. I want the process, and I believe the process is a good thing for us as creators and, if you’ll allow me one more piece of romanticism, us as humans.
I don’t know what the future holds for me and Capcom. I loved Requiem, and I am lowkey excited about what comes next for my favorite franchise in video gaming. But, I think that this might be one of those times where I have to draw a line in the sand and say no more. It makes me sad, but I think it’s necessary.
I think it’s an important statement to make.
