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Sarah Elmaleh

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Sarah Elmaleh
Elmaleh in 2019
Born
Sarah Horn Elmaleh
NationalityAmerican
OccupationVoice actor

Sarah Horn Elmaleh is an American voice actor. She is known for her work in the indie video games Gone Home (2013) and Where the Water Tastes Like Wine (2018) and AAA titles such as Final Fantasy XV (2016), For Honor (2017), and Anthem (2019). Elmaleh became involved with the SAG-AFTRA union after she moved from New York City to Los Angeles in 2015. In 2019, she founded the multilingual, online games conference gamedev.world with game developer Rami Ismail.

Early life

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Sarah Horn Elmaleh[1] practiced dancing from the age of three until she was fourteen, when an injury led her to become involved in theater in high school.[2] She attended Wesleyan University, located in Middletown, Connecticut,[3] where she performed in radio dramas, which she felt drew on her childhood experiences of playing video games, especially adventure games by LucasArts and games by BioWare.[2] She graduated in 2007.[4]

Career

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Elmaleh performed in theater in New York for a few years after she graduated from university and found that auditions for voice-over roles were "less stressful and more fun, more playful, more casual" than other types of auditions.[2] She also worked at Kill Screen magazine.[5][6] Her credits for video game voice work go back to 2011.[7] After she moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 2015 to voice AAA video games, she became involved with union organizing in the video game industry.[4][8] Elmaleh became more involved with AAA games after obtaining a talent agent in California with the help of referral by Jennifer Hale, known for her voice work in the Mass Effect series.[9] Elmaleh has since acted in voice roles in the indie video games Gone Home (2013) and Where the Water Tastes Like Wine (2018), and the AAA titles Final Fantasy XV (2016) and For Honor (2017).[10]

Elmaleh provided the voice of the female player character in BioWare's 2019 video game Anthem.[7] A review by the National Post praised the game's acting, among other features, singling out Elmaleh's performance as "instantly likeable, infusing our hero with roguishness, confidence, friendliness and authentic wit."[11] Before she was hired to work on the game, she provided the voices for characters in a mod of the BioWare-produced game Dragon Age: Origins.[12] After allegations of Anthem's protracted development timeline were reported after the game's release, in early 2019, Elmaleh spoke to Variety on the game's development and her favorable personal experiences during the process; she also said she was recording lines for a planned update to the game.[8]

Union activities

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As a member of the labor union SAG-AFTRA, in 2015, Elmaleh voted in favor of strike action by video game voice actors against eleven video game developers and publishers to receive compensation through residuals in addition to other requests on working conditions.[13][14] She participated in the strike,[15] which began in October 2016, following failed contract negotiations with publishers through the previous year,[16] and lasted until 2017.[15] In late October 2018, the union released a contract which addressed the issues of compensation and working conditions for unionized voice actors, motion-capture performers, and singers, and also provided a way for actors to work on small game productions under the union. The agreement was developed through a two-year process led by voice actors including Elmaleh, Crispin Freeman, Jennifer Hale, and Courtenay Taylor.[17][18] Elmaleh told Gamasutra at the time: "The only apprehension I had in joining the union was missing out on this whole burgeoning space of ambitious artistic expression. Coming out of indies and loving them, and not wanting to lose them as I scale up."[18] Elmaleh voice acted under the new contract in the 2018 titles Where the Water Tastes Like Wine by Good Shepherd Entertainment and Exapunks by Zachtronics.[18]

In 2018, Elmaleh, Jennifer Hale, and Cissy Jones created Specialized Workshops And Actor Tactics (SWAAT), a free service to improve video game scripts held with the Los Angeles-based company The Halp Network. Although actors involved with SWAAT were members of the SAG-AFTRA union, SWAAT did not require the game developer's project be under the union.[19][20]

Elmaleh was chair of SAG-AFTRA's Interactive Media bargaining unit when the union voted in September 2023 to authorize a possible strike against video game companies, amid a strike by SAG-AFTRA's film and television actors alongside one by the Writers Guild of America.[21] Elmaleh and fellow bargaining unit member Zeke Alton said they were interested in securing workplace measures that were, according to Polygon, "standard elsewhere in Hollywood — five-minute breaks per hour, for instance."[22] In 2024, after SAG-AFTRA made an agreement with Replica Studios to allow union members to manage a digitally replicated version of their voices generated by artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, Elmaleh stated she had "always been one of the more conservative voices" on the topic of AI voice clones, but now felt more "agnostic".[23]

gamedev.world

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Elmaleh previously worked "game-maker relations" for the IndieCade games festival, a position in which she says she acted as the "single bottleneck" between the festival and participating game developers. She recalled meeting a game developer at her job who struggled to communicate with her in English, which motivated her to meet game developer Rami Ismail after reading a blog post by Ismail on language barriers in the video game industry.[24] Ismail and Elmaleh eventually organized the online, multilingual games conference gamedev.world in 2019, supported by an advisory board made from Gwen Frey, Houssem Ben Amor and Gabriel Dal Santo,[25][26] in order to "diversify" the video game industry.[27] The conference features a series of presentations by developers broadcast with closed captioning and translations in eight languages.[25][26] It followed an initial showcase of the format organized by Ismail and Elmaleh for the 2015 Games for Change Festival held in New York City.[27]

Personal life

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On her personal website, Elmaleh states she is "bi/pansexual and gender-expansive/genderqueer" and that her ethnicity is a combination of "English, German, French, Irish and French-Canadian, as well as 1/4 Moroccan (Sephardic Jewish) and 1/8 Japanese (yonsei)."[28] Her father, Antonio Osato Elmaleh (1950–2020), was an investor and former restaurateur and film producer.[29] Her mother (d. 2013) worked for American Airlines as a flight attendant.[9]

Voice-over filmography

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List of voice performances in video games
Year Title Role Notes Source
2012 Resonance Anna Castellanos [30][31]
2013 Skulls of the Shogun [32]
Gone Home Katie Greenbriar [25]
Codename Cygnus [32][33]
2014 Children of Liberty Ally [34]
2015 Gravity Ghost [35][36]
Galak-Z: The Dimensional [24]
2064: Read Only Memories [37]
Call of Duty: Black Ops III [6]
2016 Final Fantasy XV [38]
2017 For Honor The Raider [7]
Pyre [18]
2018 Where the Water Tastes Like Wine Rose [7]
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 [24]
Exapunks [18]
2019 Anthem Female Player [7]
Gears 5 Lizzie Carmine [12][39]
Afterparty Apollyon [38][40]
2020 Spider-Man: Miles Morales [41]
Star Wars: Squadrons Specialist A (Imperial pilot) [15]
2021 Halo Infinite [41]
Fortnite Cube Queen [23]
2023 Hi-Fi Rush Korsica [41]

References

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  1. ^ "Sarah Horn Elmaleh (@selmaleh)". Retrieved December 21, 2022 – via Instagram.
  2. ^ a b c Gagne, Ken (April 15, 2020). "Polygamer #100: Voice actor Sarah Elmaleh". Polygamer. Retrieved December 15, 2022.
  3. ^ "2007 Recipients, Student Affairs/Deans' Office". Wesleyan University. Retrieved December 14, 2022.
  4. ^ a b "Class Notes". Wesleyan. No. 2. 2017. p. 71. Retrieved December 14, 2022 – via mydigitalpublication.com.
  5. ^ Hamilton, Kirk (March 1, 2012). "Downton Abbey Meets Magic: The Gathering, And It Is Glorious". Kotaku Australia. Archived from the original on December 4, 2022. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  6. ^ a b "These are your juries for the IGF 2018 Design, Audio, and Student awards!". Gamasutra. December 4, 2017. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  7. ^ a b c d e Tucker, Kevin (February 25, 2019). "Voice actors and cast in Anthem game". Shacknews. Retrieved September 26, 2022.
  8. ^ a b Crecente, Brian (April 9, 2019). "'Anthem' Voice Actor on Unionization, Struggles of Creation". Variety. Retrieved December 19, 2022.
  9. ^ a b Gach, Ethan (September 26, 2023). "Video Game Voice Actors Are Ready To Strike Over AI. Here's Why". Kotaku. Retrieved December 2, 2023.
  10. ^ Sinclair, Brendan (July 2, 2018). "Making the most of voice talent". GamesIndustry.biz Academy Magazine. Retrieved December 14, 2022.
  11. ^ Sapieha, Chad (March 1, 2019). "Anthem review: Think Destiny, with better storytelling, worse loot and more repetition". National Post. ProQuest 2187181877. Retrieved December 21, 2022.
  12. ^ a b Klepek, Patrick (April 15, 2021). "This 'Witcher 3' Mod Got Geralt to Read New Lines Without the Voice Actor". Waypoint. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  13. ^ Matulef, Jeffrey (October 8, 2015). "Voice actors strike has been authorised". Eurogamer. Retrieved December 14, 2022.
  14. ^ "Sarah Elmaleh". SAG-AFTRA. Archived from the original on November 7, 2022. Retrieved December 17, 2022.
  15. ^ a b c Sarkeesian, Anita; Petit, Carolyn (December 17, 2020). "These People Helped Shape Video Game Culture in 2020". The New York Times. Retrieved September 26, 2022.
  16. ^ Matulef, Jeffrey (October 21, 2016). "Video game voice actors strike has officially begun". Eurogamer. Retrieved December 14, 2022.
  17. ^ Clayton, Natalie (October 30, 2018). "SAG-AFTRA has a new deal to help lower-budget game developers hire unionised actors". PC Games Insider. Retrieved December 13, 2022.
  18. ^ a b c d e Cross, Katherine (October 29, 2018). "SAG-AFTRA's new agreement opens doors for small-budget and indie games". Gamasutra. Retrieved December 13, 2022.
  19. ^ Taylor, Ivy (November 29, 2018). "Voice actors launch free initiative to help developers improve their scripts". GamesIndustry.biz. Retrieved December 15, 2022.
  20. ^ Wawro, Alex (November 28, 2018). "Top voice actors sign on to help pre-read your game scripts -- for free". Game Developer. Retrieved June 28, 2023.
  21. ^ Parvini, Sarah (September 25, 2023). "SAG-AFTRA members vote to authorize strike against video game companies". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved December 1, 2023.
  22. ^ Carpenter, Nicole (September 26, 2023). "Video game actors vote yes to strike, if needed". Polygon. Retrieved December 1, 2023.
  23. ^ a b O'Brien, Matt (February 19, 2024). "Some video game actors are letting AI clone their voices. They just don't want it to replace them". Associated Press. Retrieved March 3, 2024.
  24. ^ a b c Takahashi, Dean (July 3, 2019). "Sarah Elmaleh: The game industry can become emotionally aware and collaborative". VentureBeat. Retrieved December 19, 2022.
  25. ^ a b c Batchelor, James (January 25, 2019). "Introducing Gamedev.world, the first global game developer conference". GamesIndustry.biz. Retrieved December 5, 2022.
  26. ^ a b Hall, Charlie (January 28, 2019). "Gamedev.world hopes to bring down language barriers that keep creative teams apart". Polygon. Retrieved December 17, 2022.
  27. ^ a b Conditt, Jessica (January 24, 2019). "The online conference that might change video games for good". Engadget. Retrieved December 17, 2022.
  28. ^ "Sarah Elmaleh - Actor, Advocate, Consultant". sarahelmaleh.com. Archived from the original on December 6, 2022. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
  29. ^ "Obituaries". The New York Times. February 23, 2020. p. 24N. ProQuest 2386383359.
  30. ^ Berens, Nathaniel (June 19, 2012). "Resonance review". Adventure Gamers. Retrieved September 26, 2022.
  31. ^ "Resonance". Hardcore Gaming 101. April 30, 2014. Retrieved May 29, 2023.
  32. ^ a b Pitcher, Jenna (July 18, 2013). "Codename Cygnus, the interactive radio drama for iOS". Polygon. Retrieved November 25, 2022.
  33. ^ emilygera (January 16, 2014). "Interactive radio drama Codename Cygnus price drops as new updates are announced". Polygon. Retrieved November 25, 2022.
  34. ^ Tach, Dave (February 6, 2014). "Children of Liberty cast includes Borderlands, Gone Home vets". Polygon. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  35. ^ Matulef, Jeffrey (June 2, 2015). "Ethereal physics puzzler Gravity Ghost is coming to PS4". Eurogamer. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  36. ^ Conditt, J. (May 22, 2014). "Voices of Transistor, Gone Home, Hey Ash in Gravity Ghost". Engadget. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  37. ^ McKenney, Kyle (June 23, 2016). "Cyberpunk Adventure Game 2064: Read Only Memories is Coming to PS4 with Stellar Voice Cast". Paste. Retrieved December 18, 2022.
  38. ^ a b Dornbush, Jonathon (December 14, 2018). "Afterparty's Voice Cast Includes Horizon Zero Dawn, The Walking Dead Actors". IGN. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  39. ^ Pasquariello, Michael (August 20, 2020). "Sarah Elmaleh Is Fostering Collaboration Between Developers And Voice Actors". Kotaku Australia. Archived from the original on October 31, 2020. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  40. ^ Futter, Michael (March 31, 2019). "Night School's 'Afterparty' Makes Going to Hell Look Fun". Variety. Retrieved September 26, 2022.
  41. ^ a b c Bell, Larryn (February 2, 2023). "Voice actors & cast list - Hi-Fi Rush". Shacknews. Retrieved February 4, 2023.
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