XP Game Summit 2026 – Interview with Elana Dunkelman and Myles Dobson, Actors and Members of ACTRA Toronto

At this year’s XP Game Summit 2026, the message from local performers was loud, clear, and unmissable: developers do not need to look south of the border to secure world-class acting talent. During the conference, ACTRA Toronto hosted a foundational panel, “Inside the Booth: Bringing Professional Performances to Your Next Project“ focusing on bridging the gap between indie developers and union talent.

Following the session, I sat down with Elana Dunkelman (Actor, ACTRA Toronto Councilor, and Vice President) and Myles Dobson (Actor, Union member and multi-season alumnus of The Next Step). We spoke candidly about their massive grassroots push to revolutionize how the Canadian video game industry operates, protecting actors from AI exploitation, and why video game performance is uniquely magical.

The Spark: A Grassroots Initiative

This desire for growth and change didn’t originate from top-down union directives. Instead, the initial spark flew during a casual member picnic a couple of summers back.

“There was a picnic about two years ago for ACTRA members and Elana and I were lamenting not being in certain games that were out there or not having the opportunity to audition for the games that were coming out of Canada. And we were saying, we need to fix this. We need to try and refocus ACTRA’s position when it comes to video games, because it is a multibillion dollar industry.
’” — Myles Dobson

Elana, whose traditional income was deeply shaken by the prolonged commercial agreement labor dispute, found herself highly motivated to look toward expanding horizons. While ACTRA already maintained highly successful, back-end partnerships with major entities like Ubisoft and the localization/production studio Game On, it completely lacked a simplified, public-facing portal for independent developers.

They formed the Video Game Working Group, a passion-driven team built on a pure business case: mapping out exactly what Ontario developers need, what local talent can provide, and ensuring the union meets the tech sector exactly where it breathes.

Applying Lessons from SAG-AFTRA & Navigating Cultural Sovereignty

The conversation naturally drifted to the heavy labor friction felt globally, specifically the massive strikes undertaken by SAG-AFTRA in the United States.

Myles and Elana noted how they scrutinized the American union’s low-budget and indie agreements. The primary goal? Finding clever ways to incentivize small, scaling studios to work within union frameworks rather than avoiding them out of a lack of awareness.

“It was actually, I mean, to roll back to what we were talking about, like members coming together, that was one of the recommendations to the board of putting out a public facing low budget agreement so that we could capture that work. Through the work of our members as Myles was saying, going out and actually talking about what are the speed bumps to working. What are the pain points?
“ — Elana Dunkelman

Crucially, top-tier protection against unconsented AI-generated performances or predatory data-scraping remains the bedrock of their agenda.

However, translating American solutions to a Canadian ecosystem comes with distinct geopolitical and economic quirks:

• Bargaining Power Realities: SAG-AFTRA commands roughly 180,000 members; ACTRA represents closer to 30,000 nationwide, with British Columbia (UBCP/ACTRA) operating on an independent negotiation structure.
• The Service Industry Trap: Historically, Canadian film and TV have operated largely as a service industry for major Hollywood studios, relying heavily on foreign production dollars, tax incentives, and favorable exchange rates. When the US industry halts, Canadian crews and performers suffer immediate instability.

“So I think that, I mean, if we have to kind of zoom out from the agreement, unfortunately, right now, as it stands, Canada is a service industry to the United States when it comes to film and television. I think video games are not exactly the same. We have our own developers here, and they seem to be wanting to use union talent.
“ — Elana Dunkelman

This reality underscores the urgency of building robust, domestic intellectual property inside video games. Unlike traditional media, which often frames our creatives as “actors who only truly made it once they moved to Los Angeles,” the interactive games space completely blows past geographic lines. Global players don’t look at the map, they listen to the performance.

The Turning Point: A Low-Budget Indie Agreement Is “Very Close”

For years, the biggest pain point for indie developers looking at union contracts was the assumption of rigid rules and prohibitive costs. The Working Group’s direct answer is a brand-new low-budget video game agreement, built explicitly around the financial realities of Ontario’s bustling indie scene.

According to Elana, the agreement is very close to becoming fully official, essentially awaiting final board approval. The momentum is so real that multiple local studios are actively preparing to pilot the contract this summer.

“I think it just needs to be approved by the board but we already have a developer who is clamoring to work on it and we’ll probably be using them to pilot it over the summer.” — Elana Dunkelman

To back this up, ACTRA Toronto is investing directly in performer education so that actors hit the studio floors as hyper-efficient professionals. They recently hosted an intensive video game performance workshop led by respected voice director and casting professional Lindsey Gardner, training over 80 union members in the grueling, fast-paced realities of modern game recording.

The Raw Magic of Voice and Motion Capture

Before wrapping up, I asked them both what makes stepping into a game project so radically different from standing in front of a standard camera rig. Their faces instantly lit up.

“When I was a kid I’d gone to TV sets and have that kind of like, Oh, it’s a special thing. And that’s kind of unfortunate that’s gone a little bit now for me, but like with the video game stuff I went to, I went to Ubisoft to see their space, and just walking into The Volume felt like I’d gone into church right it was so such a such a holy experience for me to go into that recording space.” — Myles Dobson

For Elana, the sheer creative freedom of interactive media stands in stark, beautiful contrast to the often restrictive schedules of television sets.

“ I think voice work to me has always been my favorite I started in commercials, I have been so blessed to also work in animation.

I think video game is, it’s almost like, it’s almost like anything is possible, right, because it’s, it’s such a magical medium where you can be a character learning that they’re a god or you could be in a, you know, a world that’s been destroyed and it’s all in your imagination“ — Elana Dunkelman

For decades, we’ve watched legendary talents like Martin Short maintain deep pride in their Canadian roots while navigating international success. Thanks to the relentless, hands-on work of ACTRA Toronto’s grassroots organizers, the next generation of interactive talent won’t need to choose between their home and their career.

The industry is rapidly changing, and the line between indie agility and studio professionalism is blurring. When this new video game agreement officially rolls out, Ontario developers will have an accessible pipeline to world-class performance infrastructure right in their backyard.

To learn more about the upcoming agreements check out the ACTRA Toronto site or to check out details from the conference session, head over to the XP Game Summit Session Page.

^{*Note, this article was updated to add a detailed transcript and more accurate quotes.}