The Scriptwriter’s strike kicked off this week, with the primary bone of contention being the Scriptwriters getting more money from DVD sales and/or Internet work (especially relevant, now that many television shows are shown for free on the Internet). By contract, show runners can only run scripts they have in the can, and in an interesting twist, may only shoot scripts as they are written (which terrifies everyone concerned).

So far, public opinion seems to lean in the scriptwriter’s direction, as they’ve done a better job at creating a grassroots campaign for their cause, as well as getting the stars to come to speak on their behalf to the press. The studios, in a response that can only be described as the stupidest possible response this side of the RIAA, appear to be considering responded by cancelling shows (mostly marginal, but some hits such as 24 are already reportedly being pushed off a year – if they come back at all).

Most scripted shows only have 2-3 more shot episodes in the can, with 2-3 more episodes written and ready to shoot (with many of those being in various stages of quality, and with producers unable, legally, to polish them up). Most of the networks usually show mostly reruns during December (don’t want to waste a new episode when many people are travelling and/or forced to watch insipid shit like ‘Miracle on 34th Street’ with the fams), and the current plan seems for the networks to start showing reruns sooner, in hopes stretching out these 4-6 episodes of these shows into January, so the true impact of the strike isn’t felt until about February. Until then, expect the immediate future of television to be mostly reruns and unscripted fare like reality shows – at least through Christmas.

Well, here’s the interesting twist: this frees up a lot of time for video game playing.

More and more people in both the TV industry and the games industry have come to the realization that the two industries are direct competitors with each other (and indeed, with any other time-consuming hobby). This makes sense – if you’re playing Halo 3, you’re probably not watching Lost. Games with serious time investments (such as WoW) make it much harder for people to consume a lot of TV.

Here’s the spicy kick to the twist: November-December is the game industry’s strongest time.

The conventional wisdom in the games industry is that it is, at its core, a toy industry. Some claim that games sell ten times as many copies when mom is looking for titles to stuff in stockings. As such, the entire industry is geared entirely for major titles to release at Christmas time. Normally, this is actually a problem – too many games competing for a player’s time. I mean, look at what there is this fall: the Orange Box, Bioshock, Halo 3, Mass Effect, Super Mario Galaxy, Guitar Hero 3, Rock Band, Skate, Assassin’s Creed, Hellgate – and that’s just off the top of my head. That’s a lot of game time competing with each other. But if games don’t have to compete with Lost, 24 or Battlestar Galactica for a geek’s face time, more games will fly off the shelf.

And more importantly to us, more bored people with nothing better to do might turn to games. If I were running Microsoft, XBox or Nintendo, I would be breaking the bank on advertising right now. This could be their best opportunity for a decade for them to make significant inroads in a currently untapped but utterly bored new market.

Original comments thred is here.