Screenwriting in Flux: Thoughts on the Writer's Strike of 2007

As the Writer's Guild Of America strike drags on, amid a boring avalanche of television reruns and major shows like 24 shutting down for the season, thoughts turn to other avenues of employment. For now, the focus is on Internet revenue, which studio owners are reluctant to share with writers. It's overshadowed a pretty shocking fact about the most lucrative work for screenwriters other than Hollywood: Video games.

I'm a screenwriter. My television scripts were produced for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. I'd love to write video games, but knowing the current pay structure for game writers, I'm hesitant.

Video game writers aren't paid residuals.

Gone are the days of little yellow guys chomping on pellets, video games are complex sagas requiring scripts like feature films. Game publishers successfully resisted Hollywood unions like SAG for actors and also the WGA for years now, so game writers are paid only for completed work. When a mega hit video game like Halo, World of Warcraft or Grand Theft Auto makes a huge financial splash, writers who toiled long and hard on that game title receive nothing else. Not even perhaps a complimentary copy of their own game. That's a pitiful picture of pixels if you ask me.

Writer "Heroes"

Tim Kring is a writing hero.

Even fans of the NBC super hit series may not immediately recognize the name. Tim Kring is creator and show runner of "Heroes." As genre TV goes, it's one of the more original and beloved in years. For the characters Kring created, fighting injustice isn't a matter of capes, masks or secret identities. It's a matter of loyal alliances, picking your battles with moral conviction and staying out of the way of an evil brain sucking guy named Sylar.

No matter if you like the show or not, the fact remains Tim Kring is a writer on strike demanding a new, fair deal for his fellow writers. You may argue persuasively Kring isn't as needy as many writers. Indeed, Kring is no doubt paid handsomely for his creator efforts. However when his show is streamed online or downloaded into an iPod, iPhone or other mobile device, under the current WGA deal he doesn't receive a portion of those substantial profits. Nor does any writer working on Heroes get anything when we pay to download the series. Where's the hero fighting for writers to get a fair share?

The Future Will Be Written

Entertainment's future will be written, programmed, drawn and acted. It will be the collaborative work of creative musicians, artists, actors and writers. Actors like Bruce Willis, one of the first to lend his likeness and voice to a video game will be seen as a pioneer. Recent blockbuster Beowulf blends the real acting talents of Angelina Jolie and Anthony Hopkins so well with digital wizardry that the line continues to blur between movies, video games and something new - a brave hybrid which has yet to be truly appreciated or exploited.

As already mind blowing technology improves further, as audiences open up to new ways of experiencing stories, the future will be fun and thrilling. It will also be written. Whatever the new games are, whatever movies might one day be called, whatever hybrids are stitched together from old forms, they will be written. Whether called iPod web casts, or webisodes of a web series, it will be conceived by someone, produced and hopefully earn the loyalty of an audience. No matter if we call that creator a content producer, an artist or a writer, those who collaborated on the production's success deserve fair pay.