Last week's announcement of the nominees for the 2008 Videogame Writing Award by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) got me to thinking some pretty spine chilling thoughts. Don't get me wrong. I relish the idea that the writers of our favourite video game's storylines are able to be recognized for their accomplishments. The introduction of the award last year only had me saying one thing, “It's about time!” Unfortunately, with all of the recent trouble and noise coming from the North American writing and acting guilds/associations, the only things I can really think about now are exclusive membership and strikes.

For those of you who don't remember, or simply don't watch television or movies, there was a period of about 14 weeks from November 2007 to February 2008 where, basically, no content was being officially produced by any of the writers in the WGA for film or television, or any other format for that matter. Those other formats, including on-demand and Internet broadcasting, were part of the issue the Guild was raising with the strike. While the Writers Guild of Canada did not participate in the strike, the Canadian television industry was also affected, as a large portion of content Canadian broadcasters show is made in America. Of course, this is just a miniscule summary of the strike issue, so if you're interested in the full story, you can either  read the Bin's coverage, read up on the WGA's side of things or search for every story on the topic on your own time. It's really up to you.

The two issues that worry me, with all of this in mind, is that writers who are not part of the WGA's Videogame Writers Caucus (VWC) will be excluded from nominations, unless they choose to join the VWC, and that any time the WGA goes on strike, video game writers who are members of the VWC will have no choice but to join them, thus disrupting the workflow of game development. The first issue appears to have been somewhat addressed already, as writers simply need a “Written By” credit in a game to be eligible to be nominated. The second issue worries me far more, as part of the WGA's primary goal for the VWC is to “ Expand writers' WGA coverage to include every writer working in the gaming industry”.

In my mind, and likely the minds of many others in the video game industry, video game writers following the rest of the WGA into a strike could be a devestating blow to the the industry as a whole. Video game development takes far longer than film or television production. Any delays, even minor, can throw things out of balance. Severe delays, which could easily result from a prolonged writers strike, could ruin video game development projects. I would hate to see that happen.

What do you think?