Wow, this writers’ strike needs to end, like now. It’s one thing for Ellen DeGeneres to highlight her love of Guitar Hero by jamming through a song on her show. But now she’s roping in kids from YouTube to play a video game.

At least that’s what I thought before watching the video, but I totally changed my mind after seeing 12-year-old Kevin Shen wailing on expert in the video. I think it’s wonderful that Ellen is giving such positive press to video games and Shen, he got to stand in front of an audience of screaming women and pretend to play guitar. Pretty kick arse.

Of the survey’s respondents, all of which fall into 18-49 demographic that advertisers just adore, 27% say they are watching less network television, while only 12% of cable series viewers have been turned away by the lazy fare being served up on the airwaves these days. The DVD industry is seeing the biggest benefit from the strike, as 43% of Americans turn to DVD movies for comfort and another 23% prefer to curl up with a TV box set of shows gone by. Another 26%, however, have discovered they suddenly have more free time to fire up their consoles or computers and get their game on.

“The strike makes scripted programming more valuable than ever,” Interpret CEO Michael Dowling said. “As top shows disappear from primetime, viewers may go back and view critically lauded TV series they missed the first time around, play more video games or watch more movies on DVD.”

Looks like Joseph Olin knew what he was talking about late last year when he suggested the strike would prove fortuitous to gaming as a whole.

The only thing that worries me here is that video game writers are slowly being allowed into the Writer’s Guild of America as part of their new media push, which could mean that in the future such strikes could affect the game industry as well. Where then would the game companies turn for witty, borderline attractive writers with a background steeped in video game culture and history? Oh, and tall. They’d have be very tall. *finger-phones to the ear while mouthing “call me”* We’ll just have to hope that never comes to pass.
Survey: DVD, games not striking out [The Hollywood Reporter]