The Game Writing SIG is proud to announce a new book–Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing. The book was edited by Wendy Despain and boast contributions from a great many members of the SIG. The arrival of our second book has inspired a page on the site titled Our Books, where you’ll always be able to find information on our completed books and works in progress.

Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing may be purchased via Amazon, A.K. Peters or your favorite local bookstore.

A publication addressing the gamut of issues facing writers and developers as they strive for better narrative in today’s games. In this issue:

Negotiating Writing in Tactical Military Shooters
Interview with Ken Levine, Mac Walters and Erik Wolpaw
“Writing for New IPs” excerpt
Game Writers Quarterly - Vol 3 Issue 1, Spring 2008 (pdf)

Richard Dansky, who did an amazing job of running the three Writer’s Round Tables at GDC this year, has gone a step further and made his notes from all three days available for our perusal. As someone who has difficulty talking and browsing the web at the same time, I can tell you that running a Round Table while taking such comprehensive notes is quite the accomplishment.

The transcript has been made publicly available as a Google doc(http://tinyurl.com/38o6c2) and contains videogame writing tips from all corner of the industry. It’s well worth a thorough read.

Thanks again for all your hard work, Richard!

Every year at GDC we get to have a writers group gathering. This is an opportunity for any of the 18,000 attendees who might be interested in game writing to come hang out with SIG members, put faces to names, find out what we’re all about, and bring up whatever concerns or ideas they might have.

We had a great turnout this year with 33 people signing our attendance list and even more who came by but preferred to be anonymous. Everyone who gave us an email address was sent an invitation to join this list, so hopefully some new people have arrived. (Hello? Hello?)

These are the topics brought up for discussion at the meeting along with some comments from me:

* Many game developers still don’t seem to know what writers bring to the table, or how to best use their skills.
— We’ve made a lot of progress in this area, but there’s still
a long way to go.

* New game writers (students and writers from other media) feel like there aren’t many resources for learning or improving the unique aspects of the craft, including barks and getting feedback.
— Our first book, Game Writing: Narrative skills for video games,
is a good resource for this, as are the two books we’re
currently working on. But we can still provide more material
on our website etc.

* Localization is one aspect of game writing, but it doesn’t get much attention.
— Very good point. In fact, a new IGDA Localization SIG is
getting underway and we hope to work closely with them.

* It takes a lot of specific disciplines to make a modern videogame, and writers need to interact with all of them. What do writers need to know about these other disciplines (art, programming, producing, design)? And what do those disciplines need to know about writers?
— This topic has come up in the past, mostly about writers needing
needing to know about game design. I like that this time the
point was made that design isn’t the only thing.

* Job titles for game writers are confusing. For instance, what’s the difference between a Narrative Designer, a Story Editor and a Lead Writer?
— The game industry as a whole has this problem. It’s not unique
to writers. The SIG could come up with suggested job descriptions
for specific titles, but we should work closely with the IGDA
credits committee.

* We also had the annual question about rates. What do game writers make? What should I charge for a freelance job?
— This is a touchy subject, and the SIG may not be the best
organization to tackle it. The Writers Guild of Great Britain
has done a salary survey specifically about game writing,
and some other game industry salary surveys include writing data.

* Game writers often find themselves managing people - either as a lead writer managing a team of writers, or a narrative designer managing freelancers. There’s also the issue of managing the boss or the client. But managing people doesn’t come naturally to writers and isn’t taught in school.
— What a great new area to attack, I mean tackle! We can all
improve our people management skills, and hopefully some of the
more experienced among us can put it in terms writers understand.

* New writers are often given advice to find what they’re good at and play to their strengths. But how do you know what you’re good at?
— This is another great topic to dive into. Maybe an article for
the website? Or a trade magazine?

* Game writing job postings are scattered and hard to find. We don’t really have the resources on the SIG to make a job board, but we could do better.
— Graeme Davis volunteered to take this on and had a good idea.
(or was that someone else with the idea? sorry, lousy notes)
We could divide and conquer. If just a few people volunteer to
check one or two of the usual message boards once a week, then
post what they find to the mailing list we could all benefit.

* Game journalism is definitely a part of the game writing SIG, but we don’t talk about it very often.
— Corvus Elrod volunteered to take ownership of this issue and
get things moving for the journalism/reviews side of game writing.

Thanks to everyone who showed up to the group gathering. It was great to see old friends and attach faces to email addresses I’ve seen in my inbox. I’m excited to tackle some fresh issues as well as revisit things we’ve been working on for a while through fresh eyes.

(by SIG Chair, Wendy Despain)

Today was one of those days where there were too many sessions to go to and too many meetings scheduled. Sadly, the one session I was looking forward to and forced time into the schedule for was canceled with no warning. I guess the writer working on transmedia stuff for Heroes and Lost had a wacky schedule, what with the strike being over and everything.

So nothing to report from that session. Hopefully other Writing SIG members will have notes to share from sessions they attended.

The one session I got to was about detecting brain waves with a headphones type thing and using that data to anticipate the player’s emotional state and intended actions. They say there’s a one second lag between when there’s a detectable, subconscious urge to do something and the conscious action of the player. Their theory is that we can use that one second to stay just ahead of the player, guiding their experience and reacting to their unconscious feedback.

Fairly blue-sky stuff at this stage, although they say they have a working prototype at their booth on the expo floor. For the whole session, I was thinking of how this interface could impact story, but I think I’ve come to the conclusion that interactive narrative still has some basic problems to solve - whether or not the feedback we’re getting from the player is conscious or unconscious.

(by SIG Chair, Wendy Despain)

I didn’t make it to any sessions today. One of the hazards of trying to get actual business done while you’re at GDC. The sessions often have to take a back seat.

I did, however, have some good meetings and went to some great parties. One of these was the IGDA members-only party. Packed house, opportunities to meet up with lots of friends. And a cool social card game created by none other than the IGDA Writing SIG. Yay us!

A few months ago we all discussed ideas about this game on the general writing SIG mailing list, then Chris Keeling picked up the ball and ran with it. He did a great job wrangling this whole project, collecting other contributors, bending photoshop to his will, meeting deadlines, and making everyone happy. No small job!

Writing the content for the cards were game writers:

Ben Serviss - Settings
Ben Cressey - Plots
Corvus Elrod - Heroes
Matt Forbeck - Villains
Mykas0 - Game Mechanics

The game was played at all levels. Somep people kept it simple and just did color/point matching, while others dived into elaborate story construction. On all levels it seemed to accomplish the ultimate goal of getting people to talking with each other.

Congratulations to the whole group who put the game together. It was a huge success and really made the SIG look cool.

(by SIG Chair, Wendy Despain)

First day done here in San Francisco at GDC. My feet are aching but not blistered. That’s a good sign. I think putting the IGDA booth in the West Hall this year has made all the difference. Last year it was in the North Hall. A lot of the sessions I go to are in the West hall, and a lot of the people I need to meet up with are found at the IGDA booth. It’s nice not to have to walk over to the other building every hour or so.

I got to spend a little time in Evan Skolnick’s session on game writing. From what I saw, it was an excellent tutorial on essentials. It was also packed. Yay Evan!

The other session I caught a little bit of was on staging and visual storytelling by Mark W. Travis. It was great. He used a group of actors and a camera hooked up to a big screen to illustrate his points about how movement, eye contact and actor interaction tell a story without any words. He staged one script in several ways to elicit different emotional reactions. It was mostly aimed at animators and game directors, but I got a lot out of it too.

And finally, I wrapped up the day by getting together with other leaders of IGDA SIGs to talk about things like budgets, promotions and working together. All good stuff. Then we went together to a nearby Italian restaurant and ate till we dropped. Everyone else went from there to other parties, but I headed back to the hotel to get some other work done. Hello, GDC, I missed you old friend.

Every year the Game Writers Conference at the Austin Game Developers Conference is a great opportunity for our organization to get together, recruit new members and discuss the craft.

This year the conference was under new management, but I thought the speakers and subject matter was better than last year and the convention floor was definitely fancier. The Writing SIG had a booth in one corner of the expo hall and if you could find us through the fray you got donuts. (At least until noon.)

We gained nearly 75 new members from the mailing list sign-up there at the booth and appreciate every one.

The speakers included some excellent sessions on writing for franchises, creating original IP, helping players follow the golden path and writing the Bioware way. On Friday there was also an excellent opportunity for writers to workshop material with other writers and two writing managers. This two-part session brought up a great deal of hands-on advice and discussion all based on the work of writers in various stages of their careers.

SIG members picked up a sticker to add to their conference badges and attempted several times to get together for meals, with varying degrees of success. We’ll try to do better on this score next year.

It was great seeing all of you who made it to Austin, and we hope many more will make it to the bound-to-be-excellent Austin 2008.

It’s our favorite time of year again - time for the game developers conference in Austin, Texas. Next week there are three whole days packed with gamewriting-specific sessions and hanging out in the evenings with people who know what a natural language parser is.

Check out their website and do whatever it takes to attend. If you have any interest in creating interactive narrative there’s no more valuable event all year.

Full Project Pages are available on the wiki.
Improving industry exposure and conditions
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* EDUCATION OUTREACH
Stephen Jacobs, our Education SIG Liason, has a meeting set up in meatspace with the Education SIG chair. Hopefully this will get our education initiatives speeding along. This includes consulting on game writing curricula and spearheading an online Game Writing Library of sample game documents we can all learn from.

* HIRING HALL
Sande Chen is heading up this initiative. The Hiring Hall is aiming to get in contact with hiring managers at companies, find out what they’re looking for in a writer, what kind of samples are best, etc. and let them know the SIG and our resources exist. Also included in this effort is a survey we’d like these companies to fill out so we can aggregate the data and learn about the state of the business. The survey is still being written and contact lists are being built up. Kim Sparks is also volunteering for this initiative.

* MAGAZINE ARTICLES
There’s a standing initiative to help raise the profile of game writers by publishing articles highlighting the profession in as many magazines as possible. We’re writers, we can take this into our own hands and not wait for other people to realize we’ve got a good story here. Recently Gamasutra.com has published several articles about story in games. It’s a hot topic - jump on the bandwagon and get us all some publicity.

* GAME CREDITS
Stephen Dinehart may have more current information about this initiative, but Andy Walsh is also working on an official letter to be sent to http://imdb.com and http://www.mobygames.com to help us get writing credits more accurately reported in both databases.

* ACADEMIC EVIDENCE OF THE VALUE OF GAME WRITING
Ben Holden volunteered to get this project moving again. He’s looking for more volunteers (as always) and some direction from people who know a thing or two about academic papers.

* GAME WRITERS SIG QUARTERLY
J. is gearing up to produce a new issue of the Quarterly for the Austin GDC. If you’d like to distribute this latest issue at another conference you’ll be attending, let him know. Also if you have ideas for articles or topics for future issues. Wendy Despain is the current production manager for this (coordinating printing and shipping) but if someone else would like the job… don’t hesitate to say something.

Providing resources to writers
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* GAME REVIEWS
Played any good games lately? Ever? Take five minutes and write a mini-review. Post your review to the mailing list or add it directly to the wiki. In other genres of writing