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, writers study the classics to learn how to improve the state of the art. Yet game writing doesn’t yet have a canon of classics. The first step to creating such a thing is our Game Reviews initiative. These are reviews of games written with an eye toward how good the game writing/narrative/story elements were.

* GAME WRITING BOOKS
Wendy Despain will probably be signing contracts with a new publisher this week. She’ll be in touch via email about deadlines and contribution agreements. We’d like to have our first book finished (Techniques) for distribution and promotion at GDC, with the Genre book following close behind in time for profs to get it on their booklists for the fall semester.

* WHITEPAPER REVISIONS
Richard Dansky and his gang of volunteers are nearing completion of this update to our classic game writing whitepaper. We look forward to its publication…soon.

* IMPROVE GAME CONFERENCE OFFERINGS FOR WRITERS
We now have our very own Game Writers Conference as part of Austin GDC in September, but this doesn’t mean we should ignore other game conferences. Kim Sparks and friends are coordinating Write Club for FuturePlay in November. You too can propose Write Club as a session at a conference you will be attending. (Or hold an informal Write Club as a pub game after hours.)

* MAINTAIN TIES WITH OTHER ORGANIZATIONS
We like to stay friendly with WGA, WGGB, the horror writers… we don’t currently have connections with SFWA, and I’m sure there are other writers organizations we can team up with. (wonder twin powers…) Do we need an official Liason for this too?

* FORMAT FOR SCRIPTS USED IN VOICE-OVER SESSIONS
We’re pooling our collective knowledge, trying to come up with a script format that’s comfortable for writers, audio engineers, programmers, designers and voice-over actors. All suggestions welcome!

* LIBRARY OF GAME DOCUMENTS/SCRIPTS
See above initiative on education outreach. It’ll be a resource for students and for working professionals. We look forward to it.

Thanks for reading this long wrap-up of everything the Writing SIG has underway. We intend to publish it once a month, highlighting progress and updating it with new initiatives. If you found this report useful, or think you could do better, heh, please volunteer to take it over from the very busy Wendy Despain.