Want to Write for Video Games? Gameacon Panel

[This article originally appeared on Game Design Aspect of the Month.]

Want to Write for Video Games? 
Gameacon November 19-22, 2015

Moderated by video game scholar Alexander Bevier, panelists Sande Chen, Francisco Gonzalez, and Matthue Roth shed light on what writers do in the industry, how newcomers can get their start, and why writers are desperately needed in the video game industry. Learn about the growing field of narrative design and how games are affected by creative narrative design. The panel gives a fascinating look at an often overlooked part of the video game development process.

Games discussed:  Tetris, Half Life 2, The Witcher, Shadow of the Colossus, Gamestar Mechanic, World of Lexica, Terminus, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, Monkey Island 2, League of Legends, Assassin's Creed 2, Shardlight, Bioshock Infinite, Mass Effect, 80 Days

Thanks to everyone who came to our panel!

If you weren't able to come to Gameacon this year, check it out next year on October 27-30, 2016 at the Tropicana Casino Resort in Atlantic City, NJ. Here's footage from Gameacon 2015.

Panelist Bios:

A writer and game designer, Sande Chen has over 15 years experience in the industry. Her first game writing credit was on the epic space-combat RPG, Terminus, which won 2 awards at the 1999 Independent Games Festival. She was later nominated for a 2007 Writers Guild of America award in Videogame Writing for the dark fantasy RPG, The Witcher. She runs the WGAE Videogame Writers Caucus and is SIG leader of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

Francisco Gonzalez has been writing and designing point and click adventure games since 2001. His favorite aspect of designing narrative based games is the writing process, and being able to create worlds and make characters come to life. He currently works at Wadjet Eye Games as a designer.

Matthue Roth is a game designer, producer, and writer. From 2012-2015 he was lead game designer at Amplify, an educational games company that won awards from the iTunes Store, BAFTA, and Games for Change. Most recently his games swept the 2015 Serious Play Conference, earning 3 out of 4 gold medals awarded that year. He’s also the author of six novels, and the New Yorker called his writing “eerie and imaginative.” He keeps a secret diary at matthue.com.

Alexander Bevier is a writer, game designer and scholar. He works in narrative design and is an IGDA Committee member for the Game Writing SIG. He is currently an MFA at NYU Game Center working on his thesis about 1970s game designers.