Soma Games Writing Retreat

WHERE: Newberg, Oregon

The Soma Game Writing Retreat is for established or aspiring authors who are interested in exploring the exciting world of writing for video games. Taught by award-winning pros amidst the natural beauty of Oregon’s wine country, you’ll come away with an enriching introduction to this growing sector.

With a combination of group and individual sessions, assignments, and feedback specific to your projects, this two-day retreat will help you learn to start your writing career with the help of seasoned professionals.

Amy Noel Green is an award-winning writer and narrative designer for video games. Her work with Numinous Games has been recognized with awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, South by Southwest, Games for Change, the Independent Game Developer’s Association, the Peabody Facebook Futures of Media Award, and the Game Awards. She has been featured in press coverage by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired Magazine, Popular Science, RadioLab, CBS Sunday Morning, The BBC, The Guardian, and many other international publications.

Amy’s TED talk about her video game That Dragon, Cancer has been viewed over 1.7 million times. Her latest game, AREA MAN LIVES, was recognized by Oculus as one of the top 5 narrative games of 2022. AREA MAN LIVES gave her the opportunity to write for and direct Hollywood actors including Joel McHale, Max Greenfield, and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ronan Farrow. It was also an official selection of both The Cannes Film Festival as well as The Venice Film Festival. Amy lives in Colorado with her husband and co-director along with their four children.

Chris is the Founder and chief creative and technical officer at Soma Games, a Portland, OR-based video game developer and publisher of PC, Console, and mobile video games since 2005. Chris began his work in high tech while serving in the US Navy with VAW-114 and continued through trade school and graduation from George Fox University with honors. His long history of blending the creative arts with technology has led him to create and produce a huge variety of cultural artifacts including graphic novels, music videos, songwriting, short stories, and, of course, over 200 video games and apps deployed on most every platform available including Xbox, PlayStation, Steam, Alexa, and Oculus Rift. In addition to being a prolific creator Chris’ technical innovation spans decades and was recognized by Intel as a Blackbelt Innovator in 2001, their highest award in the field. When he’s not blending art and science Chris speaks and writes in places like GDC, SeriousPlay, GDC Next, IDF, Lion’s Den, Casual Connect, and many more. At this event, Chris will sharing his experience with world-building including some sneak peeks at Soma’s current project, an interactive fiction game called The Wisdom of the Rain.

Samantha Riff has been telling stories since before she could write—happily dictating pokemon fanfiction to a very tolerant mother scribing the tales for her to later illustrate in marker and crayon. She graduated with her degree in creative writing back in 2016 from the University of Montana in Missoula and has worked as a writer and quest designer for Soma Games since 2017. She was responsible for Lore, Narrative, and Level Design in “The Lost Legends of Redwall: The Scout.” She’s also a frequent speaker on the Soma Soulworks Podcast and an occasional consultant for game writing and design. She’s a notorious dabbler happy to try her hand at any art, craft, or task that she can get her hands on.