Summer is awards season in the games industry. Many summer game conventions host awards ceremonies. The Ennies and the Diana Jones awards are both presented during GenCon, while the Origin awards are handed out during the annual Origins Game Fair. In addition, the International Game Developer (IGDN) Groundbreaker awards were announced in May.
On the Comics side, the Will Eisner Comic Industry awards are presented annually at the San Diego Comic Con, while other major comic awards are announced later in the year. In this issue, we present lists of winners for all these awards along with the finalists in the game and comic categories for this year’s Hugo Awards, which honor excellence in the genres of Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Both conventions and industry awards are often run by volunteer organizations, much like SFWA’s own Nebula awards, which we highlighted in our previous issue. Volunteers are the unsung heroes of most genre industry organizations and important events like conventions, award ceremonies, and industry publications like the Game & Comics Quarterly would not exist but for the tireless efforts of these volunteers.
So, in this issue we are going to begin recognizing the volunteers in the SFWA Game Writing and Comics committees who have come together to produce this publication every three months and provide other valuable services to SFWA members. Inside, you will find bios of four committee members who work to produce Planetside articles and present monthly chats on a variety of game and comic topics. These volunteers also help other SFWA committees, like the Nebula and Contract committees, perform important tasks that require a comics or games perspective.
All this work would simply not be possible without the many hours that our committee members devote to the SFWA community. Each volunteer has their own reasons for embracing volunteerism. Read on to find out what inspires them and why they joined. And, if you’re a games or comics writer who is a FWA member (or want to become one in the future), consider joining a committee and giving something back to your fellow writers.