SMILE

Grasping at anything to maintain a sense of normalcy, a widow does her best to carry on family tradition with her rebellious teenager daughter.  10% of the profits from this short story will be donated to the World Wildlife Fund. About the Author: Profiled as one of the Game Industry's Top 100 Most Influential Women, Sande Chen is a writer and game designer with over 15 years of experience in the game industry. Her writing credits include 1999 Independent Games Festival winner Terminus, MMO Hall of Fame inductee Wizard101, and the 2007 PC RPG of the Year, The Witcher, for which she was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award in Videogame Writing. She is the co-author of the book, Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform, and was a contributor to Secrets of the Game Business, Writing For Video Game Genres, and Professional Techniques for Videogame Writing. Sande graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with dual degrees in Economics and in Comparative Media Studies/Writing. Her one-act play, into boheme, was produced through the Playwright's Workshop at MIT and she was featured in the Media Lab Poetry Series. Her short story, "Smile," won a Robert A. Boit Writing Prize. She later earned a M.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economic and a M.F.A. in Cinematic Arts from USC. While still a student in film school, she was nominated for a Grammy in music video direction. She has spoken at conferences around the globe, including the Game Developers Conference, SXSW Interactive, New York ComicCon, and Screenwriters World Conference West. She is a semi-regular cast member of the Geeks World Wide podcast and Twitch show, Press Any Key. She writes about game design and other topics on her blog, Game Design Aspect of the Month and can be found on Twitter @sandechen.