Big Things Afoot in the IGDA
April 3rd, 2009 by Macguffin in UncategorizedAs some of you probably know, I’m pretty active in the game development community in Boston, and am a member of the board for Boston PostMortem, the Boston chapter of the IGDA (International Game Developers Association).
Recently, several things came to a head in the IGDA – some controversy over board member statements regarding developer quality of life, not reaching quorum for elections for another year running, and some controversy over the search for Jason Della Rocca’s replacement (Jason is the one full-time employee of the IGDA as its Executive Director, and handles the majority of its day-to-day operations).
In response to what has been going on, my good friend and fellow PostMortem board memeber Darius Kazemi has kicked off a campaign to run for the IGDA board next year. Since Darius doesn’t do anything half-assedly, he’s now got a blog/campaign site, has started talking to people a great deal on the IGDA and Chaos Engine forums, and has now set up a petition asking for greater transparency in the search for a new Executive Director.
I’d encourage anyone who is a member of the IGDA and thinks this organization could be improved to take a look at the petition and sign it if you are so inclined. I’m not sure what will come out of all this, but I’m damn sure that if we don’t get all get more active, the IGDA will never become much more than a shadow of its potential.
Tags: igda
April 3rd, 2009 at 9:54 am
Darius should have run for the election we just had, dangit!
I signed. I’m pretty active in the Game Writing SIG, but I know we need a lot more action to occur at higher levels to get things moving in the IGDA in general. More SIGs are starting to pop up, but the website isn’t very useful and much of the info there is stale. The new website we’ve been waiting for (for over a year now) is supposed to fix a lot of technical issues, but we still need more initiative from the members and the board to really get established as a community of peers, scholars, and stakeholders. Part of this is to communicate with each other at all levels, and I believe that greater transparency from the board would help a lot (although I can understand withholding names, as these people might have jobs and not want their employers to know they’re considering leaving!).
Chris
April 15th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Wow! I regret not going this year. It was off my radar as a result of being stuck in academia for too long. Thanks Scott for your insightful post. I’m looking forward to talking to you at Beta House.