Macguffin Games

IGDA Elections – Coray Seifert

February 17th, 2010 by Macguffin in Uncategorized

If you’re coming to this post without having seen the lead-in, you can find that post here.  It links to all the other assessments I’ve posted.  You can also find my disclaimer there – I’m on the Boston IGDA chapter’s board and support the candidacy of Darius Kazemi.

Coray Seifert

UPDATE – Mr. Seifert got back to me with answers to my questions – they are inline below.

Mr. Seifert’s statement is easily the peppiest of the bunch so far; it is informal, conversational, passionate – and at times hyperbolic.  His main goal is specific and limited – he wants to set up elected regional coordinators to mentor the heads of local chapters.  Past that, he would like to see an IGDA-related awards program.

Mr. Seifert is the only current board member running for another term.

Questions for Mr. Seifert:

Please tell us specifically how you have helped the IGDA become more transparent in your role as Secretary.

I would say there were two main initiatives that I drove to make the IGDA a more transparent org.

The first and most lightweight initiative was encouraging other board members to blog and tweet progress reports on their various projects and initiatives. I think we had some good success with our blog and twitter over the past year, but there is still a ton of room to grow in this department. Hopefully, whoever takes over for me as secretary (2 terms is enough for me!) will take this to the next level.

The second and vastly more important initiative was to get some actual informational content in the meeting minutes. While this sounds simple, there are a ton of legal implications in revealing too much information in meeting minutes, as it exposes the board members involved in those minutes to legal risk, should their individual opinions go against an employer, distributor, investor, etc.

That said, I think the compromise that we ended up with is a good archetype that I hope the IGDA will continue to follow. In each release of the meeting minutes, we have the summary of motions and procedural (aka unreadable, cryptic stuff) at the top of the document, and then we break down some of the action items, recommendations, and resolutions and provide as much information as possible at the bottom. While it is definitely more work, it is extremely valuable for IGDA members to understand the motivations and processes behind the decisions that shape the org. I hope that we can continue to follow this meeting notes format in the future.

Please tell us specifically what the Programs & Membership committee, along with you as its chair, has done to better the IGDA during your term.

When I took over the P&M Committee in 2007, things were in a pretty rough state. We had realized that our current chapter setup was pretty rough. Traditionally, anyone could wave a flag and say “Hey! I’m an IGDA Chapter!” which meant that those chapters had no liability insurance (if someone slices their hand open at an IGDA meeting, they could have sued the chapter coordinator PERSONALLY), there was no way for the IGDA to directly support the chapters financially, and there was a whole legal mess that, quite honestly, I still don’t fully understand

I was elected chair amidst a pretty intense debate over whether to adopt a chartering system that would resolve these issues. Unfortunately, the previous board member running the chapters had proposed some pretty heavy-handed stuff and basically told the chapters “Hey, you’re doing this now!” which our hard-working, passionate chapter coordinators (including me at the time) did not appreciate. So, I worked with the coordinators for the bulk of 2007 to find a compromise that both allayed the existing issues with the chapter system and also gave the chapter enough latitude to stay functional.

The result was a successful deployment of the chapter chartering system that provides chapters with liability insurance, structures for formal elections, and perhaps most importantly, allows each chapter to have a bank account and mechanism for the IGDA to directly support them.

Similarly, we extended a similar chartering system to the SIGs, and opened some funds for the SIGs to work on special projects. Since the SIGs were much more simple to get set up (little to no physical/geographical concerns), we were able to get them direct funding much faster. Some of the projects that were funded by that program include the Global Games Jam (IGDA Education SIG) and the Writers Quarterly (Writers SIG) as well as a bunch of other really awesome programs.

The major issue we ran into with the Chapter and SIG chartering program is that the IGDA basically ran out of funds for non-essential programs when the economy hit the tank in 2009. While I fought hard to try to keep some funds available for this program, unfortunately we weren’t able to fund grants in 2009 or this year, yet.

That said, I think we’ve done a great job of setting the table for the chapters and SIGs and I look forward to returning my focus there if elected this year!

Do you really think that professional game developers are treated like calculators?

I think that – in the worst cases – yes, game developers can be looked at in the same way that a factory might look at a robot; they are a resource that can be used, exhausted, worn down, and then replaced with a newer model. To be clear, I feel this is the WRONG way to run a game development business, but it still persists in a few dark corners of our industry. I hope that as we learn more about how to make great games as an industry and as long as entities like the IGDA continue to fight the good fight and against poor Quality of Life, we’ll get to a place where these situations are cautionary tales of old, not the current state of affairs.

To clarify, my current employer, Kaos Studios, is wicked awesome about Quality of Life. Look, no place is perfect, but by and large the management team at Kaos does a great job of balancing the needs of the project with the needs of the individual and they treat their people like artisans of their craft – the way it should be! It’s an awesome place to work and I am definitely NOT referring to them with the above sentiments.

You note the efforts of the Quality of Life group, the SIGs, and the local chapters as contributing to “the IGDA [providing] a voice to help the individual game developer…”  Do you feel the IGDA is doing a good job of this right now?  What, if anything, do you think can be improved about this?

I do think that the IGDA is doing a good job of this, but I think we have a long way to go to fully realize our potential as the voice of the game development industry. I think, as Darius has pointed out, that strong chapters are a big component of this, as  detailed in my statement. I think the work of Judy Tyrer and the Quality of Life SIG is also extremely important and is an initiative that we should continue to support and evolve (more whitepapers! more best practices! more articles!). The bottom line is that while the IGDA has done a great job advocating on behalf of the game development community, there is so much more we can be doing!

What do you think of the IGDA’s current elections process?  Is there anything you would like to change?

I think you should run the elections, Scott

Seriously though, this is exactly what the IGDA Elections need. Commentary and dissection of the candidate statements. For example, reading Tim Langdell’s candidacy statement a few years back, I was pretty impressed! The dude seemed like he had been around for a while, and had some experience working with the AIAS, so I voted for him. If someone had dug into his background, like you’re doing now, I think we would have found out that he probably wasn’t the right guy for the board.

Specifically, I think there are 2 important tweaks that we can make to the election process for next year:

1. Make things more centralized and concise: There is a ton of information out there now, which is great. Now we just need to get all of that information onto the page where you vote. If you go to the voting page, you just see a list of names, while the information on the candidates is on other pages or other sites entirely (like this one). We should have a central repository for all available information about each candidate right where you’re about to vote, and it should be in concise, readable format.

2. Get the bigs involved. While blogs like these 100% must be involved in the election process, to provide independent critiques and discourse on the elections, we need to get the big dogs involved. Gamasutra, in my opinion, should be the CNN of the elections. They should have exclusive interviews with candidates, their own analysis of the candidate statements, and we should try to tightly integrate them with the entire election process, both as a way of making sure the voting body has as much information as possible, and as a method of making sure that as many people as possible know about the elections.

What do you think the IGDA’s role in the industry-wide Quality of Life discussions should be?

I think our role should be to continue to drive home the idea that good Quality of Life = Good Games. Providing decision makers in our industry with the information that they need to make the right decisions about quality of life is absolutely essential, and the IGDA is uniquely positioned to be the voice of the game developer in this discussion.

I think we need to continue to drive home this message, not only on a national level with press releases and statements, but on a local chapter level. From what I’ve seen, the people who are involved with the IGDA are the people who advocate good quality of life, and who are the people who truly believe that good quality of life can be used to create hit games.

Do you think the IGDA’s dependence on studio sponsorships for money is a bad thing?  If yes, what will you do to begin changing this?  If no, why not?

I find myself conflicted on the issue. A few years back while working at Large Animal Games, a 10-person independent studio, the owners signed up the studio for the IGDA Studio Affiliate program. As an employee of that studio, it felt great to be working for an employer that believed in the causes that I did. It made me feel like I was truly appreciated and that I was working at a place that did things the right way.

So, in and of itself, the studio affiliate program is a great initiative. However, I understand the concern. If we are beholden to the affiliate studios that support the IGDA, we become the voice of the studios, not the game developers.

The solution to this problem is to increase the value of the IGDA to every game developer out there, to the point where studio memberships are a small fraction of the overall membership. Whether through better chapters, stronger SIGs, more advocacy programs, it should be a no-brainer for every game developer in the industry to be a member of the IGDA. While we’re not there yet, I am confident that if we stick to our core mission, continue to evolve our programs, and keep working to make the IGDA stronger every day, every week, and every year, we’ll get there!

Tags: igda