Macguffin Games

IGDA Elections – Darius Kazemi

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.

Darius Kazemi

(So, as the disclaimer above notes, I’m good friends with Darius and support his candidacy.  I’m going to try to be as hard on him as I’m being on everyone else, but I know I’m not unbiased.  If other people want to do a profile on him, I’d welcome it, and be happy to link to anything that looks even-handed.)

UPDATE – Mr. Kazemi has updated his campaign blog with answers.

Like David Edery, Mr. Kazemi comes out of the blocks with his statement strongly focused – in his case, it’s local chapters.  His statement goes a bit farther than the others I’ve read advocating local chapters, in that it envisions how this could be useful to topics like Quality of Life.  He also, at the end of his statement, advocates that we all do our candidate research and cast our votes wisely.

Questions for Mr. Kazemi:

• Why run now?
• You say that the biggest issue facing us as developers is establishing our status as professionals, and that fixing this is a long-term thing.  What can the IGDA be doing in the short term to address things you note as symptomatic of this – like Quality of Life?
• If not covered by the above, what do you think the IGDA’s role in the industry-wide Quality of Life discussions should be?
• You note that you are up on the cutting edge communication technologies, and can help the IGDA with this.  What, if anything, do you see as poor about the IGDA’s communications practices right now, and how specifically would you improve them?
• Can you please talk about the big issues the IGDA itself faces as an organization right now?  What do you think is the most pressing one, and how would you work to resolve it?
• 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?

UPDATE – Mr. Kazemi has updated his campaign blog with answers.

Tags: igda