Macguffin Games

IGDA Elections – Wendy Despain

February 11th, 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.

Update: Ms. Despain came by and answered the questions I had posed – both questions and answers are below.  She also calls me out, correctly, on morphing the question she was asked in the statement Q&A into something else.

Wendy Despain

As a note, while I’m writing this, Ms. Despain’s Q&A isn’t up on the IGDA site.  She did submit it yesterday, though, and provided me with a copy of it via email.  I’ve put up an .RTF version of it here on my site.

Ms. Despain’s statement is well-written – which makes sense, since she’s a professional writer.  Her statement opens with her saying she wants to focus on the future and on work on bringing together the IGDA’s supporters and critics.

In regards to the biggest challenge facing game devs today, she has a couple things to say.  The first is that we perhaps face a meta-challenge – namely, figuring out the answer to what our biggest challenge is.  This is a good point – with an all-volunteer organization like the IGDA, focus is always going to be a potential issue.  That said, I’d like to hear her top three or top five items.

One problem that she does raise, though, is the issue of cross-border regulations regarding games and hardware.  But is this more important than, say,  organizational credibility?  One could make the argument that the big companies, with their giant profit motives and their lobbyists, will make this happen.  Why should the IGDA spend its precious time on this?  Does it seem probable that the big companies will solve this issue in a way that harms individual developers or small dev shops?

She does give us straight answers to how much time she’d spend on IGDA matters.  There is no answer to a portion of the last question, though – how will you accomplish your goals?  It would be good to know if she has a draft plan for getting the ball rolling on something as large as an international consensus about cross-border games.

Her bit in the last question regarding the IGDA creating “masterpieces” vs stuff held together by “duct tape and hope” could easily be a veiled reference to the IGDA website debacle, which has haunted the organization for years and cost piles of money.  It is brought up only in passing – Ms. Despain is, at least in her Q&A, sticking to the idea that we keep moving forward.

I appreciate that I’m able to ask questions like this regarding Ms. Despain’s statement – she’s put specifics on the table, which in turn allows me to ask more specific questions back at her.

Quesitons for Ms. Despain:

Why are you running for the board?

I guess I skimmed over this too quickly in my candidacy statement. Happy to elaborate. I’ve been an active volunteer in the IGDA Writing SIG for many years and elected chair of that SIG for three years. When I joined the SIG, most game developers had no idea what a writer could do for games. Several of us were employed doing the job of writers in interactive entertainment, but none of us had that title. Some were labeled as designers, others like myself were labeled producers. When I tried to call myself a writer, I got very confused looks from game developers.

Today is different. Writers are a respected discipline, even though devs are still figuring out exactly the best way to use us – at least they’re using us, and appreciating our contributions. We’ve come such a long way. And I don’t know any other organization other than the IGDA Writing SIG whose sole focus was on improving the careers of game writers. I think it’s fair to give the SIG some credit for making a difference.

Now, I acknowledge that this is a difference that doesn’t directly impact very many devs. It’s niche. It’s hard to crow about it. I get that.

But here’s where I get back around to why I’m running for the board. I’ve made some great friends in the game industry. Not just writers, but programmers and designers and musicians. They’re all great people, struggling with problems unique to their disciplines. I’ve almost been feeling guilty that I’ve helped to make such a difference for writers, but not for all the other developers in games.

I’ve had some experience with working within the IGDA to make a difference in the game industry, and I’d like to leverage that experience out to other disciplines other than writers. If I’m elected to the board, I can have a wider influence, not just niche.

But I’m not trying to remake the game industry according to my single-minded vision. I’m not a programmer, for instance. I don’t know what they need the IGDA to help them with. But once we find out, then we can make a plan and execute on it. I guess it’s the producer in me coming out. Please don’t hold it against me.

How specifically do you plan to facilitate cooperation across the IGDA, and to dig up and employ its hidden talent?

I have a few ideas about where to start. I’m willing to keep trying things until I understand what works. I just know that there are a lot of great people in the IGDA and they want to help, they just don’t know what to do or how. I’ve seen the eager posts from newcomers. I’m a huge fan of delegation. This organization does not have to rest solely on the shoulders of a few dedicated overachievers. We can spread the load, we just need to understand better how to work together.

Some concrete examples of what I would like to try (or in some cases, try more of):

• clear calls for volunteers for clearly delineated projects with clear project leadership
• speaking of leadership, that’s an area we can improve on – training existing chapter and SIG leaders and starting with good examples of leadership on the IGDA Board.
• i’d like to try some “town hall meetings” as well – where board members meet with members to talk things out. (virtually as well as at conferences)

If these things don’t work, I’ll do more research and brainstorming and consulting with smart people and we’ll come up with more things to try. I firmly believe this is a solvable problem.

Can you give us your top three to five items you see as challenges to for the IGDA?  Priority order or not, either way is fine.

I’m going to be a bit of a nitpicker and point out that the question asked by the board was what’s the biggest problem facing *game developers* not the IGDA. I have different answers for these. Just warning you. But I’ll answer the question you asked.

The top three to five problems for the *IGDA* in my opinion are these:

• Credibility with our members
• Credibility with game devs in general
• Public relations and marketing of/for the IGDA and videogame devs

Can you explain why the IGDA should get involved with intra-country regulation of games?  Isn’t this something that the big companies can sort out on their own?

If we leave this problem to the big companies, they’ll act in their best interests, which is fine. But the solution they work out for themselves may not be what’s best for games as an art form – or for small companies and true “indies”. And this problem definitely impacts them as well. For an overview of the problem as I see it, I’ll refer you to the article I wrote for the escapist and linked to in my other answers:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_170/5334-Legislating-The-Virtual-World.3

This is a problem even for people making facebook games after they finish their college homework. It just hasn’t bloomed into the full-fledged disaster it’s fixin’ to be.

What is your plan for getting the ball rolling with the regulation you talked about?

I don’t think the IGDA should be legislating, but I think we’re in a unique position to bring people together and help with educating legislators about games. Some governments are seeing problems ahead as their citizens are interacting across borders in online games and cultures are clashing.

Some lawmaking bodies around the world are overreacting to what they see as a threat and creating very restrictive legislation. Others are paralyzed by indecision, their neglect quietly setting themselves up for conflict.

So I think the IGDA should participate in the conversation and help educate game devs about the legislative issues and legislators about game industry issues.

I’d love to see some smart volunteers brought together in a committee, workgroup or whatever you want to call it to write whitepapers, provide assistance to other groups out there who are working on this problem, and frame the IGDA’s position on the problem.

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

I think the IGDA should be a place where the various parties can come together on safe ground and learn more about the problem, talk through their differences, and come to a resolution.

That said, I believe the IGDA should have a strong stance in on the side of developers, rather than management. Not that developers are of a single opinion, but if we can’t have the conversation here – where can we?

What are you bringing to the table here that makes you a better candidate than the other nominees?

Here’s the thing – five people are being elected this time, and voters can vote for as many people as they like, so it’s not as if everyone has to decide which one person they like better than everybody else. So I’m not going to try to convince people of that.

I do want to convince people that I’m in the top 5 of the candidates. Sure. But one benefit to having so many seats open on the board is that candidates don’t have to try to position themselves as being the be-all-end-all game developer. Voters can put in a slate of people with different strengths.

I’m good at communications, community management and getting things done. That’s what I have to offer the IGDA, and I hope they’ll see that as valuable enough to include when they sit down to vote for their ideal slate.

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?

Yes. It’s never a good idea to have all your eggs in one basket. I don’t think we should turn away studio sponsorships, but I think we should have multiple strong income streams.

If elected, I plan to do a lot of research and problem-solving and asking everyone I know for ideas. This is one area where I believe our new Executive Director, Joshua Caulfield can help us with his broad experience running associations. Money is awfully helpful when it comes to getting things done – even if we’re just buying a round of beers for a chapter meeting.

We need to find as many honorable revenue streams as we can get. I’m confident we can (and have already gotten a good start in some ways).

Tags: igda