Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
If Size Doesn’t Matter, Where Do You Get The Virtual Goods?
Tuesday, August 17th, 2010
This post is part of a coordinated assault on the blogosphere by a number of indies – we’re all blogging today on the the theme of, “Size Doesn’t Matter”, either for or against. You can find a list of all the other posts at the bottom of this one.
Since not many indies are working in the social games space, we wanted to riff on that experience a little. We hope you enjoy.
Overall, the case can be easily made that game size doesn’t matter. Great small games have already been made – one of my favorites that pops right to mind is Strange Adventures in Infinite Space, a space exploration game where each game takes 20 minutes. We can also look at the AAA market, where games have been getting shorter for years, and people are still content to pay just as much for them. As indies, thank God for this. If the only way to succeed in finding fun was to crank out 100-hour experiences, few of us would be making games.
Something important changes, though, when you get into the social media space. If you want to make money in today’s social media (read: Facebook) market, you’ve only got a couple ways open to you. The biggest is virtual goods. But if your game is really small, how do you go about legitimately creating lots of content for it? If your game takes ten minutes total to play, good luck selling a bunch power-ups and decorative items for the experience.
The solution we see goes back to the basics of making a good game – come up with something with elegant, interesting, and simple core mechanics – and then enable your designers to create content that extends the game’s dynamics.
For those not familiar with the mechanics-dynamics-aesthetics model of game design, it posits that a game is made up of those three things. Mechanics are the rules the game operates with – like in poker, how many cards are dealt, if you can exchange some of your hand for new cards, etc. The aesthetics are the thematic and other elements that lend to the experience, but don’t directly impact the gameplay – such as what kind of poker chips you’re using, if you’re playing at a felt table, etc.
The dynamics – what I’m focused on in this post – are the gameplay considerations that arise with the framework created by the mechanics. So, again in poker, dynamics are things like a player deciding to bluff. They bluff by using mechanics in a certain way (for example, making a big bet), but the bluff itself is a result of the core rules, not a part of them.
With our unannounced Facebook game, we’re working on a small set of core mechanics that will support being extended as we add more content to the game.
So say, just hypothetically, that our new game was a steampunky mech game. It then makes a lot of sense to have interchangeable mech parts and a toolbox of different effects each attack and defense can have. The combinatorial possibilities of the parts help create many possible dynamics, just like deck building in Magic: The Gathering.
Most of this comes down to simply good game design. But in the social media space, this sort of thing becomes essential if your game is free, your team is small, and you are relying on virtual good transactions to pay the rent. If you don’t keep content in your pipeline, you can assume that revenue will dry up as well.
A small set of core mechanics means your development time to beta is shorter. The reliance on content to extend the game means your designer can contribute to the game’s bottom line on a regular basis with only light support from the rest of the team – something that you’ll all appreciate.
Please read some of the other great posts in this giant cross-blogging extravaganza:
A Boston Indie Manifesto
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010
Last month, Boston Post Mortem (our local IGDA chapter, which I help run) did a second helping of the PAX East panel, Indies Will Shoot You in the Knees – Why We Don’t Play Fair. It was moderated by Eitan Glinert, the head honcho of Fire Hose Games, and the panel consisted of Damian Isla of Moonshot Games, Ichiro Lambe of Dejobaan Games, and me.
If you want to watch it, you can find the full video of it here, courtesy of my good friend Darren Torpey.
“What is Indie” = Useless
During it, I got onto a good rant about “who is indie”. Eitan loves to get a good argument going with these panels – which is great, no one wants a snooze fest. So this time, he did a lightning round – all three panelists had to answer “yes”, “no”, or “maybe” to the question “Is such-and-such a studio indie?”
My stance, then and now, is that the question of “Who is Indie?” is utterly useless. And as a game developer, “useless” is one of the dirtiest words I can think of.
We cannot afford spending time on useless things. We have way too much to do, to create, to explore. We usually have way too little time and money. We must be ruthlessly utilitarian in pursuit of what we think is really important. Unproductive navel gazing and deciding who is not in our special club is useless.
Exactly like in film and music, there is an indie brand now – it’s a certain kind of game, a certain style of art, a certain set of people. That’s fine. But do not make the mistake of assuming that this is what you need to be as a game developer and artist. That brand will see its rise and fall, just like every other creative movement in the history of culture.
If anything isn’t indie, it’s the idea that your creative output should be forced to fit into someone else’s preconceived notions for it.
Indie is an Aspiration
To me, the indie is an aspiration. It is a desire. Indie is wanting to make your mark, creatively, to learn and grow and share something new and special with people. Indie doesn’t meant making a certain kind of game, fitting within a certain budget, or not sitting in a certain office.
I think there is a high correlation for successful people and companies not taking creative risks. This makes perfect sense to me – once you have something to lose, it’s harder to risk throwing it all away. But spending time trying to figure out if someone “is indie” makes no sense. How does that help anyone make art?
My Soapbox Manifesto
What does indie mean in video games?
Indie is the aspiration to create something new, interesting, or different. Something you as an artist find worthwhile.
That’s it.
It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks, if you make any money on it, or anything else.
So go make a game. Make something new, even if only to you. Learn something. Then challenge yourself to go make another.
Boston GameLoop 2010
Thursday, August 5th, 2010
With as swamped as I’ve been, I have done very little to promote Boston GameLoop, the game development unConference that Darius Kazemi and I run every year. Since we now have final t-shirt art to post, I figured now was a great time to rectify that – look below if you want copies of it sized for desktop backgrounds.
GameLoop is on Saturday, August 28th in Cambridge, MA. It’s a self-organizing game conference, and it goes something like this:
- 9am-10am: People show up and spend an hour getting to know each other’s shared interests
- 10am-11am: We informally vote on proposed sessions and put those up on the big board
- 11am: the conference begins!
There are rooms for people to meet in, and a big board with a schedule grid to coordinate it all. Last year’s GameLoop was a huge success: we had about 90 attendees from about 35 companies, including local companies like Irrational Games, Harmonix, and Rockstar New England as well as developers from places like Bethesda Softworks, EA Mythic, and Vicarious Visions.
The signal-to-noise ratio at a conference like GameLoop is pretty astounding. The big thing here is that it’s just developers talking about stuff they are interested in. It’s a refreshing change of pace if you’re starting to feel like the big conferences are the same people saying the same things every year.
We’ve had sessions about procedural animation, ethics in rulesets, distributed version control, iPhone shaders, illusionary gameplay, prototyping, and many others. Some sessions are incredibly small and focused – just three really passionate people that just met, discussing a topic they care about. Other sessions can be more like standard conference lectures or roundtables. You can see the whole 2009 schedule along with some audio and notes from the sessions.
Registration for the event is $40. Via our generous sponsors Gamespy and DINO Interactive Studios, we will provide lunch, and a T-shirt – we’ll also have breakfast if we can find a sponsor for that. After the conference groups of people head to dinner to hang out.
To register, go here: http://gameloop.eventbrite.com. We accept PayPal and major credit cards, as well as cash at the door (but you still need to register).
We hope you can make it! We also hope you’ll pass the word on to other industry types that you know, maybe even send a note to your company’s internal boards or lists.
I’ve gone ahead and resized the image for some desktops – enjoy!
And please, sign up now!
Macguffin in the Press
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010
Thanks to Boston tech blog BostInnovation for including us in their 4th of July article about independents and games.
Things are coming along fantastically with the new game – we’re waiting on announcing it in part to get the logo. More as soon as we have it.
Boston Indies Take Over the IGDA Newsletter
Monday, June 21st, 2010
I’m really glad Alex Schwartz wrote this up – I wanted to, but didn’t manage it. In Alex’s words:
Without prior planning, FOUR of the articles written for the newsletter were authored by Boston-area indie game developers. As a member of this awesome group of individuals, I take great pride in seeing Boston Indies in the spotlight.
Amen, brother! Check out Alex’s post at the link above, and the IGDA newsletter here.
The Humble Indie Bundle
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010
If you haven’t heard, there is currently a thing called the Humble Indie Bundle. It’s now officially a Big Deal. No pun intended.
The HIB, as we’ll call it, consists of all the following games: World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru, Penumbra, and Samorost 2. They usually have a sticker price of something like $100.
Remarkable Thing One: All these folks got together and said, pay us whatever you think it is worth. You can go and get all this for as little as $.01.
Remarkable Thing Two: You can then split the money you pay up between the developers and two charities – The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child’s Play.
Remarkable Thing Three: The bundle was on sale for about a week, and now has been extended a couple days further. To date, they have had almost 125,000 separate contributiors and made over $1,140,000 in revenue, about a third of which is going to those two charities. Several of the developers are also now releasing their games as open source, with Lugaru already out there.
Holy crap.
As Jay Barnson pointed out on the Rampant Coyote blog, they’ve shown how powerful some indies working together can be. Without no marketing budget to speak of, they’ve galvanized over 125,000 people to pay money for their game. These numbers don’t even include the pirates downloading it off BitTorrent and such! Repeating this exact thing event would be difficult (if not impossible), but this should encourage all of us indies to be audacious and to try big things.
Another big thing to note is, they were really frigging smart about this. They set up something that was pretty easily doable with out-of-the-box technology + the web skills they possessed. For a minimum time investment, they set up what may turn out to be the most significant business event to date for game dev indies.
I’d encourate everyone to go buy the Humble Indie Bundle. If nothing else, you’re getting some seriously kick-ass games at whatever price you think is a good one.
Ubisoft DRM Will Eat Your Children
Monday, February 22nd, 2010
Exaggeration? Perhaps.
Actually, their new DRM scheme will only stop you from playing your game when you don’t have a constant internet connection to their servers. If it gets interrupted, you essentially get booted. Details here on Ars Technica.
I’ll be up front – I loathe software piracy. Even though it is unrealistic for me to do so, I want everyone to play by the rules. If I spend a chunk of my life making a game, and I say it costs $30 to buy it, then please do me the service of either paying for it or not playing it.
On the other hand, like awesome indie master Cliffski, I believe that DRM is less than useless. It actively penalizes the people who buy your game, and does nothing to inconvenience the people who are BitTorrenting ripped versions of it. This is why, no matter how much I hate the idea of people taking my game without paying for it, we won’t have any DRM on All Heroes Die.
Ubisoft folks, other publishers – here’s the mental calculation you make me do every time I see a game that does something ridiculous like this:
- I think about how hard I want the game.
- I contemplate having that DRM on my system.
- I then think about, if I really need that game on my PC, that I’ll probably purchase it from you, then look into BitTorrenting a cracked version. (I pay for all my games these days. I’m also have no qualms about circumventing their DRM if I’ve done so.)
- Then I decide this is all too much work, and I go buy or play a different game. Bye, bye lost sale.
C’mon guys. Think this one out a little more, won’t you?
IGDA Elections – Mike Worth
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
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 – Mr. Worth got back with a series of detailed replies to the questions, below.
Mr. Worth lists as one of his greatest strengths his, “almost limitless energy, and passionate enthusiasm.” It shows in his statement. From what he says, he’s been right in the middle of most of the success Philadelphia has had in the game dev arena recently, including Philly’s recent game dev tax credits and last year’s GameX conference. He’s also an Emmy winner and successful entrepreneur.
Questions for Mr. Worth:
You mention that one of your three priorities while on the board would be “Webinars, articles, and blogs to help educate professional game developers…” Isn’t the IGDA already doing this? What do you propose to add or change?
I’m glad you asked that question! Let me take these three categories one at a time, with my proposed solutions at the end of everything.
Articles: Okay, I’m going to be a bit harsh here. Go to the IGDA website, and click on the “articles” link on the lower left. Here, here’s the link:
Now, look at all the articles, and find the most recent one. The most recent article posted on the IGDA website, in any of the categories, is May 2007. That stinks. Clearly, we can do better than this. I want us to do better than this. The articles are a great idea, and there are so many benefits to the IGDA doing it!
- People do much of their industry research on the web, so putting articles on there is a great way to A) benefit industry pros, and B) provide great exposure to the IGDA!
- By linking to Gamasutra and Gamedev.net articles (for example), and cross-connecting back to us, we create a web of useful information, supporting and being supported by our industry trade sites.
Webinars: Joshua Caulfield and Joseph Sapp are doing a great job of driving the webinars, and they are a total success so far. However, there will probably need to be a dedicated webinar manager/producer going forward, so I can envision that being a need to fulfill. Additionally, I’d like to expand the webinars to include some point/counterpoint discussions about industry topics, post-mortems (especially programming postmortems), and “Chapter Highlights” webinars.
Blogs: I know that we have two blogs running right now, the IGDA Board Blog and Staf Blog. Those are providing useful information to the IGDA members about how the leadership is progressing the IGDA’s mission. However, in terms of professional development blogs, I have not seen any. However, I have seen an RSS feed that feeds all the posts from all the SIG’s, so I’m operating under the assumption that the SIG’s posts are the blog posts. In this case, I have not seen very many blog posts posted on the SIG’s (Programming and Visual Arts have no posted public blogposts). Now, it could be that many of the SIG’s have private mailing lists; and that’s totally fair and a good way to disseminate info. In that case, I’d like to more proactively advertise the SIG’s to members, to encourage the members to join up and receive valuable content.
Having said that, I believe that our Special Interest Groups are a highlight of our association. They consist of passionate people, and their forums have high-quality content. I’m particularly impressed with the quality of posts and information on the Tools SIG, for example. I’d like to have more of that! So, without further ado, two solutions I propose:
- One solution I have is for each SIG to commit to writing and posting one article a month about their discipline. This article would then be cross-posted on the IGDA article area, and also on the SIG’s page. This would guarantee more exposure of the SIG’s, promote inter-SIG awareness, and generate more content and information to benefit the members.
- Second, I propose more “cross-pollination” articles and posts, involving two or more SIG’s. For example, Robin Arnott (chair of the Audio SIG) is reaching out to the Writer’s SIG and Localization SIG, to do articles/podcasts on Dialogue in Games. Brilliant! Incorporate several aspects of the game design into one blended article. I want to help the IGDA create more of that!
You also mention, “High-value “GDC Quality” lecture and panel discussions”. Where would these take place? Can you elaborate any more on this idea?
This idea came out after seeing a great IGDA New Jersey lecture (shout out to Coray Seifert for putting together a fantastic meeting). Marty Stoltz (Big Huge Games) and Richard Rouse (Kaos Studios) presented a very high-value, very functionally beneficial lecture on borrowing cinematic techniques and incorporating them into gameplay. I have rarely seen such a great lecture outside of a major conference, and I want to make that type of lecture the norm. So, to answer the first part, I would want to see these GDC quality presentations take place in two areas. First, at local chapter meetings, which means we need active support and buy-in from the local game development people who can offer these great sessions. Two, as “sub-tracks” at larger industry events. For example, so many of us are at E3, it would be great to have an IGDA afternoon, where presenters from multiple areas do industry-to-industry sessions.
Regarding your second points, here’s my elaboration on my idea/vision:
- Focus on making these presentations valuable to individuals with 3-10 years of professional experience (either independent or part of a larger studio). I think we need to excite and bring in that demographic of members to help the IGDA grow and flourish. I want people with that level of experience to gain value from the IGDA, and this is one area we can give this to them.
- Get IGDA buy-in/excitement from established studios and experienced members at those studios, so that they are willing to put together these presentations. Often, studios are a little leery about exposing too much proprietary information; if the studios, and individuals in the studios believe in the IGDA’s mission, they’ll be more likely to contribute with presentations.
- Merging of talented presenters into cross-geographic sessions at larger industry events. i.e. get an Austin and San Fran dev programming duo to talk about specific techniques of physics programming, compare/contrast, all that.
Your third priority listed is, “Industry mentoring for people just entering the industry, including how to interview for a game industry job and choosing your career focus.” How do you propose doing this?
I think a great route is to do the following. First, reach out to existing studios around each chapter, and get a list of people willing to mentor. For those of us in Philly, Grant Shonkwiler (incoming Philly IGDA chair) is a great example. He blogs about how to design games, how to make your portfolio pop, etc. Second, go and visit the local universities that are positing that they want to graduate game developers. Now we have our pairings. (Of course, a non-student who wants to break in from a different industry can contact the local chapter to get a mentor).
Then, (and this is the important part), you have the IGDA create clear documentation as to how the mentorship works (number of times a month they meet, what resources and exercises the protégé should implement, etc). The appropriate SIG should also be providing documentation and suggestions of what to help a protégé with, skillsets to learn, possible career routes, etc. All this is centralized on the IGDA website. If the protégé doesn’t adhere to these guidelines, the mentor does not have to continue the program with that individual. This will help mitigate “wasteful mentoring” meetings with people that are not willing to take charge of their careers (see point below).
Funny enough, the IGDA already has a great program in motion, which covers a lot of this. (http://archives.igda.org/women/gmo.html) So, why are we not using this to its full effect? I think that we need to get more SIG’s to cross-pollinate and collaborate, especially on a large initiative like this. And, we need to publicize this much, much more effectively.
You note that you think the biggest issue game devs face today is a lack of mentoring/coaching, brought about by the rapidly changing business environment. Can you explain why this would be a bigger concern than Quality of Life or the high turnover caused by recent economic conditions?
I think that these three aspects you mentioned actually influence and are influenced by one another. When a game developer chooses to “go pro”, I feel that they should have the ablitiy to learn all the appropriate career management skills necessary for them to A) self-evaluate, and decide what types of games they work best on, B) what studios are a good fit for their specific skills, and C) how to research those studios to see if their lifestyle needs fit the studio’s work requirements. I think that if a game developer gets caught in a work environment that’s a bad fit, then that may have been a result of him/her not knowing what to look for in a potential employer, how to find out the lifestyle in that studio at the job interview, and how to confidently choose or choose not to work at a particular studio. Game developers are the lifeblood of our industry, and the more empowered they are to drive their own careers, choose which studios to pursue that fit their lifestyle and creative passions, then the happier work environment they will create for themselves.
And that’s the statement I want to come back to; I want to empower game developers, empower them creatively, as craftsmen, and as business people (either driving their own careers, or driving a studio they’ve help found). I think the IGDA can be the single greatest resource to empower professional game developers, not just students breaking in, but industry pros with 3+ years of experience, who find themselves having to navigate our rapidly changing industry environment.
This ties into your observation of the importance of addressing he high turnover rates in our industry. I think that the effects of that turnover can be mitigated on an individual level, if that individual has strong career management skills developed through coaching and mentoring. For example, if a game developer has a good strategy to develop his own game with a team of 5-10 people, pitch to publishers, and ship on a premium download channel (Wiiware, XBLA), then he or she can weather a layoff by creating games on their own steam. These skills are completely teachable, and can give the game professional the flexibility to move into and out of jobs, as the industry changes, while still making games they love, and building their career.
Since the game industry has always been marked by tons of ambitious but unskilled people trying to break in, how would you propose to manage the IGDA’s members and resources in mentoring new developers? There seems to be the potential that we could spread ourselves very thin, possibly on people who will not have a future in this industry regardless of their mentoring.
Hoo, boy, you asked a good question there! I understand exactly what you’re saying, and now I have to be a bit cruel. The truth is, this is a very hard industry in which to succeed, and one must be truly excellent at what you do. Oftentimes, people try to enter this industry, and don’t have “what it takes” to succeed.
But, here’s a truth that I believe in, and, in fact, Scott, your awesome post about that concept artist who worked for 5 years to get his craft in shape (link here: http://www.macguffingames.com/2010/practice-trumps-talent/) talks just about that.
My best friend (Avish Parashar, www.motivationalsmartass.com), is a success coach, and he talks a lot about what it takes to be successful in any industry. It’s a harsh truth, but it needs to be said (because I agree with it).
You have to be willing to do what others in your field are unwilling to do, to be unforgettable in your field, knowing that life will probably not ask you to do what others are unwilling to do.
Weird Zen koan, but what it means is: How badly do you want this? Are you willing to get up at 5:30 AM every day and write music for an hour before going to your day job? (I did this for 2 years while breaking into TV). Are you willing to work for free on nights and weekends for 10 months to polish and re-polish your game for a pitch to Sony?
I believe that 80% of the time, when someone is “ambitious but unskilled”, then they are not “putting in the time” to be absolutely amazing at what they do. People who train themselves to be amazing at what they do get hired. In fact, there are only two things we need to do to be successful in any career:
- Be unforgettably amazing at what we do.
- Ask a whole lot of people to hire us.
If a person fails, it’s because they either:
- Don’t know how to achieve points 1 and 2, or
- They are unwilling to “suck it up” and put the time in to do points 1 and 2.
Mentoring should only help people learn how to achieve points 1 and 2. “Putting in the Flight Time” is the responsibility of the protégé.
So, it comes down to: how do we manage a coaching/mentoring program so that people who want “easy solutions” aren’t bleeding our members dry? Well, I have several ideas:
- First, we create core documentation and skill-building documents,exercises, and projects that people who are “breaking in” must read and implement before they can sign up for a mentor-partner. This will ensure that the people are willing to take charge of their career, and aren’t just looking for an easy way in. Darius Kazemi’s networking blogposts are a great resource for those types of drills/documents, and I have a bunch of articles and resources I will provide as well.
- Mentor meetings have mandatory “homework” in between meetings. If the protégé/mentored doesn’t do the homework (sketching three background terrains, calling 5 game companies, etc.), they don’t get their next meeting. Period. Mentors are giving their time, and they deserve the courtesy of having their students actually take and implement their advice.
- Protégés must give back to the community. Examples could be volunteering to set up/break down IGDA chapter events, promoting IGDA events/content on their facebook and twitter, etc.
If these three ideas are implemented in a mentoring program, I think we will drastically reduce the “waste of mentoring resources”, as well as separate the people who are willing to do what it takes to build their career in this industry, from the people who are “ambitious but unskilled.”
I’m glad you asked that question! Let me take these three categories one at a time, with my proposed solutions at the end of everything.
Articles: Okay, I’m going to be a bit harsh here. Go to the IGDA website, and click on the “articles” link on the lower left. Here, here’s the link:
http://www.igda.org/articles
Now, look at all the articles, and find the most recent one. The most recent article posted on the IGDA website, in any of the categories, is May 2007. That stinks. Clearly, we can do better than this. I want us to do better than this. The articles are a great idea, and there are so many benefits to the IGDA doing it!
- People do much of their industry research on the web, so putting articles on there is a great way to A) benefit industry pros, and B) provide great exposure to the IGDA!
- By linking to Gamasutra and Gamedev.net articles (for example), and cross-connecting back to us, we create a web of useful information, supporting and being supported by our industry trade sites.
IGDA Elections – Paul Skiera
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
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.
Mr. Skiera’s statement strikes a somewhat apocalyptic tone, starting with the definitive statement that, “Traditional education is broken and cannot be fixed using 20th century instructional practices.” His statement hammers on that single nail – his purpose if elected would be to “ensure [the] IGDA and our members are the cornerstone partners working with the researchers, policy makers and educators to transform education in the 21st century.”
Mr. Skiera has not posted his Q&A answers as of the publication of this profile.
Questions for Mr. Skiera:
- Why run now?
- Will you be posting your Q&A?
- Given the mission of the IGDA, “to advance the careers and enhance the lives of game developers by connecting members with their peers, promoting professional development, and advocating on issues that affect the developer community,” how do you justify making it a goal of the IGDA to effect a major revision to the American educational system? Would you attempt to revise the IGDA’s mission?
- Your statement seems to imply changing the American educational institutions. Even if this were the mission of the IGDA, would this be a worthy goal for an organization that bills itself as international?
- What do you see as the immediate concerns of “rank and file” developers, and where would these fit into your priorities?
- What do you think the IGDA’s role in the industry-wide Quality of Life discussions should be?
- 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?
IGDA Elections – Coray Seifert
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
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 – 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!