The IGDA sponsored this speech; as a game developer, I wanted to see what the IGDA claims to stand
for and what the benefit of joining might be. I hold serious reservations about paying 200 bucks to
belong to a "non-profit" society which is aligned if not tied to CMP. This is the
company which publishes Game Developer Magazine, Dr. Dobbs Journal, and the owner of tradeshows
including the Game Developer's Conference.
It'd be cool to join as long as there was accounting of the money's use. But a quick investigation of
the website as of July 15, 2001 reveals there is none publicly available. It feels weird that 2
out of 3 website-listed management directors of the IGDA are CMP employees. While I know it's natural
for people who are good at managing to assume that role in other organizations, it implies that CMP
controls the IGDA.
Reinforcing this idea is the fact that the mailing address for contacting the IGDA is
in fact the same address for Game Developer's Magazine, Game Developer's Conference, and the Gamasutra site. The bay area IGDA just
formed, and the CMP reps claim the IGDA to be international in scope.
Yet the contact info on the website is only for the bay area. If the
organization is national and international, should not all chapter
contact information be presented?
As of September 25, 2004, the bay area chapter has been forked into San Francisco and Silicon Valley chapters.
As of March 18, 2007, the mailing addresses of the IDGA and the Game Developer Magazine are different.
Michael Capps of Epic Games serves as Treasurer of the IDGA and is on the advisory board of the GDC.
The 2007 staff of GDC, Game Developer Magazine and the CMP game group, and the IDGA advisors otherwise seem distinct.
The IGDA is co-opting legitimate meetings of game developers like the New England area's "Post Mortem". This adds
legitimacy to a non-profit organization with close ties to the CMP corporation, and more eyeballs to their
magazine and tradeshow. But it has yet to be seen what the clubs and public at large will get out of this besides
discounts to the tradeshow and a few free fully-paid admissions to the tradeshow for students.
The student scholarship the IDGA funds is not really a scholarship, but a self promotion.
The free fully-paid admission to GDC is called "The Newbie Scholarship". This scholarship with a derogatory title,
a $1250 tax rebate for the GDC, could otherwise really give a full-time student money for an appropriate college
degree. Or help foot the bill for a junior- or senior-year internship program.
I can't join this thing. A non-profit organization poised to promote the interests of game developers to the public,
to government, and to scholastic institutions cannot remain so closely and blatantly aligned to CMP's corporate interests.
As of May 2008, I am a member of the Association for Computing Machinery, but not of the IDGA.
