[IGDA_indies] newbies, and organizational politics

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Jason Della Rocca wrote:
>
> In terms of Brandon's comments on gatekeepers and doing
> end-runs and such,
> I'll say that a lot of what the IGDA does is set up the
> "infrastructure" to allow developers to do end-runs ;)

Interesting philosophy.  Maybe you should make it explicit.  Like
orienting people with the message, "The best plans you can come up with
don't use any IGDA resources at all."  Now, this begs questions about
what the IGDA is good for, but I think there are appropriate ways to
frame that message.  The message is basically as I said, plans with few
to no dependencies are more powerful than plans with lotsa dependencies.

> For the advocacy oriented topics like anti-censorship and
> quality of life, we take more of the gatekeeper approach.

Yeah, it's necessary for presenting a face to the media, opponents, and
would-be supporters.

> Regarding Ted's note on size, the IGDA is pretty tiny. We
> only have about
> 5000 members, with ~$400k in annual revenue. We have 2.5
> staff.

Although I knew the IGDA isn't any bigger than a small game studio, I
wasn't sure exactly how tiny it is.  That's pretty tiny and puts our
past debates in perspective, Jason.  I've said before, if you are not
enough staff, and there's no budget for more staff, then the IGDA needs
an appropriate structure for incorporating volunteer staff.  Especially
for things like making additions to the IGDA website.  That is such a
resource contention.  Of course, incorporating volunteer staff means
sharing decision making authority with them.  That's where nonprofit
volunteer orgs always have to go.

Actually I'm curious, Jason: do any of the books in your managerial
library address the realities of nonprofit volunteer organizations?  I
know you like books on managerial stuff; maybe you should pick up one on
NPOs.

> Ironically, we have over 75000 folks registered with
> "free user" accounts who are more
> than happy to reap the benefits of our work for free...

I wouldn't be so quick to say they're 'reaping'.  Articles and white
papers cannot be 'reaped' as the IGDA freely distributes its output.  I
don't think you'd get away with charging for the content, and making it
less available would decrease its relevance to the industry.  In other
words, waving your stuff under people's noses for free is the cost of
doing business.

If unregistered folks are simply participating in forums and nothing
else, I'd regard them merely as content / input.  You can't have forums
without traffic.  Are you worried about unregistered people draining
resources in some other way?  It would be nice to get them to join, but
you have to provide a compelling rationale as to why they should join.
It certainly isn't going to be on the basis of offering forums.
Everyone's got forums, and IGDA forums are no better than anyone else's.

One of my own calculations would be, "Do I need access to certain people
to get certain things done in the game industry?"  If my answer is 'no'
then why would I join?  Also, I might modify my agendas to reduce
dependencies on other people, i.e. no industry bigwigs required.  At any
rate, I never got the feeling that the IGDA was getting me access to
people that I needed, or wouldn't be easy to access otherwise.  I think
that says a lot about where the IGDA stands on the 'building community'
front.  The networking stuff is simply not a value add yet.

Indeed, at the local level in Seattle, some Sputnik IGDAers have
bemoaned their inability to turn meetings into business hobnobbing.  Far
more likely that people show up for pizza, don't interact much, and then
leave.  There are many factors.  The introversion of the game programmer
species is one of the big ones.  'Digipen is full of students' is
another one, as that's where meetings are often held.  Also I wonder if
the recession left not much business to discuss!  But my perspective on
job availability may be skewed: I've avoided game industry jobs like the
plague due to Quality of Life issues.

I can think of numerous strategies to stimulate more business networking
at the local level.  I haven't acted upon them because I'm still in
survival mode, and because Seattle Sputnik IGDA has a 'mainstream
industry' feel that isn't relevant to me as an indie.  Instead I've been
putting my business networking energy into high level language
technologies.  I was running around with the Python crowd for a bit, now
I'm starting a ML crowd.

Anyways, I will be the one to get these things done locally, or other
people like myself, so what do we need the IGDA for?  Does it provide
any kind of superior organizational channel or resources?  It's a
nameplate, and some people get a warm fuzzy hand wavy feeling from that,
but I don't.  As far as I can tell, people organize because disciplined,
energetic people keep them organized, and it has nothing to do with what
you call it.

Now, even if we don't need the IGDA, I'd work with the IGDA if I thought
it would benefit substantially more people than my own efforts would.  I
figure if lots more people can benefit for almost no extra work, that's
a win.  But I don't see how the IGDA would amplify my own organizational
energies at this time.  Indeed, when I was an IGDA member, I felt it
dampened them.

So what can the IGDA do to build communities, other than encourage
people to build communities?


Cheers,                     www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every           Seattle, WA

When no one else sells courage, supply and demand take hold.