IGDA is a pointless body...discuss.

From what I've seen of the membership (when I was volunteering to do the admin on the LinkedIn membership) it is mostly developers. Students, managers, and the others represent a minority; a vocal, ruling, minority; but a minority nonetheless.

I do think a lot of developers aren't really invested though. Many have their membership through their company rather than buying it for themselves and barely know of the organisations existence.

 

in what way?

 

People getting laid off for their anti-crunch stances. People refusing to hire IGDA board members, that kind of thing. From what I gather any of that would be illegal in the UK, but in the US it would be fair game.

 

Which is why IGDA needs to be fixed and make use of its members. while it may not be a union, it can advise and support people and do a range of things to effectivley blacklist and highlight companies who do these sort of things.

If we don't actually stand up to these people, when is it ever going to change, sure there will be arsholes out there who will do this and some people will get hurt....But in time sheer numbers and public condemnation of such actions will have a detremental effect on their business.

You don't have to be a union to put pressure on companies who are expoliting or abusing workers rights, US included.

 

Let's be brutally honest.

If those in positions of "power" spent less time swanning around from one industry knees-up to another and then telling us about it on facebook with detailed and "humourous" descriptions of theirs and their mates side-splitting antics then maybe the Industry in general and the UK industry in particular wouldn't be the pale shadow of it's former self.

 

I asked a Board member about this -- he told me, anecdotally, that it's about 30% students and the rest developers IGDA-wide. This is partly due to the Studio Affiliate program where there are a lot of mid-to-large companies whose employees are automatically IGDA members (with that membership updating yearly). But that doesn't account for all of it, there are a lot of individual dues-paying members who are industry folks. And a lot of people, like me, joined when they were students but are now professional devs.

 

A lot more there than the last time I checked.

Still...a lot of dead companies or small non-entities listed.

A lot of non US based companies, which is a good thing, which is a shame they don't seem to be getting much of any props from the IGDA.

 

Wow, 15992 members in 2008 at a roughly $50 membership fee means at least $799,600 USD of revenue to IGDA-Central in 2008...

WHERE DOES THAT MONEY GO???

It definitely does not go to local chapters in cities that run events in the name of IGDA. At this time, it's basically every chapter for itself. Driving up membership has no bearing on the health of the local chapters. As somebody who helps run the Austin chapter, I can tell you that we have been...

• Aided greatly by IGDA's hosting a website and providing a widely recognizable name
• Hurt greatly by the stigma of IGDA as an org that is irrelevant to professionals coupled with the misguided belief that one must be a member to participate in local events (which is not true for Austin)

Anyway, my biased answer to the poll is that it does what the local chapter is willing to do with the resources they are able to gather on their own.

 

Not even close I suspect given the discounts on company memberships.

 

http://www.igda.org/about/annual_report_08.php

$518,420

 

I thought it was about half that.

I am struck by the website issues now tho if they have that amount of money a year. An all-singing all-dancing site would cost a fraction of that.

 

big chunk of the cash goes to a management company...what they do exactly is a bit of a mystery because they seem a bit shit really....

 

Shit management? In the games industry? I'm shocked.

 

I don't think the management company is in the game industry. We don't have the monopoly on bad management.

 

My $.02. The IGDA could be a great agent for improving game industry culture. They proved this with their clear stand on game crediting with the Mythic situation. Not saying they changed the company behavior single-handed, but they did actually speak for developers interest on that occasion.

On the issue of QoL, however, they have come down on the opposite side of developers interests, and even against the many white papers and research published on their own web site. This has severely damaged IGDA credibility. Though it could be salvaged, especially now with a new chairman. If Bob Bates did an about-face it would repair much of what has been lost. So far he's playing shy though, and every day he continues this implicit support of the previous boards' position the IGDA is further damaged.

 

sorry removed as I misread the numbers

It's actually making a substancial loss......might not actually be around much longer

 

Without seeing a breakdown of the 'administrative' costs, I still think you could quite easily eliminate that loss. I do find it interesting that it doesnt go into anything resembling detail in the expenses however.

 

I'd join if it were 10-15 quid a year. I think it will be worth more for membership once it starts getting some recognition. So reduce membership costs to get more members, and work hard on recognition e.g. some kind of standards service or something.

 

From the preceding years though, it seems like it's the jump from 100 to 400K on "Member Programs & Meetings" that's drove it into heavy losses this year - the admin cost, while being a nebulous blob of fees has actually dropped by 100K this year.

I'm having trouble interpreting their liabilities, but their cash balance and assets don't seem too bad - it's very possible they just had a bit of a surplus and are deliberately spending more than receiving to bring that in balance. They are a not-for-profit company, right? In which case it's not really in their interests to collect up a big pot of assets and not spend it...

 

There's some data on the demographics of the membership on the web site.

http://www.igda.org/community/member_demos.php?q=mj