IGDA Lowering Membership Fees

Frictionless Insight is reporting that the International Game Developers Association is lowering their membership fees after a split with their former management organization. From the article: "Ordinary memberships now cost roughly half what they previously cost, and other memberships have been discounted somewhat. For example, a standard one-year membership has dropped from $100 to $48." This can only mean good things, as more beginnign developers become a part of the association.

No benefits

[Chemisor]

According to the FAQ on their website, the membership benefits [igda.org] are pretty much nonexistent. Now that the price is lower, you don't get the magazine any more.

Re:No benefits

[bitkari]

I know people say that they join for the magazine but the real reason people join the IGDA is so that they can attend the free (quite literally as-in-beer) bar sessions run locally by IGDA chapters.

Re:No benefits

[llopis]

Anybody in the game industry (in the US anyway) can get Game Developer Magazine for free anyway, so that was never much of an incentive.

The local IGDA chapters can be great, but it's hit and miss depending on your local one.

To me, the thing that made me join a few months ago, was seeing that they're continuing to push the issue of quality of life in the game industry [igda.org].

Last year they put out the Quality of Life Whitepaper [igda.org], and now they're following it up with a summit [cmpevents.com] at this year's GDC. All of which i

Who?

[badasscat]

I worked in the game industry for 5 years (and I don't mean as a clerk at EB, I mean for a major game publisher) and I can honestly say I don't think I've ever heard of the IGDA. There may be people more on the business or legal side of things that deal with these guys but this is not an organization that most publishers or developers talk to on a daily or weekly basis.

From their web site, I can't even tell what it is they actually do. I see some advocacy topics, but that's about it - their "About the IGDA" section in the FAQ says absolutely nothing, and as someone else pointed out, their "membership benefits" are pretty non-existent. ("The main benefit of membership is knowing the you are developing your career and personally contributing the betterment of this industry by supporting the IGDA's mission." Uh... ok?).

It looks like they have about 5,700 members, but that's a tiny fraction of the total game industry.

Is this organization actually relevant in any way? What have they actually done to better the industry?

You've never been to GDC?

[SirBruce]

IGDA has a pretty big presence every year at the Game Developer's Conference. [gdconf.com] Still, it's quite true that they don't have a huge amount of members. One of the reasons commonly cited for this was that the membership fee was so high, so this is a good first step.

Bruce

The Challenge of the Common Good

[JasonDellaRocca]

As the IGDA's executive director, it is always great to see public discussion of the org. Kinda sad, however, to read that what we do is pretty worthless :(

In part, I'll take the blame for not spending many org resources on marketing/promotion. Ironically, for all the problems we work on, one of our biggest challengs is simply getting the attention of developers (as we all know how busy and overworked they are ;)

More seriously, many developers simply don't care, or can't look much beyond their immedia

Re:The Challenge of the Common Good

[SeifertC]

I know the goal of the IGDA is to help the industry as a whole, but I would like to offer up my own story of how the IGDA has helped me personally:

A little over two years ago I joined the IGDA and started attending meetings of my local chapter (NJ). I was a college student with no game development experience, no game development skills, and no clue as to how the games industry worked. Still, the group welcomed me, showed me resources on the web, told me what to watch out for and where to look for game pr