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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.
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?
IGDA has a pretty big presence every year at the Game Developer's Conference. 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