You’ve seen, probably, the recently released list of Origins Awards nominees for games released in 2009. I dig the Origins Awards. Congratulations to all of the fine nominees, many of whom are Friends of Gameplaywright.
The Origins Awards are given annually by a body called the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design. The Academy is not so much the organization you’d think, given its name. Rather, the Academy is either an arm of or a front for (depending on your level of cynicism) GAMA, the Game Manufacturer’s Association. The Academy has a Chairman, who is currently Friend of Gameplaywright (and of Jeff) Paul Tevis. If GAMA’s rules haven’t changed in the last few years, the Academy Chairman serves at the pleasure of the GAMA Chairman.
In the past, the Academy has had a membership, of varying size based mostly on whether it charged for membership in any given year. It rarely did a lot other than give out the Origins Awards, and sometimes it mostly failed even at that.
Waaaay back in the day, while Charles Ryan was Academy Chairman, I was a member of the central committee of the Academy. (This body, largely informal even then, does not exist now, so far as I’m aware. It’s possible that the various Origins Awards juries are now the official constituents of this larger membership. It’s hard to find this kind of thing out. Anyway.) I always thought that growing a strong membership to constitute a vigorous Academy of game design professional was a worthwhile goal.
I’m no longer sure whether that’s true. I think that film benefits, generally, from its professional organizations. (It definitely benefits from its strong unions.) I think that GAMA membership generally makes sense for manufacturers, distributors, and retailers. I think young game designers could do with better mentoring opportunities. The IGDA—the body for computer game developers—seems to be popular. I think it’s a little disingenuous (or confusing, at the very least) for GAMA to give the Origins Awards under the auspices of an organization that doesn’t particularly exist, at least not in the sense that its name implies. But I also observe that organizations like the Academy I imagine all too often tend to function as a thankless time-sink for people who could be doing other, generally more awesome, things. So I don’t know.
In any case (and finally!), your Friday question:
Do tabletop game designers need a professional organization? Why or why not?
What’s the membership pool? I know in one sense the barriers to entry are low — anyone can write an RPG scenario. But is that a tabletop game designer?
Y’know, I don’t even know if I’m a member of the Academy any more. (I assume not, since I haven’t seen an email from the mailling list in years.)
I’m of mixed minds about a professional organization. I like the idea of mentoring opportunities and recognition of a certain level of achievement, but I’m hard-pressed to see what that would entail on both counts.
I don’t think it’d work as a union, or a Better Business Burea, since there’s no hard-and-fast division between management and labor in the hobby.
The most valuable thing about such an organization would be the oft-discussed possibility of forming a big enough number of people to purchase group health insurance. But that’s fraught as well.
I find your idea promising and would like to subscribe to your newsletter. Or, you know, just follow your blog. Which I already do. Carry on.
On a more relevant note, the immediate question is: What would the organization offer its members. I can think of a few possibilities: private forums, job postings, boilerplate freelance contract, press release exploder.
At one point in time, the bar for membership was three published products. This, for what it’s worth, was prior to PDFs as a publishing mechanism.
It’s possible, now, for an individual to get health insurance through GAMA, by joining as a individual member, or communicating member, or whatever they call them this year. I went a fair way down this track in my run-up to leaving FFG and going freelance, and the coverage seemed to be pretty decent for its cost. My wife wound up getting a job at about that time that had fantastic coverage, though, mooting my investigations.
The benefit I think I’d find most valuable from a truly professional professional organization of tabletop game designer, the more I think about, would be an espirt de corps. An intangible sense of common pride and fellowship with other people doing and understanding the same work that I do. This, almost certainly, is chasing a mirage.
Writing from L.A., I don’t know that I got a lot out of my affiliation with ATAS (the Television Academy) back when I was a student member. Was that because there wasn’t a lot to get, or because I was too lazy to pursue? Unclear.
As far as I can tell, the working writers I know who are members join so that they can get screeners, and to vote for the Emmys. Esprit to corps is what you get with the people you work with, not that you meet at a cocktail hour.
I do think the various film and television orgs do valuable work archiving material, collecting interviews, which I would guess could be valuable for game designers as well. A way to de-fragment institutional memory in a decentralized industry.
Having worked several years with a Chamber of Commerce, I can see the value in a professional organization to both facilitate networking among the members and promote them to the industry at large. Long ago when I was an Academy member, I really only found the member directory useful (particularly in an age when the internet and e-mail were just emerging as communication tools); the occasional newsletter was interesting but not terribly enlightening. If GAMA was ambitious, it might examine strategies from other membership organizations to more assertively advocate for Academy members as, presumably, it does for its industry members. But to do that right — to the benefit of Academy members — would take a great deal of time, effort, and planning, more than I’d expect several dedicated volunteers to do.
Is there a need for a professional organization? I suppose it partially depends on your definition of need. In my personal opinion, there is a need for advocacy and for providing certain tools for the community of developers. We need a group dedicated to furthering the hobby and supporting developers.
I would agree with Justin D. Jacobson’s list of benefits it could provide. In addition, I would recommend the following.
1) Directories of game publishing companies and properties, including the print status, distributors and contact information. This would essentially be an elaboration of http://www.pen-paper.net that would make it easy for retailers.
2) Marketing options; I learn about most of the new games being released via the Voice of the Revolution podcast, but something that would stretch outside of the indie ranks would be of value as well.
3)Listings of professional freelance writers, artists, graphic designers, marketers and other more specialized resources would be quite useful. I don’t know which typography experts might be able or willing to help with a indie RPG project for instance.
4) Mentoring and partnership opportunities. I know there are a great number of interested dabblers in the game design who have some excellent ideas and there are some overworked professionals already in the industry. Linking these groups together can only help in the long run.
At least that’s my two coppers.
Fuck a professional organization. Get a union first.
Margaret: The problem, for me, in finding esprit de corps with the people I work with is that I don’t work with anyone. Lots of publishers are very small, and geographically diverse. Also, game designers are geographically diverse, so we don’t do much with the cocktail hours (outside convention season, anyway). We definitely have a horrifically fragmented cultural memory, though.
Peter: Indeed, I think that the demands of such an organization would be inconsistent with volunteer administrators. And given that dues as modest as $30/year or so drove Academy membership waaaay down back in the day, I can’t imagine an Academy being able to pay even one person anything that approaches a non-insulting stipend.
Jason: I would love to see a professionally maintained version of pen-paper.net. I haven’t been over to the geekdo RPG site recently. I wonder if they’re making any strides, there. Boardgamegeek is a very credible listing of such information in for board games.
JD: Whether a union is desirable or not, there’s definitely not enough money in tabletop game design to support union overhead. Also, there’s the problem that so many designers are also management, when they’re wearing other hats.
I’m only telling you – those who fail to learn from video gaming’s horrific example are doomed to repeat it. Our brethren over there suffer under 20 hour workdays, laughable job security and sometimes 3-4 months with no breaks and no overtime pay, and the only reason they suffer so is because they can’t get unionized. For our hobby, it can be small, it can be minimal overhead, it would fit the hobby for it to be so, but above all there must be a love of work and production. If you get offered 2 cents a word for your gaming writing and you think that maybe it is worth a tiny bit more, then no matter who is wearing the management hat, you need a union.
Who would join said union? I am the owner, author, art director, layout and marketing professional for my company. Should I be yelling at myself to pay myself more? I don’t have any income from my products which are early in the development cycle, thus I am working for less then free.
I can only think of perhaps the pale puppy or the Wizards who actually have enough personnel and reliable funding that such a model actually could work. For almost everyone else it is the incorrect approach to take. I support unions on principle, but unionizing indie game designers is like unionizing homemakers. Just not an appropriate organization or situation for a union.
Right on, Jason. The best route to an end goal of improving the conditions of tabletop game designers, to my mind, goes through educating them as to what rights, payscales, and working conditions are reasonable and achievable. Collectively bargaining for a larger piece of the income pie in tabletop gaming is non-functional because the pie simply isn’t big enough to support the overhead of the bargaining. (Not to mention that, as you say, in many cases—as many as half?—the potential union members would be bargaining against themselves.) A professional organization could totally support that educational goal.
Now, as JD says, video game designers and developers should absolutely be unionized, because the revenue pie in that business is large enough for it to make sense. The WGA is trying to do it. They’re approaching it in a generally clueless fashion, and are as likely as not to fail, but I don’t know who has a better chance of getting it done.