Students SIG/Proposal
International Game Developers Association
This is the proposal for a restarted Students SIG.
Contents |
SIG topic
Students SIG - A special interest group dedicated to the interests of students.
Reason/need for SIG
Many of the resources and goals for the inclusion of students into the IGDA have disappeared over the last several years, leaving only the IGDA Scholarship to draw new student members. Excluding students from the leading industry association is not only withholding valuable educational and professional development resources from the students, but is also denying the industry the invaluable resource of developing motivated and enthusiastic members of the next generation of game developers to enter the workforce. The proposed SIG would remedy both of these issues, at little expense and with great benefit.
Mission
To promote student activities within the IGDA, including the collaboration and communication between different students, the providing of information relevant to students, and the running of projects that students can get involved in. There will also be efforts to bring academia and students closer to developers and the industry.
Goals
- Coordination creating and supporting student chapters and game clubs (resources, communication, webspace, advertising, promotion)
- Coordination of events students can attend or will get something out of (volunteer opportunities, cheaper academic or student tickets and IGDA discounts, organisation between people on accommodation...)
- Build up information for students on what jobs are really like. This would include what the Quality of Life is like (including pay and so forth), what is usually needed to know, how to build portfolios, best practices for meeting people and finding work.
- Issues Tracking - Student issues, such as legal information (copyright, ownership, working on games at university), addiction information (MMO's and other games interfering with work), and others.
- Additional support for graduates, including continued communication as IGDA Student alumni and involvement with normal activities.
Sample projects/initiatives
- Group to work on new student game clubs and student chapters and related material.
- Facilities to upload, review and provide feedback of student made games
- Promotion of Quality of Life issues that are important to graduates
- Provide a matchmaking service for students for the creation of independent games and portfolio projects that facilitates the development of small groups of students to create games
Who would likely be involved
- All IGDA student members (Undergraduates, Postgraduates, Researchers...etc)
- Graduates (who want to continue activities or keep in touch)
- Educators (who want to get involved or help run student activities)
- Developers (who want to get involved with students)
Additional
Existing IGDA activities to help/coordinate/work with
- IGDA Women in Game Development SIG mentor programme: GameMentorOnline http://www.gamementoronline.org/
- IGDA Quality of Life SIG - Promotion of quality of life before starting professionally
- IGDA Game Education SIG - Runs the Breaking In section of the IGDA site.
Organisation
- Committee with chair person(s)
- IGDA Student Club Leaders help with the decision making ?
Future Things to Possibly Consider
- [Short term] Add "IGDA Scholarships" to the list of benefits of being a Student IGDA member. Add "Discounted Books" to the list of benefits (especially since students buy lots of books - perhaps some kind of book reviews would be nice in the future).
- [Short term] Survey! Not just what they want from the SIG (or a group dedicated to students who want to go into development - noting not just student game courses!)
- New students: how did they choose their course? (we want to improve information on this somehow)
- Current students: In addition, how satisfied are they on their course? How is it going? What is taught? etc.
- Alumni: What did they do on the course? (esp. final projects - whatever degree it is), what jobs did people get? (game development or not), what satisfaction from the course?
- NB: Can use SurveyMonkey once it is sorted for the Quality of Life survey.
- [Medium term] Newsletter (quarterly/bi-annual); possibly containing: Postmortems of student games/mods; industry trends; SIG news; education news; game reviews; book reviews; conference reviews; thesis/dissitation/FYP abstracts; advice pieces.
- [Medium term] A matchmaking and team service for building indie game teams
- [Medium term] Possibly provide sponsorship opportunities for jobs or internships specifically if you have IGDA membership
- Related: Keep academic relations going between industry and academia (noting that not all students are at Universities which would benefit from this), although this is mainly Education SIG work.
- [Medium term] Provisions for researchers to post their PhD thesis' in a online library of alumni work for both posterity and so members can source them easily.
- [Medium term] Help get sponsors to provide free/cheap deals for software to student members, or get involved in existing programs for such programming, art and design material.
- [Medium term] Club improvements if an IGDA club:
- Overseer to help club development perhaps
- Material to use for club activities (how to get building games tutorials/help, things to discuss, workshop material, presentation and discussion ideas)
- Contacts for clubs to use - Provide opportunities for speakers/lecturers/presentations/talks at student game clubs
- Inter-club activities - trips, competitions, meetings.
- Communication improvements - (magazines, job listings, advice, campus representitives, etc)
- Structured learning material (eLearning) and career guidence
- [Medium term] Provide ideas for sample portfolios (real life ones) from all disciplines and ideas about what employers want to see
- NB: the actual critique of them varies - art ones usually in CG or classic art forums, programming can vary (gamedev.net for instance and others), design is done only rarely on the IGDA forums, sometimes on blogs, many times in other random forums. Audio/music is very cultured around small groups. Other areas don't have much portfolio work - production, QA, etc.
- [Long term] Help finance or start up game clubs in remote areas
- [Long term] Provide a base of student news, perhaps with a (monthly/bi-monthly/quarterly) newsletter with original content
- [Long term] Better online networking (IGDA wide problem, website needs vast improvements)
- [Long term] Provide at least organisational information on how to do student game jams. Possibly talk to Susan Gold about this. Possibly provide organisational help to do these for student teams - with possibly different timespans and rules as necessary (ones for evenings, one day events - especially if done often, the quality of work - and of peoples lives - doesn't really work doing 2 day ones often!).
- [Long term] Conference proceedings specifically for students - podcasts and slides - from conferences too expensive to go to if you're not in that location (GDC etc.)
- Student access/discounted passes to any IGDA run events would be a good idea (half price such as ACM does for SIGGRAPH for instance).
- [Very long term] Some kind of student awards/competitions/event run through the IGDA by the students.
- [Very long term] IGDA accreditation for courses, or linking in with accreditation already done on courses (such as Skillset)
Problems
- Student Membership fees not perceived as giving enough value for money except for networking (or does the general membership fee not give enough value itself?)
- Not going to be easily solved without entirely removing Free User Accounts I presume. Some items to possibly consider above would help the situation.
- The IGDA isn't local enough for some chapters to organise things through, such as hosting events together, meetups or going to events together
- Likely never going to be solved satisfactory for everyone
- Pointed out that Student Club's require the leader to be an IGDA member
- This isn't particularly a problem, just different to how some other organisations deal with this (instead allowing an overseeing academic to be a member or something).
- IGDA Game Clubs do not have many benefits except for their name
- Need to at least provide them hosting space on the IGDA site and contacts with the SIG in some way
