About

The International Game Developers Association (IGDA)

The IGDA Website states:
"The International Game Developers Association is a non-profit membership organization that advocates globally on issues related to digital game creation. The IGDA's mission is to strengthen the international game development community and effect change to benefit that community."
 

The Chapter Idea

Again, quoting from the IGDA Website:
"Chapters connect game developers in local communities around the world. Through regularly scheduled meetings, chapters provide an opportunity for professional game developers to interact in person with peers on a local level."

This pretty much sums up what Chapters are all about:
Chapters provide a means for game industry professionals to interact with the community in the most easy and natural way.
Since many aspects of daily Game Development are closely connected to local circumstances, Chapters greatly help to support the IGDA goals worldwide, by the community, for the community. While this is extremely valuable to the professional developer, many Chapters (like the Frankfurt Chapter) do not exclude people from participating who are not currently engaged in the industry themselves.

You can find a list of Chapters at: www.igda.org/chapters
 

The Frankfurt Chapter

The Frankfurt Chapter was started in late 2003. A team of volunteers has successfully helped to establish the Chapter and organize the activities.
At all of the Meetings held so far, about 100 developers of the greater Frankfurt area have attended. Such a success would not have been possible without the great support of our sponsors. Also - of course - we have received invaluable feedback and help from the members of the advisory board.
 

Our Mission

The FFM Chapter is meant to implement the IGDA community approach using the creative freedom which each Chapter owns. Generally speaking, the Chapter should serve as a platform for vivid exchange and networking among the local developers.
While the socialising part is important to foster at any Meeting, it is not the only aspect which needs our full attention. In particular, valuable content is presented at each meeting, covering - if possible - all major areas of interest involved in digital game creation. This way, each meeting attendee should be able to capture new ideas and hints with relevance to his / her individual work field.
However, this is only possible if the community and the content providers (mainly the speakers) at the meetings realize their responsibility to uncover some concrete information or techniques rather than just keeping all the experiences they made for themselves. That does not imply people should give away their informational advantages for free, but there is always a way to keep the balance between revealing too much and revealing just as much so others can avoid the same painful mistakes you made. It is only if people start to share their ideas and experience that the German developer community will become competitive worldwide in the long run.
Thus, so far we are very happy with the fact that speakers have been willing to freely share detailed insight instead of holding back information and we hope to continue like this.

That said, don't miss out the chance to actively participate in the next Chapter Meeting.