The IGDA has found someone to replace longtime director Jason Della Rocca. Joshua Caulfield, who has experience in association management, has been chosen for the ED position.

I think it’s a really good idea for the IGDA to choose someone with this type of experience. It has been a flaw in the game industry for many years that senior management is often staffed by people who moved up to those positions from within game design and production.

Our industry has suffered from having really great, smart people with little management experience in top positions. As the industry has matured, we’ve been seeing top people recruited from outside video games.

I first saw it in 1999 at Activision when many packaged goods people were brought into senior positions at the company. As a gamer and an industry vet, I was flabbergasted at the time, but Activision has since become the biggest video game publisher in the world under the tutelage of management from outside the industry.

The ESA recently recruited someone from outside video games in their top position. When I heard he had never been to E3, I cringed. But then again, that’s exactly how I felt in 1999 and I was proven wrong.

The game industry needs to continue to mature and realistically and objectively analyze our strengths and weaknesses. And industry vets need to swallow their pride a bit and find the skills they need wherever those skills are held.

Let’s welcome these new people to the industry and open our minds to more collaboration with other industries and skillsets. It’s vital for our future!

This entry was posted on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 at 10:04 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.