A new association that advocates the interests of serious games – and, indeed, gaming in general – in South Africa may soon be a thing, thanks to a talk that recently took place at the Serious Games conference.
Four individuals from several game-related disciplines sat down to discuss how to go about it at the conference: Dr Ernest W Adams, who started the IGDA (International Game Developers Association) in the US; Werner Ravyse of the South African branch of the Serious Games Institute; Wouter Grove from the University of the Western Cape and Ben Myers from MakeGamesSA, an organisation already involved with the local gaming industry.
Dr Adams started the IGDA in the 1990s in the wake of a controversy caused by Mortal Kombat, which prompted the US Congress to start making noises about censorship, something he did not agree with. So the IGDA was started with the aim of defending the artistic freedom of game creators, and to give them the sense that someone was “in their corner”.
A South African association would have slightly different objectives, as our laws are actually quite supportive of the freedom of expression. That would be to promote the interests and activities of local game creators, both serious and otherwise in order to get the word out on what they can do.
That’s a lofty goal, but one that needs to be reached. Gaming in South Africa is a growing industry; Myers pointed out that we’ve had game developers here since the mid-90s (successes like Toxic Bunny the proof), but that we’re still a long way behind the rest of the world.
Grove went on to say that in South Africa, the kind of people who are needed to make the decisions that would fund gaming development are still not particularly knowledgeable of what gaming can actually do for business, education and the people of South Africa. An association that advocates its benefits and makes the general public more aware of what it can do is therefore an absolute necessity.
There was some lively discussion about the perceived tension between games developers and academics, as essentially they were talking about working more closely together when both groups don’t necessarily see eye to eye. The old argument of academics staying in their ivory towers and having no grasp of the on-the-ground details of what real-world developers have to deal with was thrown about in good humour, but ultimately both sides agreed that the research benefits and academic insights that could be brought to the on-the-ground development process would be quite valuable indeed.
The panelists agreed that ideally the association would provide a “landing place for enquiries”, as suggested by Ravyse, where anyone interested in games development as either a developer or a potential client could ask questions and be pointed in the right direction.
Ultimately, the best thing to come from the discussion was the promise to “not do nothing”, and for the Serious Games Institute and MakeGamesSA to sit down together at a future date to hash out the details of a possible association.
