Toronto, Canada –March 27, 2023 – The IGDA Game Credits Special Interest Group (SIG) is working to promote inclusivity and best practices for how credits are attributed, affecting career and awards prospects. Game credits are inconsistent throughout the industry and from game to game, even within the same company. Employees are often mislabeled, unlabeled, or left off, though they may have spent years of their life to bring a game to market. 

This work is supported by results from the group’s 2023 State Of Credits industry survey, which revealed that 51.3% of respondents either “never,” “seldom,” or “sometimes” receive official credit for their efforts. Additionally, 83.1% of respondents indicated “unsure” or “no” when asked if their employer or client had a game credits policy in place. These results, courtesy of the IGDA Analytics SIG, showcase a need for standardized, industry-wide best practices.

To remedy this situation, the Game Credits SIG is currently spearheading multiple, parallel efforts. Recently, the Game Crediting Guide received its first major update in 10 years, based on feedback from fellow IGDA SIGs like the IGDA Localization SIG, internal feedback, and IGDA HQ. A second version of this updated policy is already in the works, and will be revised based on peer feedback from the recent Game Developers Conference (GDC) Roundtable.

To facilitate the implementation and execution of these policies, the Credits, Engineering, and IGDA Accessibility SIGs are working together to create a robust-yet-modular, open-source toolkit that will soon be released for Unity and Unreal developers. These toolkits will allow developers to create easily-updatable UI and text-based scrolling credits, that can scale easily to a team’s needs. All ressources can easily be found on the dedicated page https://igda.org/sigs/credits/ 

“The IGDA Game Credits SIG’s fundamental mission is to advance inclusivity and best practices for credit attribution, which has an impact on career and award chances. The new resources and the 2023 policy should enable studios and publishers all around the world to use them to develop their own best practices.” stated Katie Golden, IGDA Game Credits SIG’s current Chair. ”We want all of our colleagues in the video game business to feel involved and support our policies so that we can lead the change globally”.

In addition to the aforementioned roundtable, the Game Credits SIG had a robust presence at GDC, starting the week off with a new hashtag #FixGameCrediting, to help focus discussion and rally the industry behind this cause. The Localization SIG partnered with the Game Credits SIG to design new badge ribbons for GDC, which were given out throughout the week with the hashtag launch!

We hope these efforts will enable and empower teams across the globe to pursue accurate, consistent, and faithful crediting, celebrating the contributions teams make to the games we all love. For more information, follow the IGDA Twitter and IGDA Facebook, or join the IGDA Discord.

For more information, please use our IGDA Game Credits SIG contacts:

• Katie Golden
  • SIG Chair 2020-April 2023, SIG Treasurer 2023-3025
  • katiergolden@gmail.com
• Raj Patel
  • SIG Chair, April 2023-2025
  • raj@ohmpage.ca
• Nazih Fares
  • SIG Vice-Chair, 2023-2025
  • contactme@nazihfares.com
• Trento von Lindenberg
  • SIG Secretary, 2023-2025
  • trentovonlindenberg@gmail.com
• Renee Gittins
  • Engineering SIG
  • renee@igda.org
• Zak Whaley
  • Engineering SIG
  • zak@igda.org
    

About the International Game Developers Association (IGDA®)

The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) is the world’s largest nonprofit membership organization serving all individuals who create games. The mission of the IGDA is to support and empower game developers around the world in achieving fulfilling and sustainable careers. As an international organization, the IGDA is a San Francisco, CA.-based 501(c)6 non-profit professional association and a global network of collaborative projects and communities of individuals from all fields of game development – including programmers and producers, designers and artists, as well as writers, business people, QA team members, localization experts, and everyone else who participates in any way in the game development process. The IGDA brings together developers at key industry conferences, and in over 170 Chapters and Special Interest Groups (SIGs), to improve their lives and their craft. For more info, please visit www.igda.org.

About the IGDA Game Credits Special Interest Group

The IGDA Game Credits Special Interest Group (SIG) promotes inclusivity and best practices for how credits are attributed, affecting career and awards prospects. For more information on the IGDA Game Credits SIG, please visit https:/ igda.org/sigs/credits/