Introduction

As the largest professional association for game developers worldwide, the International Game Developers Association has been in a unique position to know and understand individual game developers on a level that most companies and organizations cannot. While we’ve always had a very good pulse on how developers anecdotally feel about their work and their industry, we haven’t always been consistent in capturing and conveying that insight.

In 2004, the IGDA launched its initial Quality of Life survey in an effort to gain a much clearer understanding of the issues that affect life as a game developer –from “crunch time” to compensation issues. In 2009, the IGDA repeated the Quality of Life survey in partnership with researchers at Western University in Ontario, Canada and TÉLUQ in Québec, Canada. The survey once again provided more insights into how the issue was evolving in our industry, and then a few years ago the IGDA conducted a separate diversity survey to help us obtain a clearer perception of developer demographics.

In 2014, as the time approached to repeat the Quality of Life survey, we opted to take a different approach, one that is more systematic in how we understand game developers worldwide, including both IGDA members and non-members. It’s not just an issue of gathering basic knowledge for its own sake, but it’s about knowing developers’ priorities and the most pertinent issues affecting their overall satisfaction. Most critically, these insights will be leveraged to help prioritize the IGDA’s advocacy efforts and initiatives.

To that end, we launched this new annual survey called the Developer Satisfaction Survey (DSS), which remains a partnership with Western University and TÉLUQ, as well as our new partners M2 Research and the Georgia Institute of Technology. The DSS which was open to anyone involved in the video game industry in a professional or academic capacity, is the evolution of our previous survey efforts. Moving forward, the DSS will serve as the IGDA’s core annual method by which we inform ourselves and the industry about the critical questions around developers’satisfaction. For the sake of the long-term health of our industry, we will continue to strive to discern the demographic composition of game developers worldwide and tap into their knowledge, experiences and opinions on their well-being and on the state of the industry.

Read/Download Whitepaper: IGDA DSS 2014: Summary Report (PDF)