Vesa Raudasoja is the new chairman of the International Game Developers Association, and the first to lead the 24-year-old group from outside the U. S.
The International Game Developers Association ( IGDA) has more than 150 chapters around the world representing thousands of game developers.
The 24-year-old developer advocacy group recently appointed Vesa Raudasoja as new chair of the board of directors, promoting him from the vice-chair position. He replaced David Seltzer as chair, and current board member Emily Greer moved into the vice chair position.
I spoke with Raudasoja, a game consultant and community developer based in Finland, about this change. Raudasoja said it will be good for the IGDA to further recognize that gaming has become a huge international industry. He helped grow the IGDA Finland into more than 1,700 members and 12 hubs.
He is also a board member and evangelist with the Finnish Game Jam Association as well as co-founder of Devs.tv. I talked with Raudasoja about the change and the significance of having a non-U. S. chair.
Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
GamesBeat: I wanted to hear your perspective on the leadership transition. Can you explain some of that?
Vesa Raudasoja: Where do I start? Of course it’s an honor that the board has the confidence to choose me as chairman. I’ve been working with the IGDA for 12 years. It’s been a great career, if you can call it that exactly, with the IGDA. I’m the first chairman to come from outside of North America. I’ve been getting a lot of positive messages on that side.
GamesBeat: What do you think is important about that, having someone come from outside North America?
Raudasoja: We are an international organization. We have roughly 150 chapters around the world. The chairmen have mostly been from the U. S. and Canada, though, and North America can feel very far away if you’re looking from Europe, Australia, or Asia. Now, I think that having a chairman from outside that region will bring an international spotlight. At times it’s been said that the IGDA is very North America-centric. This proves that we’re really international. Everyone has an opportunity, around the globe, to join the board, to become chairman, to bring an international perspective.
GamesBeat: Are there issues you’re particularly interested in or well-versed in that you think the IGDA should push forward?
Raudasoja: The IGDA is doing a good job in many fields, but my personal agenda has been always the international part, working together to collect chapters and people across different countries. That’s what I’ve been trying to bring in my work on the board of directors, the perspective of small countries like Finland, and the European side in general.
In Finland we have a very tight community. We believe in working together, exchanging information and experience. Those are the qualities I want to promote on other topics that the IGDA stands for — helping people with their careers and studies and becoming better game developers.
GamesBeat: Finland is a good example of that kind of chapter and community, then.
Raudasoja: Finland, at the moment, is home to our most active chapter. We have roughly 1,700 paid members. We have about 6 million people in the whole country, and the game industry altogether is about 3,000 professionals. Of course, there are also a lot of hobbyists and students. But we’re proud that the IGDA covers more than half of the industry.
We’ve been working hard on that case, starting more than 15 years back. We started quite small. Of course, the whole industry was very small back then. But now we have 12 different cities where monthly IGDA activities are happening. In Finland, people have an idea of what the IGDA is for.
