On Feburary 12, 2006, there was an IGDA Bangkok Chapter meeting, in which this session was a closed session initially for members of local developer communities (http://www.gamedevx.com and http://www.thaigamedevx.com) to talk together about future cooperation between the various communities, and also to prepare for the first public IGDA Bangkok Chapter meeting which would be scheduled soon.
The meeting had took place at the the Mall Bangkapi(Change of Venue), as many of the delegates in the meeting requested to take some time before the meeting to observe this year's NSC (National Software Contest - Highschool and University Level) and see some of the latest development projects and games developed by the younger generation of game developers. A short discussion (in Thai) of the event could be viewed at this url: http://www.gamedevx.com/webboard.php?board=3644
After that, the IGDA Meeting took place in which the following agenda were discussed:
1) Preliminary Draft and Discussion of Likely Activities that IGDA Bangkok would be partaking in short and long term.
2) Discussions of Current Game Developer Communities and About Increasing Cooperation between Developer Communities
3) Discussions on how to improve the Game Development Community and Industry in Thailand
4) Update on the booth assigned to IGDA Bangkok on the theme - "Overview of the Game Development Industry in Thailand" at the Bangkok International Film Festival 2006
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For agenda#1, we have concluded activities that IGDA Bangkok Chapter would closely mirror the activities that the Developer Community in Bangkok have been doing for a while and have included a number of extra points and would be open for discussion during the first official IGDA Bangkok chapter meeting.
First of all, as being Developer communities we are committed to provide support and service as in knowledge exchange to members, in which we have existing sites to service. It has been agreed that GameDevX would cater for newer developers and developers that are interested in utilizing game engines and alternative languages for development. For the ThaiGameDevX community, they are catering for more hard-core and game development using more established languages such as C/C++ and Java. Content provided from both would include Industry News, Basic Knowledge (both Theory and Practice), KnowHow, Book Reviews, and a little of Ethics. As most users in Thailand are not proficient in English the majority of material would be in Thai, though it is mostly a billingual site.
In addition to that, some of the activities we plan to improve in the future to provide a better Classified section for the developer and the companies. At the present it is a simple forum-based job matching, but in the future we plan to implement a better system, which has been planned for a while.
Another activity that is planned is to arrange Seminars/Trainings/Conferences as the community developers have done earlier but now in a more formalized IGDA banner.
Other services plans include the IGDA Bangkok Chapter website which would serve as a resource for international guests to be able to get a better glimpse of our industry.
The last service planned during our first year is to start more formalized indexes of organizations and people involved in the game development industry including educational institutes, company indexes, and developer indexes.
For Agenda#2, due to the closeness of both the communities in which we have been co-organizing a number of activities including the Game Developer Exchange Conference 2004-2005 and other meetings/seminars, we have decided that for other activities excluding normal forum and community management, we have decided to pool resources as long as it follows the IGDA guidelines.
For agenda#3, we have talked about a number of activities that could be done to improve the game development community and industry. In addition to the activities stated in point#1 which are mostly developer based initiatives. As the game industry includes both the Game Companies and the Game Developers, we believe in the future to be working closely with other agencies such as the Thai Game Cluster(TGC) on events that follow along the IGDA philosophy.
For agenda#4, we have set up a preliminary draft of the volunteer schedule during the time, and are currently continue our work on organizing the booth at the BIFF2006.
The next meeting is planned around late March, in which details and confirmation will be posted again here.
Attendees of the meeting are as follows (by primary classification):
IGDA Members:
Pisal S. (Assumption University)
Suphot S. (Flying Pig Studio)
GameDevX Community Members:
Wasin P. (Iyara) and 1 staff
ThaiGameDevX Community Members:
Yodthong R. (Polygon Device) and 1 staff
Thanit A. and 2 staff (Studio Gu)
Wuttipong W. (Sanuk Software)
Independent:
Polsin P. (Sanuk Software)
Napan (Look-kid Studio)
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