Rapid growth in the games development sector is fantastic and brings a number of new challenges for individual development companies - managing the new opportunities and their consequent impact on the business can be difficult. A big part of the management conundrum is about people – knowing what you need, how to find the best people and help them achieve their best potential for the benefit of the business.
There are many general purpose HR resources, but nothing specific to the game industry. The HR-SIG is meant to be resource for the community of game industry HR professionals (and those involved in the HR process). This page lists the work and initiatives of the HR-SIG to date.
The IGDA's Human Resource Professionals mailing list is for HR practitioners in the game development industry. This list was set up as an initiative of the IGDA's Business Committee to create a forum allowing HR professionals to exchange ideas, raise questions, and generate discussions around issues that they all face: from recruitment to retention and training to scheduling. Please note this list cannot be used as a venue for presenting applicants or posting job opportunities. Violations will result in permanent removal from the list. This list is closed to non-HR professionals and jobseekers. Administrators approve all members on a case by case basis.
Dive into the Production & Management, Quality of Life and Business & Legal Issues discussion forms to discuss HR related topics and issues. The IGDA hosts online discussion forums to faciliate peer-to-peer communication and the sharing of knowledge.
The HR-SIG hosted two roundtable sessions at the 2005 Game Developers Conference titled "HR Wizardry: People Management in the Game Industry". Participants created a snapshot of current issues of game industry human resources, glimpsing trends and directions as the industry grapples with growth, consolidation, legal changes and internationalization. A goal for the sessions were to help plan actions for the HR SIG for the future.
The HR-SIG hosted a one day forum during the tutorials period of the 2004 Game Developers Conference titled "Human Resources Forum: Trends and Directions". HR professionals in the game industry, and those involved in the HR process, attended the forum and focused on defining the needs of the industry, looked at areas for improvement and studied the integration of business with HR.
For this HR Benchmarking Report, around 50 companies worldwide were asked to participate by completing a comprehensive and confidential survey, which tackled a whole range of HR issues. Responses were received from companies based in the US, Canada, UK and France. We were interested to learn about the best people-practices that are currently happening in the sector, to be able to share this knowledge with the wider community.
The Best Practice Reports were generated from a series of roundtables at the 2003 Game Developers Conference. They help educate and provide solutions for developers on industry best practices in various disciplines, such as financing, resource management/scheduling, human resources, marketing/promotion and quality assurance.
The following links point to various HR specific organizations and informational sources: