Malaysia Chapter

Meeting attendees included people from Dragonback Games, Positronic Dreams, Terra ICT, MDC, MMU, TAR, Microsoft, Game Axis, GameBrains, students and we even had Allan from the IGDA Singapore Chapter attend too!

Thanks again everybody for coming, and I hope to see more of you in the future.

For those that missed the meeting, here's what was covered (if I missed something important, please post a comment with what was missed!)

Discussed:
1. We started the meeting welcoming everybody, and doing some cross-introductions for those that didn't know each other.

2. Allan from the Singapore Chapter highlighted some of the things happening in the Singapore Chapter, including:

• They are currently focusing on providing information about the local industry, building the community and working to build communication channels with the government.


• They are interested in looking for ways to jointly cooperate with other developers and organizations, especially IGDA chapters, in the region.

3. I explained the current state of the Malaysian Chapter:

• The hiatus of Malaysian Chapter meetings was due primarily to lack of professional interest in attending, mostly due to the high number of students that attended meetings.


• While everybody is welcome at meetings, the focus of future meetings will be focused on professionals.


• We need to build up our professional membership and participation in order to make sure the Malaysian Chapter has a strong foundation and can survive and thrive even when many of the members are in "crunch mode" and very busy.

4. The floor was opened for various particpants to express what they would like out of IGDA. If I forgot somebody below, please post a comment to make sure your voice is heard.

5. Terence Tan of Positronic Dreams expressed interest in forming some sort of Malaysian Game Developer's Conference. He stressed it should be homegrown, and meet local needs. Some people thought it would be good to bring down industry veterans, others weren't sure it was needed and some expressed concern over whether it would be viable at all. In the end, it seemed that everybody agreed it would be good to do something and that more discussion was needed. [Ed: Terence, it would be good if you could drive this along a bit, gather opinion, propose something, etc.]

6. KC Tan and Mayling of GameBrains expressed that having a place, such as IGDA Chapter meetings, to meet and netowrk with colleagues in the industry is a good thing.

7. Hilmy from MMU, and Stephan from TAR, both expressed optimism and interest in working with the IGDA and the Malaysian industry to build closer relationships, develop better curriculums for their students and have an outlet to keep their own skills and knowledge up to date.

8. Hasnul from MDC expressed enthusiasm in working with the IGDA to make sure that the government is doing all it can to support the game development industry locally, and called upon the attendees to be vocal in letting him know what the needs and challenges of the industry were so that he could help develop plans, strategies and programs that would benefit the industry.

9. Jennifer Tai, editor of Game Axis, introduced the magazine to the attendees and explained that she was always on the lookout for content that would be of value to her readers.

10. Loke Uei from Microsoft introduced some of the programs they have and events they hold in Malaysia. He mentioned opportunities for the game industry to be part of their programs, both as presenters and attendees depending upon the event.

11. Josh form Dragonback games offered some insights from his publisher-oriented background that was salient to developers, expressed a number of points with regard to education, students and graduates and pointed out that openings in the game industry are seen as jobs rather than opportunities. [Ed: Josh, you really should do an article on this as it's so relevent to Malaysia and would be helpful to students and interviewees to understand the employer's point of view]

I hope I've got the main points covered, but again, if I missed anything please add a comment to point it out!