1KM1KT Free RPG Community

I'm wondering if anyone is part of or knows anyone part of the Indie Game Developers Network or the Indie Game Alliance?

IGDN is $50 the first year and $100 each year after that.
IGA is free the first month and then $200 a year if you pay up front. A Non-pro account is mentioned but I'm not sure how that works.

Both groups advertise various resources they make available to members. At first glance, IGA seems to offer a more robust system for marketing and playtesting. IGDN seems to mainly offer advice from their experience and help in working through the design process.

I've listened to some of the podcasts put out by IDGN and learned some tips, both groups run booths at cons. IDGN seems a bit more uppity from reading their website which I don't think I'd be able to handle.

IGA seems more "everybody in" but I'm not sure that breeds quality. The big thing they have on their side is a group of playtesters and GMs that will run your game at FLGSs.

Are these money sinks for someone like me or would I get milage out of them? Honestly, for the price, just having allies that cross promote a product (or Kickstarter) sounds like it would be worth it.

Good question. I don't really know anything about either of these associations. Is membership mutually exclusive?

I'm working pretty hard on PROJECT HAMMER and need to do playtesting once it hits a mature level. Maybe I'll join IGA and see what it's like.

My guess is that IGDN might not look favorably on an IGA membership by the way their website talks about them accepting or not accepting you. Then again, maybe they'd look at it as another asset? No idea.

Edit: I was looking at the publishers in the IGA. A lot of them are board game designers. So IGA is RPGs and board games, while IGDN is strictly RPG. I have a card game and a few in development so maybe IGA would be a better all around fit for me should I choose to avail myself of their services.

IGDN also worries me in a sense because it's a little too aggressively... indie?

There's something to be said for recognizing independent developers, but there's sort of an assertive "If you're not indie, you're not cool" vibe that I get from the IGDN.

On the other hand, I recognize names from the IGDN member roster, so there might be something said for that. They certainly don't seem to offer quite the same degree of services, and the IGA seems to be more of a "ready to publish" thing with playtesting as a sort of odd thing ("people who already have your game" or something similar to that, which isn't really the state of a typical game in the playtesting stage).

While I see that IGDN offers a lot of personal development, it seems to be a little heavily focused on the personal development side versus the business side. There's a strong focus on diversity, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I worry that it could easily veer into being more of a policlub than a real asset to a developer.

Likewise, the services they offer seem to be... largely outgoing? I'm not sure how to describe it, but they're sort of short on member benefits other than having mentoring programs and peer coaching, which is probably valuable. The problem is that my experience has been that game designers are pretty heavily opinionated folks, and I don't know that I would necessarily want to pair with just anyone. Plus, a lot of designers are pretty open with advice; I feel like it could be like that scene from Patton where he shouts at fantasy-brain-Rommel about having read his book, because I've read a lot of books written by designers. One-on-one is better than mass publication, but you also only get one person's insight versus going through a bunch of people.

So to basically take it back, I'm somewhat skeptical of the benefits. I'm sure that it's good for someone in some place, but I'm not sure that I have enough free time to really benefit from mentoring anyway. The IGA offers more business stuff, but it's somewhat unclear how it helps you start off. It probably helps an established business, and I might be underestimating the role they play for novices, but I'd really have to delve deeper. IGA seems more like a distributor than a social network, which might make it better in some ways. IGA also seems very heavily slanted toward board/card games; I don't think it says you can't do RPG stuff on them, but at the same time there's not much that I can find in that vein.

From IGDN's podcasts, they do know their stuff when it comes to the business side. One episode was all about how to publish and all the things they went through were dead on from my experience but they knew how to break through some barriers that I didn't. I came away thinking they'd be more useful on the business side but that might be because I listened to that podcast.

IGA does have way more board and card game designers than RPGs. I think I counted five RPGs going through the list of designers. I might have missed a few because I was guessing by their names. If it sounded like an RPG title I clicked on it to check it out.

One of the main things that they both offer is someone endorsing your games. In IDGN it's a high level endorsement. The designers of well known games saying "Hey this person also makes good stuff" Which is really really important.

For IGA, they get players to actually go out and play and then teach the game to others. At least thats how their service is supposed to work. It's more of a ground level endorsement.

There are some really polished board games coming out of IGA and they can also link you up with Artists who are members. IDGN probably have a list of artists and writers their designers have worked with in the past.

With IDGN you have to prove yourself "worthy" which is a big turn off for me. I think they want you to be present at big cons and doing all this stuff that I really don't have time for in my life. Honestly though, if I didn't have a family, I'm pretty sure they'd get me going on a more professional level much faster.

IGA is more casual, probably more anarchic, less focused. Sadly also more money. I'd be more interested if the money equation was flipped.

The money aspect effects how much hard outward influence the groups exert. IGA has a budget of $120,000 a year while IDGN has a budget of $5000 or so.

I'd be interested in hearing your perspectives. I can't afford membership yet, due to some temporary financial hardships, but both sound intriguing.

I can understand the IGDN's reticence to take on just anyone, as they don't want to be seen as scammers, people willing to take everyone's money. In addition, game developers these days are often fly-by-night operations, producing games that don't get playtested, edited or even properly formatted. The downside is that the IGDN can come across as seeming stuck up.