I am also still unsure of the benefits of a GANG membership. Membership is about strengthening a community through involvement, sharing and support. Since I’m guessing GANG events are held primarily in Seattle, Vancouver, San Francisco, or LA, I don’t think I would get that chance. If there was a Boston or NYC chapter, I’d be more likely to join.

Since I can’t see what the site offers, I can only say (and hope I’m not being totally redundant) that I would look for dependable, up to date and easy to navigate publications and learning resources. My AES and IGDA memberships took up my “allowance” for the year, but what I like about AES besides the many chapters and regular meetups is that the site has a limited video, tutorial, podcast and publication vault (though it could be much beefier given how many AES conventions happen each year). While there is a wealth of game audio resources all over the internet for anyone to find, there is a WEALTH of game audio resources all over the internet, which can be hard to trudge through without direction or a seal of approval. Even something like the Rainspell Game Audio Pearltrees is what I’d like to see with more focus on journals and standards like AES.

As far as online communities, I feel like I can barely keep up between DS, #gameaudio and the Facebook group. I haven’t even looked at the Reddit group yet.

That’s all I got! Thanks!

Adriane

Jory’s comments about G.A.N.G. feeling like a composers club and Nick’s about it feeling like a closed clique are spot-on to me. I understand and certainly emphasize with the desire to maintain a closed-circle of communication for professional niceties. Five minutes on Social Sound Design and anywhere on reddit are enough to make me run away from the continual inundation of, as Brian said, “Listen to my latest track” posts and questions about “How to sound design a game for my first time with no money”. That said, however, a pay-to-play forum is hardy the answer to that in this day and age.

G.A.N.G. is much more than just the forum, but is far less than it needs to be to attract my hard-earned money. There needs to be an obvious benefit to being a member beyond awards, forums and a coupon. A quick perusal through the resources section reveals a limited number of links and papers that are easily and immediately found elsewhere. The “news and features” links haven’t been updated recently (last feature was 1/03/15, last newsletter was August, 2013, there are NO entries on the events calendar… not even 2015 GDC). Back when I WAS a G.A.N.G. member, I joined the IESD in its infancy, only to watch it languish for years of what seemed non-action. Yes, there are the pillars of outreach, advocacy, and standards, but there is very little on the website that makes it clear what is going on. The may be the reasons for G.A.N.G., but the lack of transparency and lack of updated activity makes it difficult to discern just how much of that is truly being done. So much of the website is closed to non-dues-paying members that it appears to be nearly inactive.

Brian, I understand a “gang” is much more than just a negative connotation. I wrestled with this very fact myself when Damian first brought it up to me a few months ago. Growing up, “gang” was how we referred to a group of friends. “Hey, gang! what’s going on?” There wasn’t, colloquially, a negative meaning.

That was 30 years ago. Now a “gang” has more baggage in the public eye. Sure, not much more than it has always had, but as an adult I’ve grown to be aware of how it is perceived by more than just my close friends in the small almost-rural suburban municipality I grew up in. I realized recently that I never had the discomfort others have felt by saying, “I’m a G.A.N.G. member,” because I never said it. I found myself saying, “I’m a member of the Game Audio Networking Group,” because I was inevitably going to have to explain what “G.A.N.G.” meant anyway. Acronyms require explanation, after all, or they are meaningless.

-cheers!
-andy

The IASIG and GANG have different charters but they are not adversaries nor are they mutually exclusive of one another. Joining either doesn’t mean the other is a competitor. I think they both serve the community well, but differently. The IASIG is a subgroup of the MIDI Manufacturer’s Association (MMA). Aside from the complications of what a merger would mean for both of our groups and the MMA, I don’t see a quantifiable advantage in IASIG being absorbed by GANG but I do see potential benefits from greater collaboration and clarification between the two organizations.

Regarding what we do, the IASIG has shied away from advocacy or promotion of professions, and having any awards programs. We stick to publications and free industry resources that serve the community. The IASIG has, on a few occasions, discussed expanding our charter to include other things but they’ve always been things that would not overlap with GANG’s mission and quite often we found we did not have the resources to bring about the changes we discussed. Still, there is much to do and being actively involved in an IASIG working group can help others and it can be very rewarding to complete new industry resources.

More exposure about the IASIG within GANG could help more people realize that we are available for them to find other collaborators and publish things for the benefit of all audio professionals and educators. Similarly, GANG likely has a greater reach to more people for promotion of completed publications. Since IASIG work is often intended to benefit the fields that GANG members work in, it would help to have GANG spread the word widely on our behalf when working groups begin and when a final document or resource is published. I’m not sure we would need to be one organization to accomplish that goal but we would need more frequent communication than we have today. Maybe a bi-annual or quarterly conference call or a shared online resource for both groups to post cross-organizational topics? Maybe a single point, joint GANG-IASIG membership discount for joining both groups at once? I’m always open to new ideas and happy to put them on our steering committee agenda.

I think the IASIG could benefit by knowing more about what GANG members are seeking. There are many brilliant people in GANG who aren’t IASIG members and if we knew more about what they’d like to see happening in the industry, we may be able to find ways to help facilitate some sorts of beneficial resources.

The IASIG focuses on an active membership over a larger membership. Our organization does its best work when multiple people at once devote their time to give something back to the industry through a working group. As volunteers that can lead to a slow process when things get crazy in our day jobs. That said, we do have several new members who joined after GDC this year, including three new steering committee members. Lots of new activity has begun, including two new working groups.

The IASIG does not have the resources in membership size or budget that GANG has. Our charter would be better served by 30 very committed, passionate and patient industry experts with time to spare than it would by having 300 less-active members. The IASIG’s output is directly related to active member participation and knowledge. This is critical to understand. Sometimes it’s one person’s great idea being made into a spec, but they run out of time to devote to it and others don’t have time (or the knowledge) to pick up the ball and run with it – so it sits until someone with the knowledge and time can do it. That doesn’t mean nobody’s doing anything – they are – but it can slow projects down. When development of new assets slows down there is no way to accelerate their creation without active participation. People need to draft documents and circulate ideas for a publication of resource in order for us to reach publication. So don’t let anyone tell you that the recent long lead times to develop specifications and other resources means that it’s always that way. If ideas for improvements gain momentum with many people, things can move quickly as long as members stay active and engaged. Having more GANG members actively involved and contributing to projects in the IASIG would be incredibly helpful.

GANG members have my promise that if they have a great idea to improve tools or education for audio professionals in the gaming industry, we will welcome them and will be there to facilitate their project and see it through for the benefit of the industry. Just bring someone to champion the project as chair and everything else is already in place. Likewise, we welcome any greater collaboration between GANG and the IASIG so keep those ideas flowing and let’s find places where the two organizations can help one another! I don’t think a merger is needed (or feasible logistically) but maybe more conversations like this will help people better understand the distinctions between the two organizations and how they work together in different areas for he benefit of everyone in the industry.

Best regards,

Kurt Heiden
Chair, Interactive Audio Special Interest Group

First off, thank you, Damian, for an excellent and well-reasoned essay. I am very much in agreement with what you have said. The acronym for the Game Audio Network Guild is very hard to utilize without feeling like it has negative connotations. In fact, I rarely use the acronym when speaking with folks outside the game audio world, since they’re likely to be confused about it. (I even tell people “Game Audio Award” instead of “GANG Award”.) While the “GANG” moniker was likely quite helpful in the early days of the group, when game audio folk really needed to fly the Jolly Roger and command a unified front for attention, I believe it is time for GANG to grow out of its adolescence and evolve into adult leaders of our industry. As Damian said (and Brian Schmidt thankfully addressed in the comments already), the stature and public perception of the group and its most public aspect — the awards ceremony — needs greater care and consideration, a lesson GANG’s past leadership learned many times over the years. I have no doubt that the current leadership will make the necessary adjustments, and I am eager to witness this advancement.

Thinking further about names, though, I very much like that IAsig uses “Interactive Audio” as its name, rather than “Game Audio”, since it covers the broader area many of us work within. Games are a subset of “interactive audio”, not the other way around, and as we’ve seen, there are plenty of things we all do that constitute “interactive” while not being “games” (i.e mobile apps). From my perspective, that is as important of a reason as the tone-deaf acronym is for GANG to seriously consider engaging in a rebranding effort.

I don’t think it’s remotely a secret that I’ve been rather critical of GANG over the years. Fortunately, with the change of leadership, some of the things I’ve been vocal about have begun to change, which I am quite pleased to see. This makes me think that at some point in the future I could possibly see myself as a member again.

Unfortunately, though, there are some cultural aspects of GANG that are so engrained that they are simply accepted as okay. The one that bothers me most is what I perceive as the “composers first” mentality of GANG. I certainly realize that most of the original founders of GANG were composers and a significant portion of the membership are, as well. But it has always felt to me that the members of GANG thought of the group as primarily for composers, and that sound designers, voice actors, recording engineers, implementers, etc, were somehow not quite as important. I’m NOT saying that the organization seeks to establish that imbalance; just that it seems to be a general “composers club” atmosphere in the membership. This feeling was, to me, exemplified by the creation of the IESD, which basically organized the sound designers into their own sub-group. A voice actor group (GVAC) formed after that, since it seemed a natural evolution. But I don’t recall ever hearing of a similar thing for the composers. To me, that really drives home the idea that GANG — in practice — is a composer club [the general membership] that has non-composer members [who end up filtering their way down to IESD and GVAC].

If GANG (hopefully renamed and rebranded someday) were to ever merge with IAsig, I’d be very concerned that this “composers first” mentality would be a cultural clash and a problem to reconcile between the two entities, as IAsig doesn’t seem to have such a bias, at least not one I’ve ever noticed.

Perhaps I’m the only one who has this impression, but I suspect I’m not.

one point that deserves to be made regarding membership dues to an org like either G.A.N.G. or IASIG is that they exist so that the org can exist to carry out meaningful goals from their mission statement, such as the awards shows, scholarships, and awareness. Those membership dues don’t exist to create exclusivity.

Some examples: As a member of N.A.R.A.S. (they do the Grammys) I pay about $150 (maybe it’s $175 i don’t recall) in annual dues. I’m a voting member (something you have to apply for, assuming you have enough album credits) so I can participate in the Grammy awards process. This is, literally, the first bullet point made on the Grammy.org site under “Why join?” Other bullet points include “Speak out collectively for your rights as a music maker”, “Access Grammypro.com, members only website” “enjoy discounts on the goods and services you use most”.

Oddly enough, that’s pretty close to what GANG offers as well. Although, there is no vetting process for voting members with GANG. If you join you can vote. You don’t even have to be a member to nominate.

Similarly, the same thing has happened with the Grammpypro site, as with GANG and others, which is that NO ONE uses GrammyPro! You won’t find Quincy Jones offering production tips on Grammypro! Everyone got eaten by the Facebook monster or still uses email lists and the brand new site that NARAS just built gets nary a view. Seems like it’s hard to make the forums thing work for anyone.

Another example is the Graphic Design Guild which is $200/year & they offer a handbook, webinars, newsletter, member portfolio website, insurance (that’s cool!) and discounts.

Anyhow, point being is that professional organizations have dues but not because they are creating exclusivity. Far from it. But they do need a budget to create some of these things that we value (education, recognition, awareness etc).

One aspect of the closed G.A.N.G. forums that I always did appreciate was that I could carry on discussions there that would pretty much stay there and not be openly available for others to see (if i wanted some privacy in regards to dealing with a particular client, for instance, or chatting honestly about software/libraries etc). With discussion taking place on FB, you can forget about that level of privacy. Or maybe that’s just a symptom of the web at this point.

Anyhow, that’s my 2 cents on professional orgs and member’s dues. I just include them in my annual cost of doing business (and it’s important to not confuse what these orgs do with what a union does…very different). :)

Brian,

I can sure empathize with concerns and challenges for today’s forums such as the “check out my thing” spamming. Is it feeding the quests of the ever larger newcomer traffic without boring the professionals? Throw in the need to balance site / admin / management requirements with community desires and it can seem like you’re a 110 lb referee getting in between two heavyweight boxers. Regardless of the challenges behind facilitating it, we have to keep putting something out there to enable the discussion, analyze its effectiveness and revise. Obviously these people want to talk to each other, are looking for ways to do so, and we want to help them do it. The forum format may be a challenge but we’ll keep trying. Please do holler if there is any way I can help.

soundeziner
moderator of reddit.com/r/gameaudio