IGDA Updates Its Game Crediting Policies

The International Game Developers Association (IGDA)’s Game Credits Special Interest Group (SIG) announced that it has released the first significant update to its game crediting policies guide in 10 years, with the aim of enhancing crediting standards throughout the video game industry.

This effort was prompted by the 2023 State Of Credits industry survey conducted by the Game Credits SIG.

According to the survey, more than half (51.3%) of the respondents reported that they either "never," "seldom," or "sometimes" receive official credit for their contributions. Besides, 83.1% of respondents were "unsure" or answered "no" when asked if their employer or client had a game credits policy in place.

Based on these results, the Game Credits SIG highlighted the need for standardized, industry-wide best practices.

To address this issue, the group has started taking multiple actions, including updating the Game Crediting Guide based on feedback from other IGDA SIGs like the IGDA Localization SIG, internal feedback, and IGDA HQ.

The Game Credits SIG is currently working on a second version of the updated policy, which will be revised based on peer feedback from the Game Developers Conference Roundtable.

Additionally, the groups, including the Credits, Engineering, and IGDA Accessibility SIGs, are currently collaborating to create an open-source toolkit that will help developers implement and execute these policies. According to the groups, the toolkit, which will be available soon for Unity and Unreal developers, is modular and scalable, with easily updatable UI and text-based scrolling credits that can adapt to a team's needs.

Apart from this, the Game Credits SIG was present at GDC and introduced a new hashtag #FixGameCrediting to bring attention to the issue. The Localization SIG worked with the Game Credits SIG to create badge ribbons for GDC, which were distributed with the hashtag launch.

You can learn more about the Game Credits SIG's efforts here. Also, don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.