A few weeks ago, we posted work done by the community on questions developers and studios should answer about their use of social media.  This work also highlighted a serious gap in IGDA’s operations; we didn’t have any policy or guidelines for our official social media accounts, or for the use of social media by our volunteers, staff, or board members.

We investigated best practices in social media, including reviewing policies from the National Labor Relations Board, the Society for Human Resource Management, and game development studios like Kitfox who have made their policies public. We reviewed the IGDA Code of Ethics, which offers guidance on professional behavior in general. We also solicited impact from our volunteer leaders, which is particularly important for any policy the IGDA implements.

As the final output of this process, we’ve finalized these social media guidelines for official IGDA accounts, as well as volunteer leaders, staff, and board members.  The guidelines are based on a number of key principles:

• Our people-including our volunteer leaders, our staff, and our community members-are our most important consideration, and they deserve protection from harassment and safe spaces to interact online.

• Official IGDA accounts have very specific, defined purposes, and should be used in accordance with those functions.

• Social media guidelines should be as transparent as possible; everyone should know what is, and is not, acceptable.  As a corollary, official IGDA social media use should also be done in as transparent a way as possible while still protecting the safety of the people involved and our community.

• IGDA staff and board members are held to significantly higher standards than our volunteers; as the people who are fundamentally responsible for the strategy and direction of the organization, similar to the officers of a company, our board and staff members should be mindful of their professional obligations towards the IGDA.

• Freedom of speech is an important value of our industry, and deserves to be protected, but does not, and cannot, extend to speech that is deliberately harmful to other people.

You can read the IGDA’s Social Media policies in our Resources section here.