GAMA will be re-launching its industry discussion boards this Friday, mounting a new challenge to D.P. 'Vern' Vernazzarro's Game Industry Forum (GIF) on Delphi, currently the leading discussion forum for game industry figures.  The new boards, which will be called the GAMA Communication Center, will accept all industry professionals and 'semi-professionals' as members. 

 

This effort comes in the wake of a dispute between GAMA and GIF moderator 'Vern' Vernazzarro over his election to the chairmanship of the GAMA Retailers Division in March.  That dispute eventually led to the resignation of Vernazzarro (see 'Vernazzarro Resigns from GRD Chairmanship'), the purging of some GIF members who had opposed Vernazzarro in the GRD dispute, and reduction in GIF activity by others who sympathized or who didn't like the impact of the purges on the GIF. This created the context for another run at industry discussion boards by GAMA.  According to GAMA Executive Director Mark Simmons, the trade organization is mounting a major push.  'The Board of Directors was unanimous in directing the staff to achieve this, and allocated enormous resources to the creation and management of a top-quality Web-based tool for the industry,' he said. 

 

GAMA tried to start industry discussion boards in 2001 (see 'GAMA Bifurcates Boards'), but was largely unsuccessful.  Simmons said the new efforts will receive more resources.  'Thanks to the huge support GAMA has received recently,' he said, 'the expanded staff and budget, we are now able to do this right.' 

 

Since the value of discussion boards is primarily related to the number of people that participate, it's extremely unlikely that either GIF or the GAMA boards can be as useful as GIF was prior to the dispute anytime soon.  Since both will have only a part of the potential universe of members, neither can be as useful as one could be alone.