On Thursday, August 19^th, at Gencon, we sat down with five members of the GAMA Board of Directors-- Brian Dalrymple, Phil Lacefield, Mark MacKinnon, Will Niebling, and Martin Stever.  The context was a furious debate over a penetration of the previous Board's confidential e-mail list by Ryan Dancey, recently elected to the Board and since resigned (for background on these events, see 'GAMA Governance Crisis,' 'GAMA Board Member Resigned in GAMA-Gate Protest,' 'GAMA Board, Dancey Respond,' 'GAMA Board Statement on Dancey Resignation,' 'Ryan Dancey on GAMA Board Resignation'). 

We talked with the GAMA Board members about the specifics of GAMA-Gate, the difficult debate surrounding those events, and the future direction of the Game Manufacturer's Association.  No restrictions were placed on the questions we could ask, and every question was answered.  We present the interview in four parts.  In Part 2, we talk about political issues surrounding the board and ask about Dancey's continuing involvement.   

Some people have said that this was so damning to the slate that the entire board should have resigned.  What's your response to that?

MacKinnon:  I think resigning would be completely the wrong thing to do, based on the fact, once again, that the full voting members voted us in.  I think it is our duty to continue to serve until they make it expressly clear to us that they do not want us to serve any more.  I think it is wrong to resign when we were voted to do so, and we're going to continue to do so until we're told otherwise. 

Dalrymple:  If the members ask for us to step down and resign, and I think that would be the proper way of doing it, because that's what the members would want.

Stever:  I guess my feeling is that Ryan did something wrong that none of us knew about in advance and he admitted to it, and he's paid a heavy price.  So when somebody suggests, 'You guys should resign too,' should the full voting members leave the organization, should we fire the staff?  What other people that didn't know what Ryan was doing should pay a price for that?  It's the kind of argument that I don't see a boundary to.  If we had known in advance, and were culpable, or involved, then yeah.  But we weren't, we were as surprised as anybody else.

Lacefield:  You have to remember that Martin and I are in the middle of two-year terms.  So we served with the old board.  If anything, our privacy was as violated as anybody else's, and we should have been as outraged as the rest of the outraged folks are.  We just weren't.  It just wasn't, to us, something worthy of that.  We were elected to do a job.  We were on both sides of the fence on that issue.  Why step down over that?  It just, to us, wasn't that much of a concern. 

We were told by a game company, that someone (not any member of the current board) offered to pay his dues as a full voting member so he would vote for this slate.  (We did not disclose it at the time, but the game manufacturer who told us he was   approached in this manner was Mike Bennighof of Avalanche Press.  He did not disclose who approached him, other than to say it was not a current member of the board.)  Do you know anything about that?

(Several no's around the table)

MacKinnon:  I wouldn't be surprised if that actually occurs, not irregularly.  There could be very good reasons to get people on the board, or in a company, or get a contract done, or do whatever you have to do with regard to the normal course of business.  So it wouldn't surprise me.  I've heard the same thing; I've heard that's the case.  And in the end, I really don't think there's much wrong with it.  If we trust manufacturers to be ethical and honest, then we have to assume that what they're doing is ethical and honest.
It's not our place to judge other people's actions, if someone wants to pay for someone else's membership.  Perhaps that other company couldn't afford to sign up themselves and had sympathetic thoughts.  If you can assist someone by giving them a hand, I think that's very reasonable.  So I certainly don't have a major issue with that. 

Dalrymple:  I want to clear up -- you heard that one company had paid for another company's membership?

We were told by a game manufacturer that someone (not any member of the current board) offered to pay his dues as a full voting member so he would vote for this slate. 

Dalrymple:  I don't know specifically about that individual circumstance.  I can say, having served on the board for a long time and having been in attendance at the meetings for a long time that any year where there's been a controversy, or there's been a contested topic, membership has increased substantially.  Sometimes it's doubled.  So certainly people are going to be more involved when they're upset about something or feel that they need their voice to be heard, and you get a lot more renewals and new members that way. 

Lacefield:  I would ask any company that was approached by anyone on the present board or anyone else with the offer of pay to play, 'I'll buy your vote if you vote my way,' come forward.  Let us know.  Name some names.  Until then it's just another game industry rumor.  Tell us who and when and we'll look into it.  Until then it doesn't really mean a whole lot.

Is Ryan Dancey on the board mailing list, or does he have any other formal or informal role in the governance of GAMA or the board activities? 

Dalrymple:  The current e-mail list that we're using was initially set up by Ryan before all of this went down immediately after Origins happened.  That is the list that's still being used, but Ryan has unsubscribed from the list.  So to our knowledge he is not accessing e-mails currently. 

The old GAMA list still had a bunch of the old board members on it, and because we knew that there had been problems in the past (we've actually also received some confirmation as recently as this past week that people had been able to look at the old GAMA list), we wanted to make sure that we had a secure list in place. This week supposedly all the holes are sewn up, and we're going to be using that list from this point forward; we won't be using our list any more. 

Niebling:  People have been purposely trying to access our list, so we're moving to another list. 

Stever:  In an effort to bulletproof it.