Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University.  This week, Thorne reports on the goals the game trade organization set for 2013.

Since it is the primary trade organization for the tabletop gaming industry and since I had the opportunity to sit in on the GAMA goals meeting at last spring's GAMA Trade Show, I wanted to take a look at the organization’s proposed goals for 2013, especially since it has several ambitious ones for this year.  Broadly, they break out into: increasing membership value, enhancing GTS and improving membership services.
 
The organization's most quantifiable goal focuses on the Trade Show itself, with a target of 300 unique stores for next year, up about 9% from this year's 275 unique stores.  This is a reasonable figure, not so large as to appear daunting but large enough that, should the organization achieve that figure, it is more likely due to the strategy GAMA implemented to draw more stores, rather than year to year fluctuations in attendance.  Here's hoping GAMA works to increase the pre-registrations as well, as solid figures ahead of time make it easier for the organization to plan for meals, which do get quite expensive, and give exhibitors a better idea regarding how much promotional material to bring.
 
GAMA is generally quite happy with the retail track of presentations at GTS.  No retail seminars were cancelled due to no-shows by presenters this year and attendees rated the seminar tracks the best they have been in the past ten years.  GAMA now wants to bring this same focus to the manufacturer tracks, which were very well attended this year as well, and plans to develop a manufacturer 101 track on presenting product lines to new and existing stores, aiding its members in expanding their reach to retail stores.
 
Best practices in the industry is something else GAMA intends to look at this year, with a proposal to update its wholesale manual to reflect the current industry standards for best practices.  Kickstarter best practices is another area for which the organization plans to develop a best practices document.  The panel discussion on Kickstarter was the best attended (aside from the meals) presentation at GTS, indicating the amount of interest, and concern, crowdfunding has attracted in the industry.  GAMA has already set up a committee (I am one of the members) to develop a Kickstarter guidebook for members, with Fall 2013 the target date for release.
 
GAMA plans to improve communications both internally among members and externally through the industry at all three tiers as well, though increased use of social media (Facebook and Twitter for certain, not sure about others) as well as increased use of the Game Industry Network (GIN), GAMA's online forum on Delphi.  Externally, the organization plans to partner into and with other consumer shows, enhance educational research (some years ago GAMA had a very strong Gaming in Education program that will hopefully see more emphasis) and increase community outreach, though no specifics had been firmed up at the time of the meeting.  (As an aside, it was mentioned at the meeting that the #1 predictor of social recidivism for kids is a lack of positive social activities for them.  Well, heck, we’ve got an industry full of positive social activities for kids right here!)
 
GAMA has some really good goals on its agenda for this year, especially the potential for emphasizing the community and educational value of games, which would really help my store and the industry in general.  Here's hoping many of them get acted upon.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.