We in Games Finland’s board accepted and published WIGFI’s vision and values at the beginning of this year. They can be found here:
Our vision and values are not set in stone; on the contrary. We want them to stay up-to-date and to reflect the variety within our organization and the Finnish game industry. If you have any feedback for our vision and values, please send a message to me or use any of our channels that best suit you.
Two years of making
Drafting our vision and values started at the end of the first operational year of WIGFI. In December’s board meeting, the board 2019 summarised thoughts and experiences from the first year, wrote them on post-it notes, and tagged a wall full of post-its. Then these ideas were left to rest.
Why? WIGFI is not a homogeneous group. We are diverse in so many ways: we identify as women, non-binary, men, students, professionals, C-level people, parents, singles, entrepreneurs, persons with disabilities, persons of color; we have different religious views, sexual orientations, generational experiences, and we come from various cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. We can be many of these at the same time and even more that were not listed here. We unite in diversity – and in the fact that we are interested in making video games.
So it is possible, even quite likely, that when a small group of people representing many collects what we are and what we want to be, something might be missing. The very nature of diversity is to realise that your worldview is not shared by everyone. Giving ideas a bit more time, discussing them with many, and publicly asking an opinion can help to make the outcome better.
Listening and communications is <3 of what we do
Because of the diverse nature of our members, our experiences vary a lot. When some people might feel that there is nothing negative in a given situation, someone else might find the situation overwhelming. Nobody is wrong. The experience is different.
What would be wrong in a given situation would be to say “there wasn’t anything negative in that situation”. We can’t deny other people’s experiences. But neither can we deny other’s opinions.
We are strong supporters of open discussion in our forums, as we believe that communication is the only way to understand others. We want you to share knowledge, listen, inspire, encourage, and to help others.
Following that, we are strong supporters of the possibility to disagree. If you feel that the opinion someone has presented is not quite right, you have all the right to say it aloud on our channel.
But we hope for civilised discussions in our channels and events. There are plenty of ways to disagree, and we urge you to find a constructive way. It is very likely that the angry or uncompromising words will echo back. In our word, none of us is more important than the other. There is no need to find consensus, but there is a strong need to accept that others have different opinions.
We are the organisation our members want this to be
Our members make us what we are. In our annual meeting, our members define the focus areas for the next year. But everything we do is based on the ideas from our active members who are willing to work for the things they see important. So if you feel WIGFI is not doing the right thing: come to our annual meeting, raise your voice, and join our activist making this little corner of the world a little bit better place.