The new lineup for the board of directors of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) was recently revealed. Joining the 10-man team will be designer and professor Brenda Brathwaite, consultant Mark DeLoura, and THQ/Big Huge Games studio manager Tim Train. Other details regarding the new board of directors can be read in our full article.

The Game Developers Conference is gearing up not only for conferences and lectures but parties as well. We know that these game developers play hard and party even harder. General events are lined up for the whole week. Find out more on the events after the jump!

The largest annual gathering of video game developers, the Game Developers Conference, will be held next year on February 18 to 22 at the San Francisco Moscone Center. The event, minus a Jack Thompson debate, will feature six game summits for the community. Read about the summits in the full article.

The recent outbreak of anti-video game movements and ideals pressed the Entertainment Consumers Association to build defenses around the gaming consumer. This came at a critical moment in gaming history as the ordinary gamer didn't have an official body to represent him against those that may attempt to hinder one's right to responsible entertainment.

 

The ECA was established to protect the consumers of the gaming community, just as the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) enveloped the developers of the industry, the Entertainment Software association (ESA) represented the publishers, and the Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) spearheaded movements for the game retailers.

In an interview with GoNintendo, Hal Harpin dived into the ECA's objectives and its history, all the while hinting the ECA's views and opinions that gamers might find helpful and could relate to. The ECA is currently concentrating on monitoring developments of anti-games legislations nationwide, including updating a tracker frequently for "potential" laws as they pass through the legislative process.

Interestingly, they are also mindful of the fear of violence in video games that seem to come from people who hardly had any gaming experience. They provide the needed education for interested parties to see the pluses and minuses of gaming, while slowly dropping the non-gamers' irrational fear of games.

But perhaps more interesting than most is the ECA's view of infamous anti-video game advocate Jack Thompson. Harpin cautiously answered GoNintendo's question about their perspectives and opinions of the Florida lawyer and said:

With the resignation of Doug Lowenstein, the former president of the publisher’s trade association, I may be close to the top of his hit list. Jack is definitely not a fan, let’s put it that way. My thoughts on Jack are that he is an extraordinarily effective communicator and advocate. He’s able to pull together groups of otherwise disparate people and channel their support for his side of the argument. To-date, we, as a people, haven’t given him near enough credit, nor concerned ourselves with uniting against him and other anti-games groups. The time has come to do just that, and we need member support in order to be effective in combating them.

It seems that Jack Thompson has said another mouthful about the Virginia Tech Massacre in a recent interview on MSNBC. He has singled out Counterstrike in this specific interview and went on about how it should not have been released to the public. Yup, it's more of the same.

What should interest most people is the fact that Jack Thompson actually called Jason Della Rocca, the executive director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), an "idiot" and a "jackass". This was because of a statement Della Rocca gave: "It’s so sad. These massacre chasers — they're worse than ambulance chasers — they're waiting for these things to happen so they can jump on their soapbox."

Those are pretty strong words coming from Mr. Thompson who has recently settled with Take-Two Interactive. Check out the full interview and listen in on what Thompson had to say.