Minutes
The meeting took place 2026-03-04T00:05:00Z→2026-03-04T01:05:00Z on exodrifter’s Discord server due to security issues with login at the Matrix server. Another meeting will take place at the same time two weeks from now, hopefully on the Matrix server instead of the Discord server.
Due to the nature of the meeting, these notes cover what people discussed in both voice and text communication. Quotes include what people said or posted, with some deliberate editing to remove typos and filler words like “um” or “like”.
Attendance
First, @exodrifter notified attendees that this meeting was being recorded for the purposes of making public minutes of the meeting and that this recording would be destroyed after the minutes were made.
@exodrifter expressed that one may have privacy concerns with being included in the minutes, but that there could be a lot of benefit in posting the minutes publicly too. She asked how everyone felt about it.
- @PGComai: “What does taking minutes mean?”
- @exodrifter: “Taking minutes means that I will be taking notes on the meeting. I may be quoting what people are saying, the points that are raised, and things like that – and who says them. But I will not be making a full transcription of the meeting.”
People responded with affirmation that they were okay with it. Any who were not okay with it, including responses others made to them, have not been included in the minutes.
In attendance:
Agenda:
- What t/suki is right now
- What I want t/suki to be
- What Sociocracy is
- Vision and Mission for t/suki
- Retrospective
What t/suki is right now
@exodrifter: “Right now, t/suki is sort of a fever dream I have of a game development community I used to be a part of when I was in Austin, Texas. The organization was called Juegos Rancheros. And something I really liked about Juegos Rancheros was that there was this really nice connective-ness between game developers and people who enjoyed games, and the community felt really supportive towards that goal and being very art-positive. So, I’ve seen a lack of that, especially in online spaces […]”
See also: Why I made t/suki
- t/suki has a forum (Discourse), git hosting (Forgejo), and matrix chat (Tuwunel). Everything is run and paid for by @exodrifter, with the exception of the status page which is run by @lunarequest.
- t/suki is technically a project under exodrifter LLC for business reasons.
What I want t/suki to be
- @exodrifter wants t/suki to be incorporated as a non-profit, instead of being part of exodrifter LLC.
- @exodrifter doesn’t want to be the “Benevolent Dictator for Life”.
- @exodrifter wants power to be distributed among the members.
- @exodrifter notes a lack of game enthusiasts in membership.
Sociocracy
Right now, t/suki is under @exodrifter’s authoritarian rule, and this meeting is intended to start the transition of the organization into a Sociocratic one. @illuminesce has experience with it and has been invited to the meeting to help.
@exodrifter asks if anyone has experience with Sociocracy. They’ve talked to others about it and posted a link about it in this topic. Everyone answers in a “round” which means that @exodrifter calls on each person individually to provide comments and questions if they don’t provide it.
- @illuminesce runs a studio called Terranova, which established the use of Sociocracy last June, and also practiced it at a volunteer organization. The studio is organized into different circles or working groups, and the leaders of each working group gets the final say. So far it’s worked really well and it gives people a lot more agency.
- @exodrifter reminds the group that we don’t have to use Sociocracy, and that we can choose a different governance model if the group desires it.
- @generalred thinks that it sounds like a group project in school, where you don’t assign leadership, but you assign ownership over different things and everyone has to reach some level of consensus eventually. They comment that it seems like Sociocracy could work if there’s a shared goal in mind, but is not sure what that would be for t/suki.
- @illuminesce thinks that the group project analogy is accurate, except there’s no A+ student doing all the work at the last minute.
- @exodrifter says that one of the goals for the meeting is to establish a shared vision and mission.
- Everyone else has little or no experience with Sociocracy.
@exodrifter understands Sociocracy as a response to how decision-making is done under authoritarianism, majority vote, and consensus. In these other decision-making models, information about why someone might object is lost and/or seen as an impediment to progress. In consent-based decision-making, objections are seen as important feedback to talk about and incorporate into a proposal until the proposal is amended such that no one has any major objections. You also don’t enact proposals permanently, instead putting a term limit on decisions so you can eventually reflect and see if any changes need to be made, again using consent to decide how to proceed.
- @illuminesce agrees with the summary and mentions that in their organization, the circle leaders lead for six months. During the subsequent retrospective, some decided to continue leading and some decided to switch to a different circle. They suggest reading this article for the difference between consensus (everyone agrees) and consent (no hard objections) based decision-making: https://www.sociocracyforall.org/the-difference-between-whole-group-consensus-and-dynamic-governance-sociocracy/
- @halfcourtyeet asks what to do when there is ambiguity on how long to try a change and what to do when there is imperfect information?
- @exodrifter says that these kinds of problems will have to be dealt with by the circles. Each circle has autonomy to decide how to operate, including how to deal with ambiguity or imperfect information.
- @halfcourtyeet says that it sounds like the idea of the system is about where the power is and that it is also about leaving more room for dissent to be less problematic
- @exodrifter agrees and says that objections are seen as really good insight to a current or future problem that needs to be addressed
- @illuminesce says that dissent is actually encouraged. However, this does mean that the group has to continually build trust so that people feel comfortable dissenting. You don’t want to make a group where people feel like they cannot speak up.
- @generalred asks how failures are approached in Sociocracy.
- @illuminesce replies by saying that retrospectives are one way to approach failure. Another is by doing regular feedback loops like asking if a meeting went well or if people need to get something off their chests.
- @outfrost asks what to do when there are people in the organization acting in bad faith?
- @exodrifter presumes that Sociocratic organizations have a circle which would decide what the exact rules and policies are for dealing with these kinds of problems, including under which situations people can be ejected from a circle or from the organization.
- @PGComai asks what happens if there are people with diametrically-oppossing viewpoints. They can see how consent allows you to smooth over small differences in opinion, but they are unsure how consent differs from consensus under such a situation.
- @exodrifter says that you would have to do multiple rounds of feedback to get a proposal to a state that people consent, but for bad faith actors she refers to her previous answer on how a circle would have to decide the respective policies concerning problematic members.
- @illuminesce has experienced this in the large volunteer organization they work with. It usually comes down to the person not understanding the rules of engagement under sociocracy or they are purposefully misconstruing the rules to either harass someone or become a victim. There are situations in Sociocracy in which someone continually blocks and their zone of tolerance is so small that it causes the rest of the group to ask that individual to voluntary leave.
- @exodrifter also mentions that even within anarchic organizations like the one at Noisebridge, there is some process for someone to become a “core member” who is allowed to be part of the decision-making process. This prevents unvetted participants who want to act in bad faith from affecting the organization.
- @generalred was wondering of some ways to approach failures in decision-making due to low trust and how to restore trust afterwards.
- @illuminesce says that one of the biggest risks in doing Sociocracy is that it was originally intended for in-person organizations that use face-to-face communications. In decentralized communities where identities have more anonymity, a lot more trust building has to happen for things to work. In a trust-breaking event, you would go around in a circle to see how people feel and then talk about what proposal you can make to move forward and rebuild trust. You would also want to run events to help people build rapport with each other. Building trust slowly is important, so that people can move with a high level of trust
- @ctrl_o, @lunarequest, @Titanseeker no comment.
Vision and Mission for t/suki
@exodrifter says we’re short on time to fully agree on a vision and mission, so we’ll have to establish that in the next meeting. We’ll at least talk about it so that people can at least start thinking about it.
@exodrifter proposes the following vision and mission:
- Vision: We dream of a world where game developers and game enthusiasts have a space where they feel connected, supported, and empowered.
- Mission: To provide robust digital services and vibrant community digital-first spaces for game developers, streamers, and game enthusiasts to connect.
Round of feedback and questions:
- @illuminesce thinks this is good enough to try. Wonders if game developers and game enthusiasts occupy different spaces in such a way that both cannot be reached at the same time without sacrificing the other.
- @halfcourtyeet would like to see resources on how to make games, not necessarily technical, so that people have a non-technical understanding of what you need to make a game.
- @exodrifter agrees. Also says that they want to build this because they don’t see a space like this out there. One of the motivating reasons for this is because game developers have a problem with their audience where game development is often seen as magic. There’s a lack of literacy about how games are made that affects the way gamers treat game developers. This is not as much of a problem with movies for example, where people have more of an understanding of what goes into making a film.
- @outfrost suggests generalizing “streamers” to “content creators”. Also would like to see a statement on how the services should be controlled by us or by people with aligned class interests. The services should be as independent as possible from owning class interests and from outsized outsider control
- @exodrifter agrees. Wants to also point out that the vision and mission are not set in stone, and that there are often circles in Sociocratic organizations which evaluate the vision and mission to see if the vision, mission, or circles need to be changed to better serve the organization’s interest.
- @PGComai is thinking about how to support game enthusiasts and game developers at the same time. The analog is an indie film festival. Not everyone who watches film will go to a film festival, but people who are more interested in the craft and how the sausage gets made is more likely to be at something like Sundance. At indie film festivals, people get the chance to talk to directors, videographers, and editors. When we say “game enthusiasts” it might be okay for us to not get all the gamers and instead aim more for a specific group of gamers.
- @Titanseeker agrees
- @illuminesce says that we’re looking for the indie dev version of “purveyors of fine wines”. Points out that there’s a similarity between the vision and Portland TBA and Austin Fusebox Festival, which are yearly events and general discussions for people who love performance art.
- @exodrifter says they are imagining a community space open 24/7.
- @exodrifter reminds @PGComai of another idea where we could, in the interest of community over the profit motive, connect game makers with their audiences by letting people have pages for their games on the website. Any and all chatter related to testing builds or speculation can happen on the forums, and they’re all connected to the game page. That way, you can bring people in who heard about the game and that can facilitate people looking into more games on the website.
- @outfrost thinks the t/suki to steam community analogy is really good
- @Titanseeker: “I think viewing it as serving the purpose of individual developer’s Discords but all in one place serves both purposes. We know enjoyers of games join Discords, we know that developers make Discords. This serves both communities. We aren’t worried about getting all gamers, just the kinds that would join Discords for fan reasons.”
- @exodrifter points out t/suki already has all of the services we need to do this in the name of serving the community rather than serving profit. Game developers already need to make their own Discord servers to talk to their communities, but t/suki can do this without the profit interest.
- @Titanseeker points out that Discord doesn’t have discoverability.
- @generalred is in agreement, but has an operational concern. How do we make sure we balance the needs of the two different groups?
- @exodrifter says that this is something the organization would have to constantly re-evaluate. She refers to her earlier answer concerning how there is a circle in charge of evaluating whether or not things need to change within the organization.
- @ctrl_o, @lunarequest no comment, but appear to be excited for the vision.
Retrospective
@exodrifter opens the floor for comments and feedback on how the meeting went. Mentions that she did the role of “facilitator” for the meeting.
- @illuminesce appreciated the depth of the discussions
- @halfcourtyeet would prefer a two hour meeting
- @exodrifter doesn’t want to do this because everyone is joining from so many different timezones, and a longer meeting makes it harder to get everyone to join. We could do proposals for changing the frequency and length, but it definitely can’t happen next week because she will be out for GDC.
- @outfrost says that we will get more comfortable and fluent as we go on
- @exodrifter watched some Sociocratic meetings and was really impressed with how quickly and effectively people would do a round.
- @lunarequest may not be able to attend these often.
- @outfrost suggests buying a house in Iceland for everyone to move to as a solution.
- @Titanseeker says it will be way too cold.
- @illuminesce suggests building a heated biome.
- @PGComai, @generalred, @ctrl_o thought the meeting went great.
- @Titanseeker no comment.
The meeting is adjourned.