John Sharp, an author, a game designer and associate professor of games and learning at the School of Art, Media and Technology at the Parsons The New School for Design, has stepped down from his co-chair position at IndieCade, the annual indie game awards show.

In a very lengthy post over on his official website, HeyI’mJohn.com, Sharp explains in great detail exactly why he’s stepping down and it has to do with the sustainability issues (or lacking options therein) that indie game makers suffer from.

Sharp explains that part of his mission was to increase diversity and inclusiveness in gaming, stating…

“Part of IndieCade’s mission is to bring more diversity to games—both in terms of the play experiences, but also those making the games. With this mission in mind, my co-chairs and I have worked hard to diversify the speaker pool. We’ve done a pretty good job of it, too: this year we have roughly a 3:2 ratio of women to men, approximately 25% people of color, and an even larger percentage of LGBTQ-identifying speakers.”

Sharp explains how events like the GDC and IndieCade help give marginalized voices a platform to be heard and an outlet for these voices to get their projects up and out to the public. However, Sharp also believes that these events aren’t necessarily doing more for the game makers beyond simply giving them a platform and then moving them on their way.

Sharp explains that there’s little post-conference sustainability offered through events like IndieCade and GDC, saying…

“Events like IndieCade and GDC’s diversity track give these developers and critics a platform to share their work, but I fear these events are not providing sustainable, long-term benefit to those outside academia and game development companies.”

According to Sharp, indie devs aren’t gaining anything long-term from stepping away from IndieCade even if they do step away with an award and some recognition from the gaming press.

Sharp’s biggest issue with conferences like GDC and events like IndieCade is that there isn’t enough support thereafter, stating…

“Academic conferences operate within the larger ecosystem of higher education, from which we can return to our jobs as faculty or our studies as graduate students. But gamemakers outside academia and game companies leave Culver City to return to… what, exactly? There simply isn’t an infrastructure there to provide a basic, sustainable quality of life.”

Sharp cites a couple of organizations and initiatives like Intel’s $300 million diversity investment and their “gaming for everyone” program, as well as the indieXchange.

Although, technically if an artist or designer makes a good game it sells well enough to support them. If they make a great game, it enables them to make more games and support themselves, with some examples like Evoland and Gunpoint being small-time indie projects that jettisoned the creators into success.

The market determines sustainability.

Even still, in the mind of Sharp, he feels more needs to be done to help creative artists outside of simply propping up their work and celebrating them for it; they need to be able to live comfortably outside of “winning” anything from IndieCade, so believes Sharp.

However, not everything is merriment and fanfare when it comes to IndieCade. Last year ShortFatOtaku and Camera Lady did a series of videos about alleged corruption happening within the IndieCade circles and the appearance of conflicts of interest.

The videos also highlighted a similar event for independent game developers, the Independent Games Festival, previously chaired by Brandon Boyer. This past July, Brandon Boyer stepped down as chairman of the IGF for undisclosed reasons after a five-year stint.

John Sharp stepping down as co-chairman of IndieCade has been done with more transparency and communication to the audience, explicitly detailing why he’s stepping and what the actual problems are with the current ecosystem of the indie game award shows.

It will be interesting to see if there are further shakeups within both the IGF and IndieCade before the year is out.