

Indie (Game) Fund is open for applications - zachbeane
http://indie-fund.com/apply/

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reitzensteinm
These guys have balls of steel to be doing this (or other people's money...).
I started writing a long reply, but realised it was turning out almost exactly
the same as an earlier post I made so with appologies for the copy/paste:

I'm a game developer, have built a profitable but small studio and I wouldn't
invest a cent of my money into a game company I didn't have control over. The
risks of developing a game are:

* Technical. Modern games of the retail console variety are incredibly complex pieces of technology. I would not be surprised if building an MMO was comparable to designing a car in terms of engineering effort expended. If your schedule slips, you need to rework major pieces of code just so your engine is no longer dated.

* Artistic/Creative. The game world needs to be interesting, believable and engaging. Asset production is very expensive. Let your schedule slip, and it will all feel dated.

* Gameplay. The game needs to be fun! This is much, much harder than it looks.

* Market. Distribution is incredibly hard, and even very good games often fly under the radar. Is your game the genre of the month? Is it fun enough that everyone talks about it? etc

Very rarely is someone great at all 4. I'm reasonably good at #1 & #3 and
hopeless at #2, and average at #4.If you manage to somehow succeed at all four
points, then you have a game that makes essentially a one time income of $x
(it's spread out over a few years, but it spikes high and rapidly diminishes).
Hopefully you made a profit!

And that's per game. All you need to do is mess up your next game (for
instance by being too ambitious and letting your success get to your head),
and you're bankrupt. The trouble is that you're essentially engineering new
products each year or two. There's none of that nice, slow maturation of
product and increased customer base you may get if you make, eg, bug tracking
or database software, operating systems etc. Each release is potentially a
very big, maybe-the-company-won't-survive flop.

There are a lot of companies that are established enough that they can survive
on their fan base and income, but they're the exception, not the rule. I
admire every one of them.

~~~
NickPollard
Your points are all valid, but many of these apply to other industries too,
and other industries also have their own subset of problems.

You could basically sum it up by saying 'Startups are risky. Angel Investors
are brave'.

All the risks are why Angels/VCs (including PG in his essays) are always
saying they look for promising founders rather than good ideas. There are so
many risks that can derail a great idea, what's important is that you can
trust the people at the wheel to make the right moves.

There are a lot of technical problems in making a game, but if John Carmack is
doing the coding, I'd trust him to solve them. There are a lot of gameplay
problems in making a game, but if Soren Johnson is doing the design, I'd trust
him to solve them.

~~~
ultrasaurus
That's still not a risk-free approach, you could trust John Romero and get
Daikatana. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana>

~~~
daniel-cussen
"John Romero's about to make you his bitch...Suck it down."

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nihilocrat
"It is one of the main reasons we are able to offer funding terms that are
better than anything else out there. Well, except maybe Canadian government
funding, but we’re not all fortunate enough to be Canadian."

Hells fucking yeah.

~~~
jrbedard
Specially in Quebec, where productions costs are highly subsidized by the
provincial government - [http://venturebeat.com/2009/12/04/canadian-
government-is-buy...](http://venturebeat.com/2009/12/04/canadian-government-
is-buying-the-video-game-industry)

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Dilpil
My first thought was "oh wow, some rich people who want to participate in the
gaming industry, how cute".

But when I saw the team, wow. The creators of Braid, Fl0w and world of goo are
all among the partners it seems.

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wallflower
> It's founded by a bunch of people who have done pretty well with their indie
> games.

Reminds me of the fund that one of the creators of Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles setup to help independent comic book artists publish their own comic
books.

"The Xeric Foundation has awarded in excess of $2,000,000 to comic book
creators and non-profit organizations since its first grant cycle in September
1992."

<http://www.xericfoundation.org/>

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ww520
What are the terms of the funding? If an indie game has low cost development
already, why need the extra fund to dilute the profit? It would be great if
it's a grant.

~~~
nihilocrat
Because the kind of people that tend to make indie games don't have the money
to keep themselves under a roof and fed without taking gainful full-time
employment, which gets in the way of getting a game out in a timely manner
since it's done purely in free time. The investors don't want to make it into
a grant a) out of respect for the developer and transaction and b) because
they don't have oodles of money themselves, at least compared to more
traditional investors.

Think of it less as a business venture to jumpstart a company and sell it for
millions later and more as a way to allow people to have a job doing what they
really want to do full-time... so long as the game is successful enough. :)

~~~
ww520
Understood. Then it's more important to spell out the terms of the funding
ahead of time. Are they paying you money to develop the game then take over
the end result completely? That would be 100% equity funding and it sounds
like a "job" to the dev. 6%, 10%, 20%, 50%?

~~~
v21
The aim is ramen profitability, I guess.

Vague outlines to the funding terms are at <http://indie-fund.com/about/> .
Basically you pay back a proportion of revenue til you pay then back plus a
bit. Or, if you make no money in the first 3 years, you don't owe them
anything.

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revoltingx
Cool, my game almost qualified except for the last bit of making money. I'm
developing an android market distributed game (which doesn't make that much
money, from what I've heard) and a free add supported version. So the income
possibility isn't that high. Though it is a social mobile game it might have
an edge.

