Professional group of gamedevelopers is looking for financial support.

[BG-General]

Professional group of gamedevelopers is looking for financial support for growth of small company on profitable conditions. Please request to ventrual@mail.ru for discuss details.

[Indiepath]

If you are looking to attract investors then I recommend working on your proposition.

[Game Producer]

You might also consider doing a business plan for your investors.

Here's a recent blog entry which you might want to check out:
http://www.gameproducer.net/2006/06/29/list-of-firms-that-will-fund-game-development/

[Ste Pickford]

You might want to consider looking somewhere other than a board full of skint indie developers.

[BG-General]

Yes of cause we are ready to give you:
- Business Plan
- Design Document
- Technical demonstration of project.

In short:
The project in Quest\Adventure genre with RPG Elements. The base of technical side of project is ready. Terms of development are 8 months. If you are interesting in other details, please request to E-mail. It will be better if you give us information about yourself.

Ste Pickford
Can you advise where we can look?

[sillytuna]

BG - have already spoken to you privately but a couple of things can go on this public forum.

If you're looking for funding, especially if you've got no track record, you're going to find it extremely difficult. Here's some random do's and don'ts which many of you can add to.

DO

Produce a short and highly polished demo WITH gameplay. If you have no commercial track record, you'll need one.

Show artwork, including animation, relevant to your game and not one-off images.

Produce a business plan worked on with a professional accountant. Allow for everything, including marketing, testing, accounting, contingency, time taken to get into retail outlets (web, other), realistic revenues (best case, worst case), cash flow (very important!) etc. You can finish a title but not see much revenue for months quite easily, even if it's a good title. People who made it in the commercial world like Introversion and Behemoth will warn you about stuff like this!

Know the business inside and out, as far as your research will allow.

Have a highly detailed design document. This shouldn't be fluffy, but very specific (it can always change later), include detailed artlists, game flow, menu systems, technicalities, and ideally (for an investor) a risk analysis + how you'll deal with those risks (what if your programmer is ill or quits? It happens). A good GDD can save a lot of development time later. GDDs can be fluid during development. As well as a GDD you can do a 1 page overview and a doc explaining the market (casual, indie, commercial) and how you plan to market/sell the title.

If necessary, bring someone on board in some fashion - e.g. part-time biz dev figurehead - who does have commercial experience, esp. at getting games out the door. Indie or not, you're looking for an investor, and that changes things a lot.

DON'T

Show demos that don't sell yourself well.

Promise your game will be the greatest ever. Designs are (generally speaking) value-less, it's the development that adds the value. In the casual space you can see this time and again -the top games are often clones but they are brilliantly delivered. Kudos to all those who made them, many on this board it seems.

Promise the investor money back/sales. You can't, not in the games world. It can also show lack of industry knowledge.

Have appropriate investor terms. If they are paying for the project, they take all the risk and you take little or none in many cases. Your experience will affect these terms as well.

Expect to get rich!

Expect it to be easy - long hours are needed when you get going!

DO NOT EVER GIVE UP!

There's many more I could add, but my other half will shoot me if I don't get out the door on this bright sunny day in Sheffield!!!

[zoombapup]

DO: expect to sell your soul and eventually lose any control of your own destiny you thought you might get from having an investor.

VC's especially are evil.. flat out evil.

Think about it from thier point of view. They dont want to create games, they dont really give a damn about being creative. They want money, plain and simple.

So they need to maximize thier funds, which means they need fast turnaround of profits. So expect a quick escape strategy, expect that they will want the lions share of any profit (and remember that profit is unlikely).

In short, I think going for investment is probably the worst idea any indie can have.

UNLESS

Of course there are counter arguments. It really depends on how insanely lucky you are. You *might* just find that angel investor who cares about making a viable company over the longer term. Who actually enjoys games and wants to be part of it without being at the coal face.

We all dream of such a guy. But I've only ever heard of it happening once. That was for a completed project who got some funding to make it a bit bigger and more polished.

Time better spent making a good game I think.

[sillytuna]

There are one or two people who will invest money , or at least invest someone else's money(!), in game development mainly because they like it.

Everything I've said still stands. It has to make sense from a business point of view. If you don't have commercial experience and/or something deeply impressive, you won't get the cash.

Game development is tremendously risky and rarely worth investing in. Except for those of us dumb enough to do it every day!!!

Serious point - It's very high risk therefore the investor's requirements will be extremely high. Also, as has been commented, you'll normally be selling your soul.

If you believe in a product, try and raise cash through friends, family, and the bank. However, bare in mind what can happen if you fail, and most games do (so don't think you're special - always have a plan B, and maybe even C - e.g. quick reskins).

[Applewood]

Imagine coming up with the funding yourself and consider if the deal still seems sweet.

This is a bit contrived but it does describe well what I'm getting at:

You need to borrow 250K for something. Anything. A rich guy says to you, "I give you 250K now, but in a years time I want either 450K back or I take the remaining money and your home for free, you'll be on the street but still paying your mortgage off for the home I now live in".

If that deal scares you, you're not ready to get funding for your project and the VC will spot it a mile off. They won't back maybes and they certainly won't pay anyones wages. Not in this industry.

[kay.altos]

You might want to consider looking somewhere other than a board full of skint indie developers.
:D And by the way this market is overfull nothing to do here...

[T4RG4]

Is thinking you can get funding to create an RPG.Fullstop.

Awful stigma attached to this, usually, and I'm not saying this is you/your team, the people that want to create this kind of game are buried in their own geeky world. Sure, there are those who can create a good RPG that'll sell, but you will need to fight twice as hard to convince people you are one of them. Keep this in mind.

[IronChef253]

This type of "investment" generally comes from publishers I think(?) Like they will take a look at you and say "okay, we want this" and set up project funding.

From what I saw at Cyberlore, pitching game ideas to a publisher is an artform in and of itself. They used to literally have entire cabinets filled with failed game ideas / proposals that publishers had nixed.

Best of luck to ya

[Brian A. Knudsen]

Hello guys,

im the sort of guys whom would like to become a VC/producer, but actually arent.

From my perspective you should build trust in all aspects and asking for money without reason is stupid and there is no business in it.

I would look more midly at funding if it was like this:

'we seek partners to provide seed capital to allow us to create a tech polished demo for a well documented design'. This is far and square and no dreaming, if you remember seed capital is very small numbers compared to production. Keep budget real, no gold digging or trust is broken.

Nomatter what size money promised are, they would never fall without solid plan where milestones are handed over and trust relationships are build. In all regards the game developers will hand over a lage part of ownership when running on seed capital rather then self funding until demo is there.

the earlier you ask for money, the more likly you reach goal (imho) because outside accounting of your doings, but the more likly you end up with little ownership of your produce.