Black Game Developers Fund on rebranding, evolving, and expanding
Danielle Partis
News Editor
Friday 14th January 2022
In 2020, Humble Bundle unveiled that it would be committing $1 million a year to its Black Game Developer Fund, a resource set up to enable independent Black developers to create and publish their games.
Sithe Ncube and Justin Woodward were appointed as strategic advisors to the Black Game Developer's Fund in October 2020. Since then, the fund has signed on and issued funding to over 20 developers, all at different stages of their projects.
In its next step, the BGDF has just signed on eight new developers to receive support from the fund, and is also undergoing a rebrand so it can stand independently away from Humble.
Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Woodward says that Humble has given the BGDF the freedom needed to really connect with the community it is aiming to enable, to really cut to the core of what Black developers in different parts of the world need to succeed, which often goes way beyond far beyond financial backing.
"Humble has really allowed Sithe and myself to jump in and make the adjustments necessary as Black people in the industry, to lead the focus on communicating with the developers and asking what they need, in context to where things are at in the industry," Woodward says.
Justin Woodward
"We know it would be very nuanced, but you don't really know until you start taking action. There's no one rubric that you can create that is going to be one size fits all," he adds.
"If it's a small team for example, maybe they're okay with development because they came from a AAA studio and they need advice on marketing or building out. And then some folks have five to ten people, and they're having a hard time figuring out how to get the next prototype off the ground.
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