INSIGHT: How to finance your indie games development studio - Part One

pcgamesinsider.biz:

In this series, Philip Oliver addresses the serious issue of how to take your indie games development studio to the next level.

Philip Oliver is one of the Games Dragons, a new video games consultancy agency set up by the Oliver Twins who have over 35 years worth of experience in developing games and running games development companies. They published their first game in 1983 aged just 15 and went on to establish three companies, to employ over 600 people and to create over 160 games across all platforms, selling over 45 million units with a retail value in excess of £1.2bn.

Philip was awarded an Honorary Doctorate for Business Administration from Coventry University in 2008 and recently also became a visiting professor at Staffordshire University.

Looking for finance

Running a small games studio has many challenges, with money usually being one of the most pressing. As Blackadder so brilliantly put it: “Some days I feel like a pelican, every way I turn there’s a great big bill in front of me.”

In order to keep doing what you love you’ve got to find ways to pay all those bills and it’s common to look for third-parties to help you do that. But there’s no such thing as free money so it’ll be crucial for you to assess the costs and benefits before you strike a deal.

In this first of a four-part series of articles, we’re going to look at the initial stages of that process - knowing where to look and how to establish if you’ve found the right partner.

Securing investment in any form is a long road with a lot of work along the way, but we’ll dig into the rest of it in future pieces. It’s unlikely to take less than three months, more likely around five to six months, so don’t expect this to solve a short-term cash flow crisis.