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独立开发者如何为自己的游戏募集资金

发布时间:2014-05-19 11:25:00 Tags:,,

作者:Ella Romanos

在过去几年里,我们见证了开发者们从依赖大型发行商去投资,营销并发行自己的游戏过度到一个能够更好地掌控这一过程的模式。然而这并不意味着开发者们就必须独自去完成这件事。

越来越多的可发现性变成了一种挑战,随着全新平台的质量门槛的提高,预算也在不断增加,这就意味着能够为开发者们提供资金,营销和发行帮助的组织的重要性与过去一样非常重要。

尽管现在我们所面对的不同情况是开发者能够做出更多的选择,而与处理着整个过程的发行商签署协议也只剩众多选择中的一种,并且通常都不是最佳选择。

一方面,这对于开发者来说是件好事,因为他们将能更有效地掌控自己的命运,但是另一方面,穿梭于众多选择是个既消耗时间又充满挑战的过程。

money(from develop-online)

money(from develop-online)

本文将着眼于当前开发者主要使用的三种集资选择。

公共资助

对于游戏开发者和工作室来说,现在有越来越多的公共资助机会。

有些渠道会直接资助于你的游戏开发,也有些渠道是提供给你的公司资金援助。但大多投资者都要求30%以上的“相应资金”,并且至少需要签订一些书面内容。

许多这样的资助,特别是允许直接投资于开发的资助都是来自欧盟,特别是ERDF(欧洲区域发展基金)。而这也是伦敦和欧洲东南区域的开发者们缺少资金援助的主要原因,因为这些资金主要专注于帮助那些处于特定区域且有助于推动区域发展的公司。

通常情况下你不会知道钱是来自于ERDF,除非你着眼于细节内容,而英国的一些组织(游戏邦注:如Creative England)将申请来自ERDF的资金,然后将其用于资助其方案下的公司,有时候他们还会将其与其它资金组合在一起。

获取ERDF的资金通常都需要签订许多书面内容,但你也将因此获得大量的现金支持,这对于小型开发者来说特别重要。因为这是专注于区域发展,所以他们更愿意资助于一些更具有风险性的公司,从而使其成为具有风险的娱乐世界的一大发展机遇。

还有其它可利用的资金来源,数量通常较小并且是基于特定的商业目的。对于开发者来说一种真正有效的选择:UKTI(UK Trade & Investment)—-面向出口活动(如参加海外活动或营销)提供资金。这种资助通常会遭遇延期偿还,但合计起来将至少有活动消费成本的50%。还有一种选择便是Creative Skillset,它将通过DCMS(文化,媒体和体育部门)提供给任何在游戏产业的经验少于12个月的人相应的资金。

SEIS(种子企业投资计划)

SEIS是由政府所提出的一种方法,这能更有效地吸引投资者,特别是那些具有巨大财富的个体去投资于一些初创企业。

SEIS的最高限制是15万英镑,并且这也是许多英国工作室用于集资的一种方法。有一些投资者是针对于游戏或数字/创造性产业提供SEIS资金,即扮演着投资者和公司之间的中间人角色。

他们都带有一些不同的要求和专注点,但通常情况下,比起其它股本投资方向,他们更倾向于一些较为简单的内容,不仅因为这能够降低风险,同时也因为这些投资过程旨在快速且轻松地落实行动。他们讲使用较少的投资金额去管理过程,然后与开发者分割收益,即主要是基于瀑布分布模式,即收益越高,开发者获得的比例也就越高。

有时候SEIS也会资助于市场营销活动,可能包含或独立于15万开发资金中,如果这项工作是由发行商所执行的,SEIS将只是资助游戏开发。

项目融资

如今出现了许多项目融资组织,他们将设置一家SPV(特殊目的实体)公司,它将部分归属于开发者而部分归属于项目融资组织。该公司将拥有游戏的知识产权,如此开发者和投资者将同时拥有游戏的知识产权。

与SEIS一样,这些投资将带有不同的目标和要求,并且涉及到的资金也大于SEIS,可能是在30万英镑到几百万不等。因为公司的管理成本和运行项目的成本,这些资金往往不会低于30万英镑。

更广的视野

除了本文所提到的三种集资方法外,还存在许多其它形式的方法,如群众募资,EIS(企业投资企划)和发行商的资助等等。到底该选择哪种方法是取决于你所面对的情况,目标,游戏以及市场营销方案。

也许与发行商合作,让他们负责集资,市场营销和游戏发行过程对你来说是可行的,也许你想要的是控制整个过程或者某些过程,并希望能够为获得更大的收益而冒更大的风险。但不管怎样,你需要做的便是去探索所有的选择并作出最明智的决定。

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Getting funding for your game

By Ella Romanos

Over the last few years, we have seen a transition from developers relying on large publishers to fund, market and distribute their games, to a model where they can be more in control of the process. However this doesn’t mean that developers can necessarily do it all alone.

Increasingly discoverability has become a challenge, and budgets have gone up as the quality bar on newer platforms has increased, meaning that organisations that can help with funding, marketing and distribution are as important as they were previously.

The difference now though is that there are a lot more options for developers, and signing with a publisher who handles the entire process is only one of many options and (arguably) often not the best one.

On one hand this is great for developers as it puts them more in the driving seat, and gives them more control over their fate, but on the other hand, navigating through the options is a time consuming and challenging process.

This article looks at three options for funding that are being used by developers at the moment.

Public funding

There have been an increasing number of opportunities for public funding that are available for game developers and studios.

Some of these directly fund games development, whilst others are funding for your company.  Most come with requirements for match-funding from 30 per cent upwards, and all come with, at minimum, a fairly substantial amount of paperwork and boxes to tick.

A lot of this funding, particularly funding that allows direct investment into development, comes from the EU, in particular the ERDF (European Regional Development Fund). This fund is the reason why London and South East developers are often excluded from funding, because the fund is largely focused on assisting companies in areas identified as needing help with regional growth, defined largely as areas where raising private funding is more difficult.

Usually you won’t know the money is from the ERDF unless you look into the detail, as UK organisations (e.g. Creative England) will apply for pots of ERDF money, and then use it to fund companies through their own schemes, sometimes mixing it with other pots of money.

ERDF money generally has a lot of paperwork and a lot of boxes to tick, but can be fairly significant amounts of cash (in either grants or unsecured loans with little or no interest to pay), particularly for smaller developers. Because it’s focused on regional growth, they are also more willing to fund riskier companies than private funding bodies, making it a great opportunity in the naturally risky world of entertainment.

Other sources of funding are available, often smaller pots that can be used for specific business purposes. Two really useful options for developers are UKTI (UK Trade & Investment) who provide funding towards export activities such as attending overseas events or marketing. This funding is often matched and paid back in arrears, but can add up to at least 50 per cent of your costs for expenses and exhibiting at events. The other is Creative Skillset, who via DCMS (Department for Culture, Media and Sport), provide match-funding for anyone you hire with less than 12 months experience in the games industry.

SEIS (Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme)

SEIS was introduced by the government to make it more attractive for investors, primarily high wealth individuals, to invest in start-ups.

SEIS has a limit of £150,000, and is being used by many studios in the UK for funding. There are several funds who provide SEIS funding, several exclusively for the games or digital/creative industries, acting as a middleman between investors and the company.

They all have slightly different requirements and focus, but generally they tend to be much less complex than other equity investment routes, mainly because of the lowered risk but also because these funds have a process in place that is designed to be implemented (relatively) quickly and simply. They will take a fairly small percentage of the investment money to manage the process, and then split revenues with the developer, generally in some form of waterfall distribution model where the developer gets an increasing percentage the higher the revenue.

Sometimes the SEIS will also fund marketing, within or separately to the £150k development funding, other times a publisher will be used, and the SEIS will simply fund the development of the game.

Project finance

There are several project finance organisations now, who will setup a SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle) company, which will in turn be owned partly by the developer and partly by the project finance organisation. That company will then own the Intellectual Property in the game, resulting in the IP being effectively owned jointly by the developer and funder.

As with SEIS, these funds will have different goals and requirements, but tend to be larger pots of money than SEIS, anything from £300k up to several million. These funds tend not to go below £300k due the administration costs of setting up and running the project.

Broader Horizons

There are other forms of funding aside from the three discussed here, such as crowdfunding, EIS (Enterprise Investment Scheme) and publishers themselves. Which one is right for you depends on your situation, your goals, you game, and how you are planning to get your game to market.

It may be that working with a publisher who handles the entire funding, marketing and distribution process is right for you, it may be that you want to retain more control over all, or some of the process, and are willing and able to take more risk for the potential larger gain. But exploring all the options and making an informed decision is the key.(source:develop-online)


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