Finance for games

Self-Financing

Advantages	Disadvantages
Quickest and easiest way of securing money	The person who in which started up the business (entrepreneur) may not have the required knowledge or skills to keep the business running or make it bigger.
The entrepreneur gets to spend the money on whatever the entrepreneur needs/wants.	The entrepreneur is the only one at risk, if the money runs low then it is the entrepreneurs roll to sort it out.
It gets rid of any complications of having to add more partners and shareholders.	If an opportunity comes up to expand your business or make an appearance somewhere, you may not have the money to take the opportunity.
It is simple to exit the business.	Possibly be put into debt by taking out overdrafts from the bank.
All of the profit goes to the entrepreneur.

Self-financing means being able to make enough money to carry on supporting yourself/your company. Money that comes from yourself and not from anyone else such as investors and lenders.




http://www.drjeffcornwall.com/2008/08/07/pros_and_cons_of_selffinancing/

Indie Funding

Indie fund is an organisation in which is created by many different independent game developers. The indie fund is to help fund businesses in which are going into indie video game development.
GamesLab Development Fund is a dedicated program in which support and invest in indie game businesses. Companies that are eligible to this program will be granted up to £25,000 to support themselves on. This includes publishing, marketing and distributing.

Advantages	Disadvantages
Simple contract which you doesn’t need negotiation or lawyers. (indie fund)	They don’t publish (both)
Get funded quicker than other funding organisations (indie fund)	Cannot be repaid if your game doesn’t launch (indie fund)
Advisers to ask for advice when you run into a situation or problem (indie fund)	Very selective (indie)
Offers master classes for development which includes pitching, legal workshops, marketing and development. (GamesLab)
Free access to UK events where it is possible for you promote your company (GamesLab)
Opportunity to show your game at the GamesLab event (GamesLab)
Regular contact with an industry mentor who can offer guidance and advice (GamesLab)

 http://indie-fund.com/      
http://gameslab.creativeengland.co.uk/

Crowd Funding

Crowd funding is where you ask a large group of different people for money and then receiving small amounts of money from each person. Crowd funding is very common on the internet.

Indiegogo is accordingly the “largest global fundraising site” in whom help out individual people, businesses and non-profits to raise money online for what they want to achieve. How it works is that you start a campaign and then you activate your community and then wait for it to be funded.

Kickstarter is another website in which helps people raise enough money for them to fund their projects. Kickstarter also builds a community around your work. With Kickstarter, you are able to track your funding progress on your phone with the Kickstarter app.

Advantages	Disadvantages
Free to launch (Indiegogo)	Your project may not get funded at all
“Simply and Easy” campaign editor (Indiegogo)	Collects 5% fee from a projects funding total (Kickstarter)
Multiple payment options (indiegogo)	Pledges on Kickstarter are collected and processed by their payment partner, stripe. They take 3-5% of the processing fees.
100% ownership of your work (Kickstarter)

Grants “Epic has created a $5,000,000 development fund to provide financial grants to innovative projects built in and around Unreal Engine 4. Awards range from $5,000 to $50,000, and there are no strings attached: you continue to own your IP, are free to publish however you wish, and can use the grant funds without any restrictions or obligations to Epic.”

This quote is from the Unreal Engine website. If you are using crowd funding sites such as Kickstarter then you are still eligible to receiving a grant from Epic. Although to apply for the UE dev grant you need your project to already be working in UE4 or for it.

Publishers

A game publisher is a company that publishes video games that they have either been developed by someone in that company or by someone who has created a successful game. Activision is a very popular video game publisher. It has published series of games in which are extremely popular amongst the gaming community. These game series are Call of Duty, Destiny and Skylanders. They also publish games which are on a variety of platforms.