What Matters


You have a game concept, and possibly a team. Investors have money and questions.

A financing deal has to be built on a win-win agreement. Building a product with someone else's money requires a strong and honest relationship between the parties. Answering each other's questions is the key to a good start.

Risks Are Everywhere

Software development is very hard to plan. Unexpected problems—hardware failures, employee turnover, and so forth—keep cropping up at the most inopportune moment. Not only should your design be structured in such a way that it minimizes risk, but you must also prove to investors that you have taken all of the steps necessary to do so.

It is very important to be completely open and honest at this stage. All parties involved need to know what parts of the development carry the risks, how to handle them, and so forth. For example, the technology to be used has to be discussed in detail; using pre-existing engines or building on a previous game carries much less risk than rewriting code from scratch, even if it means more work.

Fallback Plans

Plans fail. Seemingly perfect ideas sometimes turn out to be wrong. And things sometimes just don't happen as expected.

Nobody is expecting you to deliver a problem-free project. However, investors need to know that you're ready to handle the problems as they arise. Take the right steps to minimize the risks, and prepare multiple fallback strategies to account for the possibility that part of your design might be cancelled, that you might lose a part of the team, suffer technical or planning problems, or that an unannounced competing title might change your own game's market conditions.

Experience and Knowledge of the Industry

Dealing with a company familiar with the game business is definitely easier for everyone involved. If your investor is not also your publisher, relationships can become slightly more complicated, especially if the funding company has no prior game industry experience. If that is your case, question the investors about their motivations for entering the game market and try to understand their culture and goals.

Commitment

All projects go through hard times. For an investor, it is sometimes easy to bail out, leaving you with very little recourse, no matter what the contract says. Keep in mind that contracts are not much more than what arguments revolve around in courts if things go wrong, and that the investor has more money to fight legal battles than you do.

In practice, completing the project successfully will require you and the investor to be more flexible than what is specified in the contract. As long as both parties are committed and on good terms, this is the way every project goes. Therefore, before signing with an investor, make sure that they are as committed as you are. Ask the tough questions: Are they going to concentrate on a couple of projects, or do they run a myriad of them at the same time? If your game is just 1 out of 100 projects for them, it probably won't hurt them much to cancel it for any reason they please. Ask them to demonstrate a strong interest in your project and team.

Flexibility

Don't be afraid to ask the prospective investor about their plans if the game slips, and if they'd be open to prototype some ideas that might change the nature of the product. While the answers to these questions will need to be detailed in the contract, it is a good idea to understand the intent of what the other party is looking for as early as possible. Do they want a specific game to fill a niche, or just any good game with a chance to compete in the marketplace? Learn from other developers who worked with that investor.

How Solid Is the Company?

Even a good deal is not worth much if the company disappears in the middle of your project. It is important to do your homework and then question them. You'll have to get involved with their politics and listen to their employees as well as other developers before you can determine if you want to do business with them. Remember that a single replacement on the board of directors can make the difference between saving and canceling your project, and that this type of situation is out of your control. And don't forget that the financial situation of the investing company's subsidiaries, parent company, or other branches might also affect you.




Secrets of the Game Business
Secrets of the Game Business (Game Development Series)
ISBN: 1584502827
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 275

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