This week I've got some wild news to share: I've secured some funding!
I guess I'm a game developer for realsies now? Read on for the lowdown.
Funding Secured
Firstly, I'm super excited to announce that I've received funding from Screen Australia's Emerging Gamemakers Fund to keep working on this game! 1
Actually, I'm double super excited because I've also received funding from Screenwest's Digital Games Production Fund! 2 3
These are grants, not loans or a publishing deal, so there's no need to repay them, nor will I need to pay any royalties or anything like that. 4
In case you're wondering: it's comfortably more money than the median lifetime revenue of a Steam-released game5 - but if you're after the big bucks, well, you're better off working at Maccas. 6
Using Funding
These grants are both "preproduction" funding: the intent is to use them to make a good prototype (so as to get further funding or a publisher for "production" later).
Now, I already had a vaguely playable prototype, so when I applied I set two goals:
- Build a cool spell system - one that's both easy to pick up and stays fun even through hours of playing.
- Find out if networked multiplayer is feasible, by trying to implement my fever dream.
Regular readers will have noticed I'm heads down on #1 right now (with varying levels of success).
So, you'll hear more about #2 later - but for now I need to reiterate that this is not a guarantee that there will be online multiplayer: multiplayer is hard, networked multiplayer is twice as hard, and it's especially difficult when your game simulation is both CPU and data (i.e. memory & bandwidth) heavy.
(Also everyone says "don't make your first game multiplayer" but hey what would those industry veterans know about anything, amirite?)
These funds can also be re-allocated as needed, so maybe I'll scrap the networked multiplayer plans to make an overall-better local-multiplayer game instead. 7
We shall see: I'd rather make a fun local multiplayer game than a boring networked multiplayer game!
Acquiring Funding
A few readers are probably interested in the process of getting a grant, so here are some things I can share:
- I heard about the funding availability through word of mouth. 8
- Each application took about a week of full-time effort, spread over a month. 9
- For each application, I submitted: a creative pitch deck,10 a 10-pager game design summary,11 a spreadsheet budget,12 a project plan,13 a plan to productionize,14 a playable demo,15 a heartfelt video,16 networked multiplayer technical design,17 my resume,18 licensing info,19 and as many links to this website as I could plausibly cram in without being too obnoxious.
- I recommend carefully reading the guidance given,20 because government agencies literally tell you what they do and don't want to see. 21
- Staff at both Screenwest and Screen Australia are super responsive and helpful; definitely email them beforehand if you have questions or want feedback on your application. 22
- After submitting, you don't hear anything for a month or two.
- Once you hear you're accepted, signing the contracts takes another month or two.
- Once contracts are signed you can get (some of) the money... but each deal is embargoed23 until the relevant agency announces it, which is why you're only hearing about it now. 24
- A small mistake I made: I really should have budgeted $500-$1,000 for legal & insurance costs associated with closing grant funding.
- A bigger mistake I made: I wish I had asked for more money in general!
Disclaimer: I am not an expert! It's entirely possible (and even likely) that I just got lucky on my first time.
Anyway, that's all for this week! Come 
celebrate in the Slow Rush Discord.
Doing that paperwork half a year ago was a good idea!
For my non-West-Australian friends: Screenwest is West Australia's equivalent of Screen Australia.
Shocking, I know.
Though I admit my excitement at announcing both bits of funding together is reduced by 1% on account of the two sets of logos not aligning their middle-divider line nicely with each other.
How am I supposed to make that look good when they're next to each other, you guys?!
For ballpark numbers by genre, check out What genres are popular on Steam in 2022.
Thank you my tax-paying Australian readers!
There are some fairly reasonable strings attached; I can't share details, but to give a taste...
If - purely hypothetically - you were a government agency who threw money at a certain industry in order to promote the growth of that industry, letting members of that industry get away without acknowledging your role in their success would probably be bad.
And likewise, if you threw money at someone who then made a game about torturing puppies, maybe you decide that it's important to allow their artistic expression, but at the same time you might prefer that particular industry member actually not acknowledge your role in their success.
Now just repeat that sort of thing until you've filled up a number of A4 pages that is surprisingly large relative to the actual amount of money involved.
For my international friends: Maccas.
Or, err, are there any important gamedev conferences in, oh, I don't know, let me pick a place at random... in Vegas, maybe?
It is important to keep up with the state of the art, you know.
...
Relax, my government agency friends! I know this funding has some requirements as to where it's spent. I was just joking!
After all, Perth can host perfectly good parties in its single casino too.
Thanks Spuddy, Nick and Ian!
Only included for Screen Australia. I used the Screen Australia template almost verbatim, and put exactly zero effort into theming or styling it.
I based my design document on the structure in Level Up. My section headings: Summary, Characters and Controls, Gameplay Overview, Game Experience, Mechanics, Enemies and Bosses, Accessibility, Monetization, Status/Roadmap, Team, Risks.
I used the template Screenwest provided,
Only included for Screen Australia. Follows this template.
My plan for how to go from "working demo" to "released game on Steam" (which at the time boiled down to "use my savings"), along with explicit callouts of what funding would be used for.
That's excluding writing the 10-pager game design summary, which I had already done just before.
As of the end of March - which is to say, the actual gameplay was moving a rectangle with a hat around, but the atom and moving body simulation was working well enough to demonstrate the pixel physics concept. Only for Screenwest, since Screen Australia didn't accept demos.
Only included for Screen Australia. My script was: 3x 10 second shots of narrated demo gameplay, 15 seconds showing my inspiration games, and then about a minute of talking about myself, how this game advances my game dev journey, why this game matters to me, and what I would use the funding for.
I was really worried that I would be lumped into a noob developer doesn't understand how hard multiplayer is so we should disregard him bucket, so I wrote a six page version of this multiplayer fever dream update (or rather, I wrote the six pager first then drastically cut it down to form that update).
It discussed multiplayer technical architectures in some depth and included feasibility calculations with respect to frame budgets and bandwidth for each approach; I was hoping that would push me into the yes this is a noob game developer but actually he can code a bit and based on his research evidence he does know how hard multiplayer is but still he made a reasonable case that it's feasible, so maybe we give him a shot? bucket.
Only included for Screen Australia, since I was only pitching Screen Australia on "fund me for prototyping networked multiplayer".
Only for Screen Australia. As per longstanding tradition, I assumed my resume would be filed in the closest circular file - so I just exported my LinkedIn profile.
As in, the licenses of open source software I used (though if I had licensed some IP then that'd be included here too). Generated automatically using cargo about and cargo deny and some custom scripts to make things more readable. Only included for Screen Australia.
Example 1, Example 2. They also include wry gems like "Due to generative AI’s inability to conceive original creative thought, it may not be an appropriate tool in crafting a competitive application for cultural funding."
For example, if they write "videos from successful teams often featured a chipmunk high on helium in a tiny yellow tracksuit", it doesn't hurt to go find yourself a chipmunk and some birthday balloons even if you can't get the tiny yellow tracksuit.
I got some feedback from Screenwest that was quite helpful. I should have sought feedback from Screen Australia too but by that point I just wanted to be done with paperwork!
As in News Embargo.
If you give them some stellar art then they can feature it and you get some free press coverage. Or if you give them a great sounding hook you might still end up on the first page.
If you're a terrible artist because you're still in awe of how pixel art manages to convey information while only containing tiny squares, and your game's demo screenshots still look like MS Paint drawings, and you didn't write well because you didn't realize you were competing, well, then you get relegated to a back page that nobody reads. (And to be clear, that's at least partly on me for not treating the occasion like a press announcement.)
But, you can still write footnotes that make fun of yourself, so there's always a silver lining.