{"id":758,"date":"2014-12-16T16:48:57","date_gmt":"2014-12-16T14:48:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.osmotic-studios.de\/?p=758"},"modified":"2018-04-25T15:24:48","modified_gmt":"2018-04-25T13:24:48","slug":"the-road-to-existence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.osmoticstudios.com\/de\/2014\/12\/the-road-to-existence\/","title":{"rendered":"Money and the road to EXIST(ence)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maybe you’ve heard the news on social media a while ago or just us screaming at the top of our voices: We got funded by EXIST! <\/strong>Today the official funding confirmation finally arrived at the office!\u00a0<\/strong>Whew!<\/p>\n

But … money? Really? Aren’t we “independent”? And still no word of the first game? Why bother with two months of boring paperwork? Well, read on. Also if you don’t know what EXIST\u00a0is – don’t worry though, you don’t have to.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Most people who are in the\u00a0so-called “independent” games scene don’t like to talk or even think about it: Money. After all, we are into entertainment and fun. We want to craft games. All day long. So money is a topic which is too serious for us, isn’t it?<\/p>\n

Inevitably, the moment you set out to make games for a living, money is something\u00a0you\u00a0absolutely must take into consideration. The need to make money (or to have<\/strong> money to begin with) is pretty dominant, unless you have the infamous rich uncle paying for your everyday expenses and you can work in the even more infamous garage (or alternatively in an attic<\/a>).<\/p>\n

At the beginning,\u00a0we\u00a0were fortunate enough to be capable of covering our costs through\u00a0the award money that we had received\u00a0from the German Games Award in 2013 for\u00a0GroundPlay<\/a>. Shortly after this\u00a0we were granted a rent-free office\u00a0by\u00a0HAW Hamburg<\/a>. Still, it was obvious that this black day when\u00a0we’d run out of shiny metal\u00a0coins would come. And it was\u00a0bound to come\u00a0before we’d be able to release our\u00a0first game\u00a0in order to\u00a0make money at all. It felt like a\u00a0dead end sign, hinting our path would soon stop continuing. We needed to make more money with the money we had. Quickly.<\/p>\n

There were a few possible ways\u00a0to go from here:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Make a\u00a0publisher deal.<\/li>\n
  2. Find an investor.<\/li>\n
  3. Pick up a loan.<\/li>\n
  4. Try crowdfunding.<\/li>\n
  5. Find work\u00a0for hire.<\/li>\n
  6. Apply for public funding.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The list could certainly go on a bit, but these were the main options to choose from. However, our very own self-picked constraints narrowed the options down a little. If possible, we wanted to keep out third parties and obligations to those out of the equation. That excluded options 1 to 3. Also 4 to a degree, because even if we like the idea of crowdfunding, the crowd is yet another “party” to report to.<\/p>\n

    Work for hire is something we considered and already did to a degree, but it is\u00a0nothing we are planning\u00a0to continue\u00a0on a larger scale. Since this is very time-consuming, it would have taken us much longer\u00a0to get anywhere near the amount of money necessary\u00a0to complete\u00a0our first game. We feared that splitting resources, on the other hand (like\u00a0some of us working exclusively\u00a0on assigned\u00a0projects, and some\u00a0exclusively on our game), might be\u00a0discouraging and counterproductive to the team\u00a0spirit.<\/p>\n

    So we kind of chose the risky shortcut: We applied for public funding. In Germany, there are several ways to get public funding for games: Filmf\u00f6rderung (movie funds) usually include\u00a0games nowadays. But most of them are tied\u00a0to a certain federal state or region. Unfortunately, there is no such thing in\u00a0Hamburg, where we are located. Although Hamburg has a really awesome game dev scene, this is something\u00a0that is really missing in\u00a0the self-proclaimed\u00a0“Gamecity.<\/a>”<\/p>\n

    Alongside InnoRampUp<\/a>, which is only considerable when you already have something close to a prototype,\u00a0EXIST<\/a>\u00a0was our best public\u00a0funding option, since it is a scholarship, closely tied to a\u00a0college or university (just like our office). EXIST is public funding from the European Social Fonds for technologically-oriented start-ups.\u00a0To get funded, all\u00a0you have to do is apply and describe\u00a0your idea, financial plans, and market research as detailed as possible. But that is easier said than done.\u00a0For us that meant doing research and writing plans for nearly two months. With three people. Full-time. We never imagined\u00a0it to be this time-consuming.<\/p>\n

    To make all the tedious paperwork worthwhile, EXIST will, when accepting your application, fund the living expenses\u00a0of three people for up to one year, while granting additional money for\u00a0hard- and software as well as\u00a0hiring more people. There also is a small budget\u00a0for business coaching.\u00a0But if they refuse you, you get nothing. You lose.<\/a>\u00a0And to make things even worse, many promising game development studios who had applied for EXIST in the past got turned down. So\u00a0we pretty much went all-in with that. Not getting the funding would have meant losing 2 months\u00a0we could\u00a0have used to work on the prototype, which in turn is essential in order to pitch the game\u00a0elsewhere.<\/p>\n

    This is why\u00a0we\u00a0were\u00a0eagerly waiting for the result during the next three months to come, anxiously calling our advisor Werner Krassau again and again and asking for a response from EXIST\u00a0– to no avail. Finally, the\u00a0relieving result came in:\u00a0“Decision positive.”\u00a0<\/strong>And what a relieve that was! We can still hardly believe our luck, as you might witness below.<\/p>\n

    \"Happy
    How do you celebrate a lot of money? Right! Champagne from plastic cups.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    This does not mean that we’re rich now, nor does it guarantee success of what we do. This does<\/strong> mean that we are able to work on our game\u00a0for another\u00a0year, (for the most part) without troubling thoughts of the unpleasant, but yet essential\u00a0money-issue. The dream of the “indie” game developer has come true!<\/p>\n

    Thank you for being so tremendously supportive, HAW Hamburg, Werner Krassau and EXIST. We’ll\u00a0make it count.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Maybe you’ve heard the news on social media a while ago or just us screaming at the top of our voices: We got funded by EXIST! Today the official funding confirmation finally arrived at the office!\u00a0Whew! But … money? Really? Aren’t we “independent”? And still no word of the first game? Why bother with two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":773,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-company"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.osmoticstudios.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.osmoticstudios.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.osmoticstudios.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.osmoticstudios.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.osmoticstudios.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=758"}],"version-history":[{"count":44,"href":"https:\/\/www.osmoticstudios.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":826,"href":"https:\/\/www.osmoticstudios.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758\/revisions\/826"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.osmoticstudios.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.osmoticstudios.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.osmoticstudios.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.osmoticstudios.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}