This applies equally to the quality of teams as much as to the concepts themselves. After all, anyone who’s been reading Denki’s blog for any length of time will already know we believe the creative process to be limited by great teams rather than great ideas.

And funding should be about proving its value every week – none of this “six months and then we’ll expect some progress” that seems to be the norm so often. That approach simply doesn’t work when proving concepts in the games industry. Investments need to be limited in small quanta either by amount or time.

There needs to visible progress at the end of a week’s development, or after an investment of £x amount – enough to justify further investment. Otherwise don’t expect people to take your word for it. Go and prove whatever needs to be proved on your own time, at your own expense and *then* come back for additional funding in those cases.

I believe the selection criteria is still to be established, but ensuring it meets the standards we’d expect as professional game developers, as well as tax payers, will definitely be an important part of making this system work for the long-term.

Realistically this is an opportunity to prove a creative development methodology – no more – and that means it’s about results. If we end up with anything less than a system that delivers the results people expect, it doesn’t really deserve to continue being funded in my opinion.

Which is why I believe getting the process right is *so* vitally important. Not just for students and game developers, but for showing a way forward for the creative economy as a whole.

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For every stable little studio like Denki doing things right, there are dozens of hapless little startups living on the breadline. Clearly if you aren’t proven capable of running a business, and if you haven’t demonstrated good faith by shouldering a chunk of the risk yourself already, we as taxpayers should not be entertaining the notion of giving you any funding.

Clearly the ideal use for such a fund would be to give proven, established local studios a little more polish time on their demos, to allow them to negotiate with publishers from a stronger position.

The money is there, so it is up to devs now to do the work and prove they aren’t just yet another unprofitable local industry being subsidised by handouts from the taxpayer.

Those are great news! I’m just sad that here in Portugal we still have a LONG way to go before that happens…

I actually wrote it when I only had use of one of my arms. No joke.