Funding an Indie Project

Greetings Earthlings.

I am finally at the point now where I have done all the grunt work for the few projects that I have decided to pursue. This grunt work includes setting up the server infrastructure for the hosting of websites and other goodies (not the game itself - as this is a whole other story), I have finished all my GDD and High Level Overviews. I have invested in JIRA / Confluence / Fisheye for the collaboration aspect of the projects in question and I have started doing the basic marketing of the projects.

Although I have managed to acquire an extensive amount of Art and Assets, I am now at the stage where I need to start looking at recruiting specialists in the Art and 3D Art fields (my skills are adequate but no where as good as the experts).

I wanted to use Kickstarter ... but unfortunately they only support the U.S. - being in South Africa means I am completely out of luck.

I have done some Googling, but can't seem to find similar type of organisations/websites out there for the rest of the world.

Now my question: Do any of you know of any similar sites that would be able to help me raise the funding?

Paypal donations is an option, but in my personal experience it can take some time.

Has anyone tried to raise money for an Indie Project and if so can you give me any advice.

I can probably forge ahead as is and try to do everything myself ... this however will delay things quite extensively and could result in the projects never getting released.

For one of the projects I have an approved Hero Engine account and would like to recruit some people to run with that project. The other projects are based on Torque 3D (which I have recently upgraded to Studio Accounts and will purchase more seats as I need them).

Anyway ... I think I have rambled on long enough ... so any HELP or SUGGESTIONS would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

The only real advice I can give here is that you need to find someone to handle this portion of your adventure. You obviously have planned out meticulously your development roadmap and are concise in what exactly you want to build, so I commend you there. You're as prepped for the next step as you can get. But since you are asking the question then it's plainly obvious you'll need someone who can not only find funding but help you incorporate with it and leave you to worry about the dev aspect.

 

wil http://www.indiegogo.com/ work? It draws a medium amount of traffic (not kickstarter style, but better than a lot of other similar sites)

 

@Mad: Thanks, I will see what I can do.

@gormlai: Thanks, I am looking at it now.

Much appreciated to both of you.

 

http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-in-the-uk

Looks like Kickstarter will be available here in the UK at the end of the month, might be worth waiting for?

 

Just read that you're not in the UK, oops! You could always try and build up some media hype. A nice website, some art, early demos etc and get donations through that?

 

@loupz: Yeah ... Sunny old South Africa ... weather is cool but the access to these types of services are limited.

What I have decided to do, is the following:

1). Build a fully working Demo (1 semi-large map) that is fully rigged out and has all the aspects of the game I am trying to build.

2). Release the Demo along with some Developer Blogs and Vlogs on a nice shiny website.

3). Try the IndieGoGo approach and see what I can accomplish. I will make sure that the rewards are sufficient and that hopefully will allow me to get some traction.


I have enough art and assets and to make the Demo work and so it will NOT contain any placeholder art or assets.

Doing a fully working demo, means that I will take a little longer to get the project ready for IndieGoGo as I have to balance it with my current day job.


To date I have made some solid progress ... the base Game Mechanics are in place and I am currently fleshing out the main Demo Map (an Urban map with some outlying Rural Areas -- purely to showcase what I can do) and the next step will be to start implementing the final stages of the Game Mechanics that I require for the Working Demo.


I should have some screenies ready by the weekend ... will post them on an update later on.


Thanks again to everyone for the help and advice ... it is a pretty daunting task trying to do this from South Africa ... but I shall prevail. 8-}