UK Games Talent & Finance CIC's Mark Hogart on supporting new UK games IP

well thanks very much and I guess we'll take you through the recently launched UK games fun today well that'll help em so the key thing is they the UK games fund is run by community interest company and its founded by the same team that put together the previous prototype fund and operated that between 2010 and 2014 and quite importantly it's not for profit so there's it's a community interest company we are a natural fact they're interested serving and the community of interested serving is the airless stage game sector and the fun that we're talking about today is just the first of a number of initiatives they are planned their UK a GT f to run so the core funding in the first stage of what we're dealing with here is a it's a government-funded games

intervention scheme what we're looking at is getting involved in there really dealing with some of the things that ella was talking about they are the very early stages of IP creation so we're talking about project finance in the form of grant funding for the very early stages of IP developments that's most lately before you qualify for what other sources of funding that we're talking about here today and what's also going to be coming along very soon is the talent development program which will mesh in with that and support even earlier stages of company development skills development and effectively all the important pieces that you need to put together to have a sustainable business in the games industry and I mean as we mentioned their key thing is this is actually developed by the same team that developed the previous prototype fund so that their previous funders for its 70 plus companies and around 250 jobs were created and sustained as a result of it and many nice things were said about the work that was done by that and there may even be some previous recipients in the room and getting the key thing is this will

use a very similar model but taking up to the next level with addition of the talent programme another initiatives that go along Seder so why no well government recognizes that there is a need to grow the volume of original IP in the games industry and that's also been hampered in the very early stages by some of the things that are touched on in the previous a thought and it's really difficult to get there when you're at that stage because you put nothing to secure against equity is quite tough at the very early stages I mean there are some specialist guys that might be able to dip down into the other stages but on the whole as discussed previously they what is required is actually an ability to support your development of a prototype to help you get into the stage where you can actually picture to other funders or publishers or whatever say where's the next stage for your business so really that's the reason why this works now follows on from the previous fund and it addresses a continuing issue and working capital for the very earliest stages of a games IP development so the one trains

us as his Federation one trained was in November 2015 that was an accelerated writing to deal with pent-up demand a sort of hangover from the previous lund was over a hundred applications which is a huge increase on the typical level of applications in the previous fund and twenty-five percent were selected for funding now I guess the key thing there is because there were so many applications and there is limited pot of money that was a quite competitive round and if people who did apply last time who were unsuccessful are welcome to apply again the next round will have slightly different criteria and a slightly longer time frame the fashion was very accelerated because of their time skills hey and also a over 800 Twitter followers or there was a slight bit with my photograph went out last week which is a little bit distressing for me personally but we seem to have recovered from that quite well and so the form of funding what we're talking about is its grant funding in the first instance so up to 25 k / early prototype work and there is in future ends going

to be a 50k possibility that's for companies are a little bit further along and I've got some form of leverage whether that other sources of funding or support yeah but the next line will be principally focused on the 25k a prototype grants and importantly only covers UK costs and specifically UK labour base cost so these are costs going through peer or contractor costs and companies can be standing here in the UK so there's no Geographic restrictions and and unlike the fashion new startups and established a Sienese can apply a importantly thought must be your own IP it's not for a license projects or the like but any projects type any genre platform anything is eligible the application process and has a number of common criteria so I mean in that respect each rainville would cut innovation development capability in potential of

the team and the company they're taking a taking a project forward a how well thought through the Richter market is and the commercial viability of the project I mean obviously these are you know key considerations for any business air but these are the core criteria that we consider that each round and some rounds may have specific criteria and these will get announced as soon as possible air and so there's about to be a new round announced and so any specific criteria will be will be announced at the open up the schedule and I guess the important thing is if you go to the website there is quite comprehensive guidance on the common elements of each round so there is a are some elements are pretty common to each of the reins yeah so I mean I guess as I said a once they say criteria is up and running which their next step the processes will be a call for applications which will be open for roughly two months a review process that follows that of about six weeks and then

there's a final process about four weeks where you may be interviewed in person or via video call and so the grants of the way the grounds have paid in common a lot of public sector grants is a key sub spend the money crushed and claim it back so in order to me that possible you're going to need six weeks working capital to really clean the ground and respect effectively in this case because all the money is really only for a employment costs effectively you have to be able to pay your employee are some contracts provide evidence that's been done and a prorated evidence of continued development of the project and then you can submit your monthly clean so a going to criteria will be announced tomorrow so that's say and then roughly the the program will them for about two months I'm not sure exactly how what the final day is that it'll be roughly a two-month open window for applications that I touch a Q&A

tomorrow lunchtime where you can get I hopefully all the answers you need and there are other events in terms of supporting necessary they're going to be announced very since again a if you're not already fallen out on Twitter you'll get the latest information on Twitter on the website and and also as I talked about at the beginning this is their funders really just the first stage of the program actually the next thing that's about to launch is the games talent program which will wear which is really as I said saying to support an earlier stage so the key thing there is there going to be a number of initiatives that all dovetail with what the fun does and provide support for early talent development she'll casing of talent Lana there and support around the skills required to launch a business in this sector and also will trying to blend together all the people are supporting the fund people have been supported by the fund and between us a support there l estate development of key skills so if you're interested because we are looking for industry

participation in this the UK games talent program is they currently taking expressions of interest for people who might be interested in supporting it and so we're looking for a range of types of support whether it from all over the industry but also universities incubators enterprise hubs the lake because I mean effects of what's there every thinking in this program is suggests that we're going to have a number of regional hubs so we're really looking for people to come forward with their facilities skills wisdom expertise and they work with us on the rollout of this program to make sure that we are developing talents are best suited for the for the needs of Industry and thank you pain for questions if there anybody has any questions about their the fund hey there's not at the moment no

I know there's no question say I'm going to be here until the two o'clock today a curse teen dads are here as well so they'll be here today and they're chill here for a while tomorrow as well