Over the four years from 2015 to 2019, the Video Games Prototype Fund, which will be administered from offices in Dundee and London, will offer grants of up to £25,000 to support video games projects, as well as creating jobs, nurturing talent and furthering the growth of games clusters all around the UK. Like its predecessor, the new fund offers businesses grants of up to £25,000 each in order to turn their ideas for new games into working prototypes which can then be used to woo private investment – or, as is increasingly the case, to launch a crowd-funding campaign via Kickstarter or similar. There will also be a second tier supplying funding of up to £50,000 to more advanced projects. The government will also provide talent development initiatives, competitions, placements and mentorship schemes, having already introduced tax relief for the sector.
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A report published last September found there were 1,908 video gaming companies in the UK.
The VGPF is run by the UK Games Talent and Finance CIC and, according to statements, will come in with £4m to be spent over the next four years.
Ed Vaizey is the person within the United Kingdom government who looks after the gaming industry.
“This fund will give small businesses, start-ups and individuals the support they need to better attract private investment and go on to create the blockbusters of tomorrow”.
The Prototype fund will build upon a previous government-supported scheme, which was successfully run by Abertay University between 2010 and 2014.
More interestingly, perhaps, the UK Games Fund is, among other things, a move to increase the number of new game IPs in the country.
United Kingdom gaming entrepreneur and one of Tomb Raider’s founding fathers Ian Livingstone said: “The United Kingdom has a long history of developing world-class video games”.
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The official missives announcing the fund mention lots of developed-in-Britain games like Tomb Raider and Grand Theft Auto, which apparently made ” significant cultural and economic global impact”.
