A post up in the IGDA Sydney facebook group has pointed out the fact that the latest round in funding from Screen NSW's Interactive Media Fund was awarded to zero game projects. Only a small portion of the $298,205 funding from this round went to anything remotely games related - a small $3,380 travel subsidy for Sydney games developer, Nnooo, to travel to the E3 Conference in Los Angeles. The rest went predominately towards mobile apps development, as well as a transmedia project and a start-up business plan.
The Interactive Media Fund was announced by the NSW Government late last year, pledging $3 million support for creative digital content. It replaced and expanded the Digital Media Initiative which saw NSW based games developers DinoRoar, Uppercut Games, VagabondArmy, and Epiphany Games funded for various game projects.
(NSW Deputy Premier, Andrew Stoner) We are refining the Digital Media Initiative to reflect its alignment with industry priorities and have invested $3 million in the new Interactive Media Fund.
So what's the reason for the lacking presence of games-related projects in this round of the Interactive Media Fund? We're not really sure. The discussion from the IGDA Sydney facebook group points to many possibilities, from the lack of quality submissions from NSW games developers, a highly competitive round of submissions from other sectors, to a bias from the assessment panel. We're certainly hoping it isn't the latter.
I don't think that is actually correct
I don't actually think that these are for the last funding round as I think the latest projects haven't been announced yet. These seem to have come in-between funding rounds. I discovered the following link prior to chasing up about the current funding round and when decisions would be made:
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/439186/new_south_wales_dishes_2…
My assumption was that they were the result of those unhappy with the last funding round in that their projects didn't get funding so they took things further to have the decisions reviewed in their case. Perhaps because they felt that games were actually unfairly represented in that the fund is supposed to be for the Interactive Media industries -- not just games; but really, there is only one reason why the fund exists.
If I am wrong, I would really like to know as I put in a pretty good app all things considered :/. But, I do believe that they had yet to even meet to make their final decisions yet and that link was already up.
Though come to think of it,
Though come to think of it, it may be the reason why there hasn't been an announcement as these projects have been funded out of this round. Making decisions harder as there is less funding to go around... Just a thought.