Indie Fund

The Indie Fund is an organization created by several independent game developers to help fund budding indie video game development. The Indie Fund was created in early 2010, its purpose aimed "to encourage the next generation of game developers" by providing them funding for development of these games without the terms that would normally be associated with publication agreements.

The founding and current members of the Indie Fund include: Ron Carmel and Kyle Gabler of 2D Boy, Jonathan Blow of Number None, Kellee Santiago formerly of thatgamecompany, Nathan Vella of Capy, Matthew Wegner of Flashbang Studios and Aaron Isaksen of AppAbove Games.

Members of the Indie Game organization have identified difficulties for indie developers to be able to fund their projects. Ron Carmel noted that there are typically two ways that this funding can occur: either through the developers providing their own money to initiate the project, or by signing deals with publishers for funding in exchange for part of the game's revenues being given back to the publisher. Neither of these choices were considered optimal for an aspiring developer, according to Carmel.

In 2008, several self-published indie games, including Audiosurf, Braid, Castle Crashers, and World of Goo were released to both strong critical reception and large sales. All of these games were initially funded by their respective studios, and demonstrated that investment in independent games could be profitable. With the following years also providing more commercially-successful games, the Indie Fund group decided to create the fund, using the profits from these games, as to aid the next iteration of indie games.

Investments in indie games are pulled from the Fund's reserves. Currently, the group states they can select two to three games that they can support per year, but they believe as the Fund expands, they can invest in more projects. Developers cannot directly apply for investment by the Fund; instead, the Fund watches the indie game market, observing games that get notice from the gaming press through both conferences and word-of-mouth, and selects candidate teams from these sources. The Fund provides monthly payments to the selected projects to cover development costs; upon release, the developers are expected to pay back the development funding and a small portion of the game's revenue over the next three years based on the level of funding required. There is no penalty for failing to be able to pay back the full funding and revenue; should this occur within three years of release, the Fund requires no further payment, and all further revenue can be kept by the developers. The Fund allows the developer to retain all IP rights, and does not set any timetable for the development, only requesting monthly progress updates.

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