Indie-fund.com - is it worth it for a dev with virtually no background?

Of course I'll have a playable demo before even talking to them, but I wonder from people who used it if it's worth it, if it is a scam or not and if they *really* accept new devs (they say they are, but practice may be different).

http://indie-fund.com/

 

I see armello and her story on there. You could probably go to those forums / ask the developers if it's legit. If they are, great. If they aren't, great. You'll help burn that site to the ground if it's fake.

 

Yeah, but there are unity games on there too, so I've figured out some of the forum goers may know something about it. But the part of it being legit is smaller concern for me as how it exactly goes on from submission of project to getting funded, since on list of investors there is Rami Ismail from Vlambeer, a person whom I respect.

 

There must be something to it as we own Her Story & it got funding from them

 

None of the people involved rang a bell until I went to Wikipedia's entry on the group and clicked a few links. A list of games funded through them is available there too. Only recognize a few of the games though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indie_Fund

 

There's no doubt its legit, but imagine how many games they see, notice how few they fund. The terms are very favourable which means that its going to be MORE competitive than most funding options. It can't hurt to try, its probably a good experience, but I'd say you are more likely to get funded through kickstarter or a publisher (which doesn't mean these options are likely, just more likely ).

 

@MatthewW might be able to give more details.

You probably need to be pretty well connected in the community to get funding, have a pretty solid game and have worked on successful games in the past.

 

There's some info on the current application process here: http://indie-fund.com/apply/

It's changed over the years--originally we took in applications formally, with the seven original Indie Fund members reviewing the status of all submissions on a monthly call. Later, we had formal scouts tracking both submissions and prospects pretty carefully. These days, there's a wider list of investors, with funding decisions coming out of an internal mailing list: http://indie-fund.com/about/

(More info on the organizational changes in this post, if you're curious: http://indie-fund.com/2015/06/indie-fund-adds-new-investors-now-backing-armello/ )

We do accept new devs--QUBE was one of our first funded games, and they were a fresh-out-of-school team that came in through the public submission form. Nobody in Indie Fund had pre-existing connections with them. They had a promising game and a good demo, and wouldn't have been able to complete work on it without picking up funding from somewhere.

That said, it isn't free money, though. It's still pretty hard to get the attention of someone in the fund. Someone looks at every email that comes into our apply alias--those emails actually go to everyone--and ideally someone on the mailing list will reply to your thread internally with a "holy cow, everyone, this game is great for reasons X, Y, and Z, I think we should seriously consider it".

9 times out of 10 the submission email is pretty uninteresting and momentum sort of dies right there...

If you have particular questions feel free to ask in this thread (or email matthew at indie-fund.com directly if it's more sensitive).

 

It certainly doesn't hurt to know someone at IndieFund.. so send Matt chocolates or spare Unicycle parts... probably the later

Also: Certainly Indiefund isn't a scam, its a solid group of some of the very best indies out there.

 

Oh, I definitely keep my options open! Actually, originally I wanted to get funding from IndieGoGo (as you can't do Kickstarter where I live and I kinda like flexible funding thing, because I will make this game anyway), then if that won't work out, go to a bank and get a loan. Then I've learned about Indie Fund, so now path is like this: IF->IGG->loan.

Just wanted to know a) if it's legit and b) how it looks from insider's (a person who applied and got funding) point of view.

 

You should send the game to the fund and if you hear back you might as well do it yourself because they thought it was profitable.