We wrote an article “How to Nail A Grant Opportunity For Interactive Development” previously, but what happens if you actually get a grant? How do you proceed in turning an idea into a reality? In this article we’ll teach you how you can try to start commissioning and working with a game development studio. In our previous article we covered more the contract side of things, so here we’ll talk more about work flow.
Request For Proposal (RFP)
Any government funded organization (including most non-profits) need to make any service they need go through a public bidding process. This lives up to an organizations need to respect their funders and the money they give. A public bidding process ensures the organization is aware of the possible ways a contract could be fulfilled, ensures potential service partners have the chance to bid on the business, and helps prevent self dealing, where an organization feeds its money into the board and staff’s own interests instead of the best interest of the community, funder or government.
RFPs are the heart of this system. They provide a clear and thorough description of the need of the organization that are publicly posted and contain information how service organizations or businesses could offer their services for consideration. RFPs are like job postings, but detail the work needed, the metrics by which submissions will be judged, and requirements of contractors. They will generally be posted on the organizations own website as well as others, such as government tendering websites, or in traditional media like newspapers.
The easiest way to know how to write an RFP is to look at previous RFPs from your organization if possible. If not you can check for RFPs from any local major organization as a relatively good guide of what is likely good enough. Of course, because of the financial and legal aspect of these documents you may wish to contact a lawyer in your jurisdiction. As a permanent online article, this article cannot constitute valid professional legal or financial advice, I don’t know when or where you’re reading this!
Tips for Finding a Developer
While RFP is a moral and ethical first step to getting the ball rolling, the truth is, not a lot of digital interactive (especially game development) studios are paying attention to your website or government tendering websites. This means your best bet is to prime the competition by reaching out directly to studios to make them aware of the opportunity. Directly emailing game studios / digital interactive agencies can be your best bet for finding folks. Of course, in the name of fairness, I’d recommend never reaching out to less than 6 studios directly, include your RFP. You’ll want to double check what studios do or don’t do contract work. Not a lot of game studios do, but it’s better to ask than assume not, they may have been thinking about it, but not announced it or known how to approach clients. If you’re looking for a true game experience I would recommend a game company over a digital interactive studio, as they will be specialists in a very deep and specific field you’ll be much more likely to get quality results. However digital interactive studios are much more likely to do contract work.
The following are websites you can use to find game studios across Canada:
- https://canadiangamedevs.com
- https://www.saskgamedev.com
- https://albertamakesgames.com/studios/
- https://www.digibc.org
- https://interactiveontario.com
- https://www.laguilde.quebec
- https://www.interactivenovascotia.com
How to Work with a Developer
Your first step to understanding the Developer-Client relationship is to read our article on How to Commission a Game Project. We detail different styles of relationships and their pros and cons there. This article will give you a good start to understanding the process.
Most of the work with a game development studio will be setting the initial development plan. This phase will require the most work on your part. Having submitted and gotten approved, a grant application, you’ll be able to hand that to the developer, along with your RFP, and they should be able to get a pretty strong sense of what you want, or are obligated to from the grant proposal. Depending on the working relationship you’ve got you can be more or less involved with this concept phase.
The contract you sign with a developer should include key outputs and phases which can help guide both of you in how you’ll relate and timelines involved. It should also have fairly clear requirements about deliveries. This can go both ways. You may need to develop and provide material for the developer depending on the contract. With any project they’ll need your branding materials to ensure logos are properly included, but learning-based attractions may need to provide text or diagrams for the information that is needed to be included in an educational game. Especially for cultural projects video or audio from sources acquired by the attraction or institute might be needed. Remember that any materials used need to have their copyright clearance ensured by whatever party is providing them. If you don’t provide materials as needed by the timelines in the contract, you might be waiving some right or responsibility on the developers part due to this failure. This isn’t just an awkward delay, but could cause hardship for the developer and further delays on a project.
Grant Responsibilities
Any grant-funded project has to put the obligations of the grant as priority number one. Failing to meet the obligations of a grant, could mean having to repay some or all of a grant, even if you’ve spent the money. So you need to double check that the grant checkboxes are getting ticked off by a projects design early in the process, and again throughout the process. Your project should be designed to the grant requirements, so following to the plan that you presented in your grant application is important. Changes always happen, but the major points should stay the same. If you need to you can check back with the Granter. It’s not uncommon to need some clarification. It’s better to do that earlier than later. Don’t let yourself develop based on a hunch, get things confirmed so you aren’t working on the wrong thing, or headed in the wrong direction.
Budgets and Cash Flow
We covered some basic contract and budget basics in our How to Commission a Game Project article. That’s a great place to start to get the basic structures used in commission hiring in game development. Of course different game studios will have different preferences for their project contracts, but that can be discussed as part of the hiring process.
In general grants are often for a set amount, often doled out in two phases – signing and completion or reporting. The bulk of a grant is generally paid out at the start of the grant contract to allow the grantee flexibility with managing cash over the course of the project. A portion, often around one quarter is often held back to ensure the grantee completes the project, or often a final report at the end of the project. This last portion basically as an insurance policy for completion. This means that a grantee needs to be smart with their money. At first they may be flush with cash, but they need to be careful with it so it’ll last to finish the project. The final portion will be a good incentive, but it can be difficult to pay out all the bills to finish before getting the final portion. This means good financial management is critical for a grantee.
Be sure to understand the grant funding schedule so you’ll know when your payouts will be available, so your contractor obligations are after you’ve secured the cash to pay them out. If you have to deal with a held back portion until after the project, ensure that your contract has that flexibility or you have cash reserves to pay out while you wait (and take the risk you don’t get final payment). Getting the funding up front is great so you can have the money in reserve for milestone-based payments throughout the project. If the grant funding gives you a overhead/admin percentage you can keep, I recommend using that portion as the withheld portion so you’ve got the most flexibility in dealing with your outsources first, so you can get your contractual obligations cleared first.
Results and Reports
There’s a few last considerations nearing the end of a project. As the project takes shape you’ll be able to start playtesting the game. Ideally you’ll put it in front of some people in the target audience and get their feedback. This can help inform any changes you might need to make before the project finishes so that the project lives up to its potential and serves its purpose. This might include needing tweaks to difficulty, timing, or clarity. You may have the game developer include some kind of analytics so you can capture gameplay experience data that can be reviewed to help inform the changes you make in response to feedback. Don’t think feedback is precise or entirely accurate, but take it as a guide that you can use with the developer to come up with a plan for changes that might be needed.
Depending on the grant, you might need to fill in a report of some kind at the end of the project. Make sure you’ve planned for this. Sometimes metrics might be requested that you can plan for early in the project. Sometimes these can tie in with analytics built into the project, sometimes not. The better you’ve planned for your final report the easier it’ll be to do, and the quicker you can be done your obligations (and get your withheld funds if that applies).
The Bottom Line
Developing games is hard, but if you’ve got a grant to pay for it there are professionals out their ready and willing to help make your ideas come to life. An expert team that know game development will help solve all your technical questions, if you can find a team that are also experts in education or marketing you’ll be able to trust their expertise to help bring your project to that next level. Thankfully Massive Corporation is here to help you with it’s professional game development and professional educational design team. We’re here to help. We can help you whether it’s production, concept design, or grant applications, we’ve got the experience and knowledge to help you succeed. With our free consultations what do you have to lose? Drop us an email today and let us know what project we can help you with!