Ukie and the Tentacle Zone partnered to deliver a virtual access to finance event in early September.
This event afforded UK developers and games studios the opportunity to hear from leading industry professionals. The talks themselves were interactive with attendees engaging through Q/A with the speakers and panellistst. The first of which was Steve Tinkler, CFO at Tonic Games, who walked us through the thrills and challenges of Tonic's journey from start-up to now and the key commercial decisions which have underpinned their success. 15 years in the making, they are a 300 person strong developer-publisher group with studios around the world, their latest game, Fall Guys is recognised as one of the breakout hits of 2020. Steve shared the insights into how a studio too can build a successful and sustainable business to last.
This was followed by Shipleys LLP's Terry Bourne and Gurvir Cheema, who gave an overview of UK tax relief for the games industry (VGTR), a valuable incentive that allows video games studios to claim a cash repayment or tax relief from the Government after they have spent money on developing a video game.
The first panel of the day saw a number of investors and funders; Hiro Capital, EG7 & WINGS Fund, discussing what they look for when deciding whether to fund a game and subsequently studio.
Post lunch, the sessions were kicked off by Matt Frenchman, CEO & Founder of Sugar, the financing platform for the digital economy. Matt gave his top tips for building a successful studio, before going on to answer some live questions in a Q/A.
Before we moved into the final panel of the day, Kendall Deacon Davis of Kowloon Nights gave an introduction to the Fairchild Initiative, a fund dedicated to projects led by Black creators and studios.
The final session and panel of the event was created to help developers/studios understand value as an independent game developer.
Ukie would like to thank everyone that took part, speakers, panellists and attendees. If you would like to watch the talks from this event then please head to Ukie's YouTube channel here.
For information on upcoming events check out the Ukie events section here.