I shared this on the news page but I thought it was an interesting new take on things. Currently I'm not aware of anyone else doing this or have heard about it in the past.
What are your thoughts?
I think it might open it up to teams with smaller spread out budgets and maybe even the bigger guys that like to spread things out over time.
http://www.exisinteractive.com/financing/
Replies
I like the idea of it, this service will be great for Indie studios no doubt. However, I can't help but think that perhaps this is a play by Exis to become the next big EA/Activision in 10 years or so.
Most banks and investors don't want to loan money to game devs - they either don't understand the business or see it as too risky.
This doesn't say anything about a loan for game devs, or whatever else people are implying, unless I'm reading the wrong page.
That's how I understood it from the linked page too. Didn't see anything about financing indie projects. Just financing work you outsource to them.
What do you mean? This is a means to control your budget piece by piece. Not here is free labor since you have no money.
Im guessing he meant whats going to happen if the project doesnt go well, what happens to the debt..
Well.. I suppose that it's gonna happen bank-style: They're going to take everything you own until the debt is repaid.
art department and Exis has got people of Triple A skill to give their game the
edge.The financial side will now no longer be a stumbling block to further their
ambitions.
Lol- When a developer borrows 30 million lets hope the subcontractors don't get paid on layaway as well.
I can help clear up some of the confusion. What we're offering is essentially a "revolving line of credit", which is fancytalk for a studio credit card that can be used with Exis.
We pass the financial info off to our financing partners, and they'll approve a given applicant. Once an applicant is approved, they'll be given a credit line that they can spend with us, for example, $1,000,000. They can then buy as much art outsource/development from Exis as they want, and not have to pay for it upfront.
They can make payments as they see fit, just like you would for a credit card.
All this does is give our clients the option of managing their financial situation better. We hope that it can be a benefit to them, and make it so developers are less likely to lay people off due to cash flow problems.
This is just a way to help our clients be more competitive, and also an attempt to innovate the business of games. My dream for my company has always been to grow while making a product that people can use, and enjoy.