Stakeholder groups involved in or supporting game marketing and investment.

Key Stakeholder Groups and their Pertinence for Incubation

Not every stakeholder group of the ecosystem needs to necessarily play an active role in the incubation lifecycle. Their relevance varies, but ultimately the more of these stakeholders are part of the incubator’s network, the higher the quality of the incubation results is likely to be. For each group, there is a rationale of its own for reaching out to them or engaging them actively in the incubation.

Investors

Let’s start with the most obvious and most difficult stakeholder group: the investors. In itself, the profile of “game investors” reflects the heterogeneous interests and commitments found in that group. From an incubation perspective, an investor can take on two roles. An investor can be an active participant in pitching test runs or an actual investor, mostly likely someone interested in seed investment. In the latter case, the incubator’s basic task is to help their incubatees to attract investors.

Optimally, an incubator has a good network of investors based on a proven success rate or high renown. Investors should be appreciating the reliable assessment provided by the incubator and trust the incubator’s recommendations. Therefore, fostering an investor network is a fundamental building block for a growing incubation organisation.

Alumni

This group refers to former game developer incubatees of a specific organisation to which they still feel connected. With a young industry such as the game sector, knowledge growth and good practice understanding is a process that relies heavily on the goodwill of senior and veteran game entrepreneurs and professionals.

Experienced game companies often reinvest in younger games and in fact provide a substantial share of seed investment into games. Thus, it makes a lot of sense for an incubator to foster a network of alumni and create an alumni programme to entice them to invest their resources into the incubators’ incubatees.

Publishers

The role of the publisher has changed over the past year. Before big platforms such as Steam¹Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/ would make it possible for teams to publish their games themselves, a publisher was a common source of financing for game developers.

So do game developers need publishers? The publisher covers all costs. This is one of the key reasons why game developers enter into a contract with the publisher. At the same time, the publisher takes a share in the royalties of developers until the budget invested in the game is recaptured. What percentage do game publishers take? The size of the royalty is typically between 10 and 20%. Obviously, there are some advantages to having a publisher: instant validation whether your product would work on the market. You do not need to take care of the marketing. The financial risk of launching a new project on the market is the responsibility of the publisher, not the developer.²Indie vs Game Publisher: https://blog.getsocial.im/indie-vs-game-publisher-whats-better-for-your-game/#Publisher_vs_developerPros_of_choosing_a_publisher

Resources

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Deep Dive: Game Investors

Looking at the game industry from an investor’s perspective.