- Hi!

We’re here to bring you up to speed with how you can apply for development funding

from the EU through the Creative Europe Programme. We are Kåre and Anders from

the Norwegian and Swedish Creative Europe Desks.

1

The Creative Europe programme supports European creative and cultural industries.

Creative Europe is the result of the earlier MEDIA programme and Culture programme

being merged together. The MEDIA sub-program supports the european audiovisual

industry.

There’s one deadline per year – the last one was in March this year.

We expect the next call to be published in October with deadline in March 2016. But

these are preliminary dates and changes may occur.

2

If you have never applied before, the scheme might look a little overwhelming at first -

but remember that your local Creative Europe desk is there to help you and guide you

through the application.

Each country has a Desk, and you find them all on this link.

3

4

5

You need to be able to demonstrate that YOUR COMPANY has produced one previous

video game – that has been commercially distributed in the last two years.

You do need to be able to prove that your company was the one behind this previous

game in particular - either through the credits on-screen, or a financing plan, or if it was

a produced in collaboration with another company then an agreement or contract could

be provided between the two to show that your company led the development.

And you must show that the reference work has been commercially distributed during

the two years preceding the publication of the call – which will be 1st of january 2013 if

the call is published in 2015.

Again for both the track record and the proposed game we are also looking for projects

which feature both of narrative and interactive elements, but also bear in mind that it

must not fall in to one of those non-eligible categories. So puzzle games are out, sports

games are out, promotional games, ebooks etc etc

You’ll also need to provide evidence that clearly shows that the game has been

commercially released. This could be through a publishing contract, or sales report, or

some kind of distribution agreement – but we should highlight that demonstrating that

the game is out there is not really enough – we need to see that people are PAYING for

the game in some way or another, and paying for it within that required time frame.

6

For games that are free to the user we are going to want to see evidence of how that

game has generated income – either through in game purchases, advertising, etc. If you

can’t provide this then I’m afraid you won’t be considered eligible.

So, say you do meet tick all of those boxes…how are the applications assessed?

6

7

8

The Creative Europe support is for development only – and in this scheme development

is defined as up to the realisation of the first playable prototype. Production starts when

you are testing and debugging your first prototype - and it must be at least 8 MONTHS

from the date that you submit your application to the date that you start that work.

So, what can you apply to spend this money on?

Firstly there’s the creative development of the project: the creation of content,

developing visual concepts (characters, backgrounds...),

The realisation of a prototype of the game, trial version, alpha version or beta version,

whichever comes first.

Then there are the financial or business costs that comes with trying to get a game

financed: Preparation of a business plan and financing plan, the provisional production

budget, the production schedule

As well as the search for and identification of investors - This could include travel to

meet potential investors, Initial marketing and sales plans (target markets and buyers,

presentation on markets, etc.)

The whole purpose of the scheme is that it allows you to put together a really attractive

package at those earlier stages which you can then take to investors to ask for further

finance to complete the game.

9