Sumea Launchpad has been over 12 months of unpaid development (website design and backend/administration) and maintenance (news updates, and website optimisations/fixes). It is currently running on a small hosting plan that is paid from my own pocket. As you can tell from the lack of banners and pop up ads, Sumea receives no revenue for its service, and is run at great personal expense. It has been a labour of love, and was never intended to make money, nor was it expected to have grown as big as it has. It currently consists of over 65 members, and provides them a personal profile, a journal, and a gallery for their work. From this, they get exposure to the many developers and visitors that visit Sumea daily.
As Sumea stands at the moment, it is the *only* such site that offers this kind of focus and support for the Australian (and NZ!) game industry. It's a valuable service for game developer students and those wanting to find more about the industry. It also gives local game developers more awareness of their work too.
So why am I telling you all about this ? Well, Sumea, is rapidly outgrowing allocated webspace and resources. For continued growth, further support is required for Sumea. Funding can guarantee Sumea's continued service to the community. Additional funds will help for a bigger web hosting plan. More webspace means extra services such as storage for game demos sent to Sumea from start up game developers. Funding would also be the incentive for me to continue maintaining and updating the site, and look into changing to a *much needed* and better database. (Those of you who have had received the dreaded server error know what I mean).
Anyway, if you're interested sponsoring/donating to the website, you can contact me (Souri) through this form. Any help is appreciated.
I'd also like to make a call for news editors. If you visit a lot of gaming websites, and don't mind posting relevant Australian/NZ developer news, then I'd appreciate the help! (Game developers can add me to their news mailing list too!) Contact me through the form above! Thanks..
Souri!