Company
IR Gurus alternative funding for Heroes of the Pacific gets a mention in the "Death to the Games Industry (part II)" article by Greg Costikyan over at The Escapist...
"Another route is to look for project finance. This is something that's very common in the film industry: Investors put up money in exchange for a share of the product's revenues. This has its good side and its bad; you're mortgaging future revenues for money to bring the product to market - but you also aren't selling equity, so you retain control of the company. Because it's such a common model in the film industry, the sorts of people who provide this kind of money - typically rich people, but sometimes funds devoted to film industry investments - are comfortable with the idea. Finding and networking your way to them is a challenge, of course, but it's feasible; this is the route IR Gurus took with Heroes of the Pacific."
Greg's article is also discussed at Slashdot where special mention has been given to the solid reviews that Heroes of the Pacific has been getting...
Remember meeting this fella at the second-last IGDA meetup.
IR Gurus are still constrained by market pressures, and they need to do make a game that'll most likely sell in todays market. Your own intellectual property is sort of like the holy grail by many in the games industry. The reality (from the indie games) is you can't do just do a project that interests you, you have to meet those market pressures.
Heroes though lost a publisher about half-way through it's development, the reality is if this was the normal company structure where the publisher is your main form or income the project would of gone under, IR Gurus since they had investment from capital investors were able to ride the weather and get a new publisher for the game.
Don't forget about loads of government cash...
For the record there was only 26K of goverment cash involved in the project. The rest of the budget came from investors.
Congratulations IR Gurus
I've had to remove this comment entry.
Qustion for you Insider. You obviously have some fairly serious knowledge about the goings on at IR Gurus. Are you still an employee or have you taken a stand and resigned in diusgust at all these shady things going on?
Or even forwarded your claims to the government regulators, or the Opposition???
If only it were true. Nice story.
EA hasn't been a publisher for AFL in quite some years, Sony is the publisher now. When EA did the publishing they made the game directly themselves.
Also 1.5M is quite a rich amount to suggest.