About the Square Enix Collective

Basically, we’re trying to help teams build greater awareness of their projects – so that can in turn help them to increase the size of their community (and hopefully their chances of success through crowdfunding therefore); but it’s also a great chance to get feedback from gamers who could be potential backers or customers, about what they like/don’t like, or what they understand/don’t understand about the pitch.

There are a few parts to it:

The first phase is the Feedback phase. We publish one pitch per week to the Collective website and over the course of the next four weeks, we use our community, social and email channels to help drive visibility of that pitch. We also help developers to understand what needs to be included in a pitch, and help them to get the best out of that opportunity. It’s a practice run for crowdfunding, but it’s a great chance for a team to increase their own mailing list numbers, and also see (sometimes for the first time) how gamers react to their project. This bit is totally free.

The second phase is Funding support, although we can only offer this for a handful of teams. This involves conducting a Team Assessment with the developer to make sure we understand the team’s plans and capabilities. It’s like a mini due diligence process, and it means that the endorsement we give can help the trust relationship with backers – because we obviously work with external developers all the time, and have the experience to know what making a game will take. And once the crowdfunding campaign starts we help with marketing that to as wide an audience as possible, again making great use of the Square Enix community, social, PR and email communication channels. If the campaign is successful we ask for 5% of the net crowdfunds raised (ie 5% of what the developer receives); otherwise there’s no charge.

And finally we may offer to support the release of a successfully crowdfunded project with distribution or publishing. We can help with a range of services, dependent on what the developer actually wants or needs. Typically this includes QA, platform relations, marketing, and so on. The amount we ask for is dependent on the services asked for, but basically ranges between 10-30% of net revenue (ie 10-30% of what’s left after tax and sales platform royalties). The developer always keeps the IP.

On top of that, we’ve also started making direct investments into projects when developers don’t want to go through crowdfunding – and we’re also open to providing publishing services to teams who are self-funded, but just want support when they’re ready to release.

It’s also really important to remember that developers aren’t ‘locked in’ to the process at all. If we offer to support a project through crowdfunding, the developer doesn’t have to accept that. After the Feedback phase they’re free to go in whichever direction they feel is best – and the same is true after crowdfunding. We may offer to distribute or publish a game, but it’s up to the developer if they want that. They might have another publisher, or launch the game themselves – it’s totally up to them. Of course, we believe that we have a very competitive approach in terms of what we provide versus what we ask for – but we don’t want to force anybody into something that’s not in their best interests.

Submitting a Game to the Collective