Metal Fish Eggs

With news of the Ontario government using the lure of $250+ million in incentives to bring UbiSoft to Toronto there is talk in the air about government support for the gaming industry. Ryan at Untold summarizes things well in this blog post.

The government is failing to support the folks who need it most – the interactive startup companies with between 1-10 staff. What these firms lack in size they make up for in numbers and I’d hazard to say there is more innovation happening among these hungry start-ups than in all the big shops combined.

There is support at the education level (much of it misdirected, but that’s another story) and there is support for the UbiSofts of the world. But what about all the folks small enough to develop original, interesting ideas but not big enough to have an accountant, lawyer or full time business manager? If we could find better ways to feed the ‘plankton’ of this ecosystem things would really and truly take off.

When I look at the companies I respect most in business virtually all of them have one thing in common – a founder with true hands-on experience in their field. They may have long since graduated to an executive office, but these folks started their careers in the trenches wether they were animators, computer programmers, illustrators, writers or artists. Not lawyers, not accountants, not tax credit consultants, not administrative assistants.

My point – in my idea of a happy universe, businesses should be built around people with good ideas. And then everything should work to serve those ideas. Not the other way around.

So what would I do if someone handed me a bag of money to promote this industry?

To find the solution we should steal from the micro-credit model. Instead of rating people on how well they prepare proposals rate them on the quality of their work. One over-used line that I continue to throw at people is that you are only as good as your last project. Full stop.

Offer up small grants (3-4k) to individuals who have a smallish idea and are willing to invest their own time in them. Make it a 1 page application. Have the applicant do a conference call to answer a few questions about their idea. These should not be earth-changing ideas. These should involve one, specific, measurable goal. Build a Flash-based game with a comic book artist, make a website for a local craftsman, make an interactive prototype of your casual game idea. Do something small, do it well. And put a timeline on it.

If the project is successfully completed then we raise the cap and allow them to apply for a larger pot of money. Make them eligible for $10k, then $20k. If several individuals want to pool their allotment, so be it. Let them apply jointly. If their project goes off the rails, they can start over at the introductory level.

Then give the gift of free professional advice. Hire one good lawyer, one good chartered accountant and one good professional writer. Offer all the participants in the program a day or so of their time every year. Offer a mentorship program where people with small business experience sit down and spend a few hours with participants to bounce ideas around.

The new media industry is young, nimble and full of ideas. I’d like to see the government tap into some of this new thinking when it comes to how it supports the industry. Motivating Ubisoft with hundreds of millions of dollars is easy. But the industry is not Ubisoft. The industry is a vibrant ecosystem of smart and hard-working programmers, designers and artists busting their asses. Feed these folks and new Ubisofts (or flickrs, or freshbooks) will emerge.