BFI issues £510,000 from lottery challenge to back dev-focused aid projects

A quartet of projects focused on assisting indie developers recently won £510,000 (or $665,275) from the British Film Institute (BFI).

Per GamesIndustry, the four were awarded funding from the production company's National Lottery Innovation Challenge. Businesses will put that money toward new tools and resources for undersupported developers.

BFI's research and industry innovation director Rishi Coupland said the four projects "romise to deliver further creative and commercial success for the video games industry, through a focus on data, insights, market access, and diversity."

The first of these four projects is a Games Insight Database from Into Games CIC that will give developers information on workforce, funding availability, and salary benchmarking. OKRE and UKIE's Video Game Econometrics provide data on the UK industry's economic, social, and cultural impact to "articulate its value."

Aurora, a business development accelerator from Code Coven, will help developers connect with publishers and investors, and "build the skills and knowledge of underrepresented developers in business knowledge and financing."

Finally, Games London's Self-Publishing Toolkit is a two-year endeavor that will enlist up to 12 UK studios into business development workshops. After the workshops end, the data from those studios will be collected into a toolkit.