Government Assistance in Ontario II – OMDC Interactive Digital Media Fund

The Ontario Media Development Corporation (OMDC) Interactive Digital Media (IDM) Fund is a very important funding opportunity for small-to-medium sized development studios in Ontario. The down side is that it is a competitive selection funding program, and there are always more applications than there are funds available.

The IDM Fund provides a "non refundable contribution" (ie money you don't have to pay back) to cover up to 50% of your project's budget, to a maximum grant of $150,000. This fund is designed to invest in projects that can show a solid plan to reach a commercial market, as well as a strong benefit for Ontario (such as job creation and Ontario expenditures).

As the OMDC says, the Fund "will support projects from a range of genres, delivery platforms and budgets. Consideration will be given to the cultural and industrial benefits of each project." At the present time there are two application deadlines per year – the next deadline from when I write this is November 16th 2009. Once the applications are in, the OMDC uses an external jury with industry knowledge to evaluate and help rank the submissions. The business plan ("potential for commercial exploitation") is as important as the project itself, the OMDC really does try to invest this fund in projects that have a real market potential. This doesn't mean the fund is looking for AAA titles (considering most triple-A titles spend $150,000 on just the coffee and pop for the programmers); however, again quoting the OMDC, they are looking "to provide Ontario interactive digital media content companies with access to the final piece of funding required to move their content projects into production."

At BattleGoat we applied for this funding for our second title, "Supreme Ruler 2020", however we didn't make the cut at that time. The OMDC do have a very good "post-mortem" process, so we were able to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of our project and our application. There were some oddities (for instance some of the jury questioned our projected costs and revenue per unit in our business plan, even though we used the exact costs experienced with our first commercial title three years earlier); however the follow-up discussions allowed us to make sure our next application had more details and background on those areas, making sure there would be no more misunderstandings. In 2008 we were successful in our application for OMDC IDM funding for our next title, for which we are currently in negotiations with publishers. Given the painful rise in the Canadian dollar and other challenges, the IDM Funding we received proved to be an essential element to allowing us to use a bigger team and keep development going smoothly, even without advance funding from a publisher.

For those interested in this fund, the OMDC holds information sessions (those were held in October for the upcoming deadline), and the OMDC staff are always available to discuss this program and ways that you can potentially take advantage of it. Unfortunately the government funding for this program is approved on a year-by-year basis, so there is no guarantee that the IDM Fund will continue to be made available in coming years, but given the growth potential for new media businesses in Ontario I certainly hope this fund continues to be part of the mix well into the future.

-- George Geczy / BattleGoat Studios.