Indie dev starts game fund

Dan Marshall hopes to build the fund from profits made from sales of his game Gibbage and related merchandise, plus other titles sold via his site www.gibbage.co.uk.

"The developers get the lion’s share of your cash, and the rest gets plugged into making the sort of games you want to play," said Marshall in a post on the site, explaining his motivation: "The trouble with the independent games industry is that, all said and done, there’s very little money in it."

He added that as the money builds up he’ll start commissioning indie teams to start developing their ideas full-time: "From now on, every penny of profit this site gains will be plugged directly into funding future independent game projects. That doesn’t mean me hacking together some rubbish code while slurping on caviar you’ve kindly provided, that means hiring professional artists and coders to make interesting, high-quality, funny, funky and brilliant games for you to enjoy.

"What that means, eventually, is me ringing up a struggling band of developers somewhere and saying ‘Hey! I like the look of what you guys are doing over there. It’s fresh and funky and innovative and exciting. Here’s an envelope stuffed full of cash. Go full-time Indie and do something amazing with it.’ "