We are excited to announce that the 2017 Incubator is accepting applications from the public! Thanks to the recent $450,000 grant from Empire State Development, the Game Center is offering seats in the Incubator to game developers from the community again this year. We’re excited to invite a wider range of game makers to work alongside our graduates, Faculty, and Incubator Advisory Board in the Incubator.
The purpose of the NYU Game Center Incubator is to bridge experimental work with the realities of the marketplace. The Incubator gives promising games time, space, guidance, and resources to maximize opportunities for commercial success. The Incubator is suitable for a wide range of projects, from free to play iOS games to digital board games. Developers may apply solo or in teams. Additional information about the application and the program is available below.
To see a past info session, check out this video.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Once accepted into the Incubator, developers are provided a structure to address the marketing, legal, financial, and other business challenges of launching a successful commercial game. The Game Center fosters partnerships with publishers, technology companies, veteran developers, lawyers, journalists, and other industry experts who guide the Incubator participants towards their launch goal. Through a combination of curriculum development, events programming, production assistance, and financial support, the goal of the Incubator is to bring to market innovative work that might not otherwise get there.
The Incubator will run from June 1st to September 1st. Each core team member will be provided a living wage over the course of the program, subject to their full-time work at the Incubator and continued satisfaction of Incubator milestones. Each game will also receive dedicated mentorship time from the Advisory Board members, Game Center faculty, and other local NYC-based game developers.
WHO IS IT FOR?
We’re looking for innovative projects that are finished or are close to finished and would benefit from a focused, final push to maximize their opportunity for commercial success. The Incubator is designed to assist polished betas or nearly finished games develop a launch strategy, meaning it is not suitable for games that in the pre-production, prototype, proof of concept, or alpha phase. To get a sense of what projects are suitable for the program, review the 2014 cohort, 2015 cohort, and 2016 cohort games.
The Incubator aims to assist a diversity of game styles and game makers — we are actively If you are unsure if you game is appropriate for the Incubator, contact the Incubator Director at gamecenter@nyu.edu
THE APPLICATION PROCESS
Projects will be selected by the Incubator Advisory Board with guidance from the Game Center Faculty and Staff. Online applications will be reviewed first, then a subset of the online applications will be invited to demo their games in-person at The Game Center on 4/26. Applications will be evaluated along three vectors: Commercial potential, production feasibility, and innovation.
Commercial Potential: What are this game’s commercial aspirations?
Production Feasibility: Can these developers bring the game from its current place to the commercial goals?
Innovation: The Incubator is most interested in games that aren’t obviously commercially viable from the onset. Is this the kind of interesting/experimental/innovative game that could benefit from the Incubator?