At 6pm the visitors took place in the spacious entrance hall of the historic building and soon it was clear: the amount of guests lied way over the expectations. Nearly 80 people had arrived to listen to the speakers talking about how to finance an own game project in Switzerland.

Then – as everyone has found his place – Robbert van Rooden from Nothing and committee member of IGDA started the meeting with a small introduction, followed by Matthias Sala from Gbanga, chairman of the IGDA Switzerland Chapter, who announced the first speaker: Simon Meier, investment director at the Roche Venture Fund. He gave the audience a slight insight into how the Investment Projects of the huge pharmacy company works and compared it to the game industry. There are surprising similarities to find in the way companies support developers in game industry as well as in the pharmacy industry. And there exist useful ways for smaller companies to receive support out of Venture Funds.

After a short break, Siggi Kögl, founder and CEO of Attaction.com and member of b-to-v.com hold his speech about the function of Business Angels (BA). He was involved with the financing of several AAA (Triple-A) game productions and seed financing of game startups and could give the audience a glimpse of all the possibilities which lie in the assistance of a Business Angel.

The drinks and food were eaten fast in just a short break and Robbert announced the last speaker of the day: Philippe Trawnika, founder & entrepreneur at Shadow Government Inc., who  recently went through the process of raising money for his business idea of Shadow Government. He shared his various experiences with venture capitalists and also business angels and all what was necessary to raise money for Shadow Government.

Same as in February, the speeches where followed by an interesting panel discussion lead by Matthias Sala and all questions of the audience where answered. Game financing is a part of the game industry which easily gets forgotten under all the positive things of creating a vision in computer games. But it is a subject of great importance to everyone who’s planning to publish a game of realizes a project in that area. The amount of attendants showed that it is in fact a subject of great interest to the game developers and game designers in Switzerland.

After the group discussion there followed other interesting discussions with the speakers and among the audience. The interesting evening found its end as finally also the “last guests standing” headed to the train station.

Cornelia Zogg (bitforge)