Indie Game Business Case Template

🕹️Build a Better Business Case Faster💰

This Google Sheets template will serve as a quick way to structure and strengthen your process with comparative analysis and building a business case for your indie game.

The template is based on Rami Ismail's approach to business cases, seen in https://ltpf.ramiismail.com/pitch-template/, and on VGinsights' revenue calculator.

How To:

1) Make a copy of the document before using it.

2) In the 'Comparative Analysis' tab only edit fields marked with green and/or framed with a gray border.

3) Start by adding your total budget. Then go to 'Comparative Analysis', scroll to "GUIDE: PRIMARY COMPARABLE TITLES, and look at the target performance numbers for comparative games.

4) Next, scout for games in the same genre with roughly the performance numbers indicated in the guide section. I use VGinsights.com for gathering data on games. The numbers in this template are tuned roughly according to the numbers generated by VGinsigts.

5) List relevant games in the Comparable Games tab.

6) Select the 3 games that fit your case the best, and add them to "PRIMARY COMPARABLE GAMES" in the Comparative Analysis tab

7) Along the way you can fill in the 'Business Case Overview' tab.

Finally, don't forget that both you and whoever you ask for funding, should be able to make money from your game. This might seem obvious, but it's awfully common to think that reaching a 100% return on investment is enough is someone else has put their money into it. It's not.

Backstory:

This template grew out of my own frustrations and banging my head against the wall, as I tried to build a decent business case for a game.

The culmination was a slightly embarrasing pitch meeting with a friendly publisher, where a couple of obvious flaws in my analysis was pointed out. I needed to make a better tool for myself.

One thing I had struggled with was finding actual relevant comparable games. I guess that's often a case of "my game is unique" syndrome. That, and the fact that I found it utterly overwhelming. So many games, so much data to dig through...

With this spreadsheet, combined with data from VGinsights, it feels much more manageble. I hope you'll feel the same way.

Credits:

The Comparative Analysis is based on Rami Ismail's pitch template and model that can be found here: https://ltpf.ramiismail.com/pitch-template/ - Specifically this slide. Thanks for sharing, Rami!

The Revenue Calculator is based on the one from VGinsights.com. I've found their 'Indie Access' paid tier worth the subscription fee. I've also found https://games-stats.com/steam/tags/ super useful when exploring the right tags.