Screen Queensland Opens Applications For Its Next Round Of Games Grants

Hear ye, hear ye, game devs of Queensland! Screen Queensland has opened applications for the second round of Games Grants!

For those out of the loop, Screen Queensland has been making significant progress in providing support to local developers in recent years, offering tax rebates and funding to those wanting to develop new games in Queensland.

Not long after announcing a 15 per cent tax rebate for Queensland game developers, Screen Queensland then announced their Games Grants program. The grants program offers up to $90,000 in funding for game projects at varying stages in development.

This all came after the success of titles such as Unpacking, a Brisbane-made narrative-driven puzzle game that saw developer Witch Beam win multiple awards for their work. And rightly so!

The first round of Screen Queensland Games Grants were announced back in August, with studios such as Prideful Sloth (Grow: Song of the Evertree), MAXART (Servonauts), and Drop Bear Bytes (Broken Roads) securing funding from the state government.

And now, Screen Queensland is back to offer up their second round of Games Grants for next year to a select few game developers in Queensland wanting to bring their ideas to life.

According to the Screen Queensland website, the eligibility requirements for game developers wishing to apply for the Games Grants state that applicants must:

• be a Bona Fide Queensland game development company or individual (as defined in Screen Queensland’s Terms of Trade);
• be able to demonstrate that they are the IP creator and owner of the game. Commissioned projects are not eligible;
• not be full-time undergraduate, honours or masters students;
• not propose a project designed for the education, training, advertising, marketing, tourism or media sector;
• not submit an application for a project that has been declined funding by Screen Queensland previously, except where it can be demonstrated the
• application has been significantly reworked prior to submitting. Projects that have been declined twice are not eligible;
• not submit an application for a project that has not acquitted previous Screen Queensland funding; and
• only submit one application per round.

The website also lists types of games that are ineligible for Games Grants, which include:

• games that are not completely digital (boardgames or hybrid digital/physical games);
• gambling games;
• serious games, or games which are made for purposes other than pure entertainment;
• games that are, in Screen Queensland’s opinion, likely to be refused classification under the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Act 1995 (Cth);
• games designed to, in Screen Queensland’s opinion, predominantly or substantially market, promote or advertise a product or service; and
• games designed primarily for educational or training purposes.

Not sure what ‘serious games’ means there, but cool to see that they’re not funding gambling games!

If you’re a developer interested in applying, you can head over to the Screen Queensland Games Grants webpage. Applications close on January 22nd, 2023.