Four NSW digital ventures share $291,000 in funding round

Four NSW digital ventures have been backed with a total of $291,000 in state government funding, including, unusually, backing for a start-up to further develop its business plan.

The state government said that the latest round of funding from Screen NSW’s $3 million Interactive Media Fund will help keep the “dynamic” interactive media projects from leaving the state.

In April, the NSW Government announced that it was subsidising four local businesses to join the Startup House hub in San Francisco, leading to criticism in some quarters that it was driving innovative start-ups offshore.

The new Screen NSW funding includes backing for Mod Productions, a start-up that produces interactive installations for live events and the web, to further develop its business plan.

The support given to Mod Productions is unusual in that it is rare for state or federal governments to provide financial support to enterprises at the business planning stage.

The other three projects to share the $291,000 in funding include:

• ACO3D – a collaboration between the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Mod Productions to show the group’s performances to Australia in “innovative and interactive ways.”

• The Hive – a project that involves game-players solving real world problems, encompassing social networks, television and online engagement.

• Earthquake Buddy – an app developed by The App Collective that uses real-time seismic data and geo-tagging to let loved ones know the location of a user at the time of an earthquake.

Andrew Stoner, deputy premier of NSW and minister for trade and investment, says: “This is a dynamic new industry which harnesses creativity and technological brilliance.”

“The NSW Government’s Interactive Media Fund is designed for commercially-oriented projects that are destined for distribution on web-enabled platforms or devices and interactive video game consoles.”

“In this latest round, four new projects from some of NSW’s most exciting creative talent were selected for their innovation, quality, originality and interactivity and their potential to contribute to a robust NSW economy and the NSW digital media industry.”

“The global digital games market is expected to more than double to $53 billion by 2016 and mobile gaming to triple to $17.5 billion, so the potential for Sydney and NSW to build its share of the high-value digital games sector is significant.”