It announced a $40 million per annum funding boost for the sector in the May Budget and submissions were then sought to determine how best to deliver it.
To counter lucrative rebates offered to game developers based in Australia, the Government is offering a 20% rebate to individual studios that meets the minimum $250,000 expenditure threshold a year.
Successful applicants will be able to receive up to $3 million annually in rebate funding, backdated to April 1, 2023.
Among the submitters is Balancing Monkey, one of the Dunedin’s earliest studios.
Managing director Anna Barham said she was happy with the speed of the scheme’s turnaround but was not sure about some of the logistics.
"Which games will be eligible is ... unclear.
"Currently there is a caveat against gambling games or with gambling-like mechanics but where is the line being drawn?
"There are also questions about why educational games are eligible but corporate training games are not.
"These will probably be dealt with on a case-by-case basis but there needs to be greater clarity," Mrs Barham said.
Those concerns aside, Mrs Barham said the funding would allow gaming studios to plan with confidence, especially around the attraction and retention of staff, which increases quality.
"Game development is a risky business so to have greater certainty is really helpful."
Balancing Monkey was established in 2017 and generated significant international profile with its game Before We Leave.
It is working on the sequel with another city-building game, Beyond These Stars.
The company has eight staff, plus additional contractors including a composer in England and a 3-D artist in Poland.
An outline of the scheme was expected to be announced by October and, pending consultation, registration would start prior to Christmas with successful applicants receiving funding from mid-2024, Mrs Barham said.
The industry brought $400 million into the New Zealand economy in 2022 and, as far back as 2017 Rocketwerkz founder Dean Hall suggested that figure would reach $1 billion within a decade.
Formerly based in Dunedin but now having shifted to Auckland, Rocketwerkz is one of New Zealand’s largest development studios.
Aaron Alexander, a former senior game designer at Rocketwerkz, co-founded Usual Suspects Studios in Dunedin in 2020.
The studio launched its first game It’s Only Money last month.
All energy has been directed towards promoting awareness of the game and Mr Alexander reported global interest with sales, reviews and numbers playing "encouraging".
While that meant no time to make a submission, he supported the scheme.
"We’re a bit irregular in the industry in that we have five full-time staff, so having that rebate would be life-changing for us," he said.
"It’s a volatile industry where you have no idea what your sales will be like next week.
"The rebate would be a real safety net and definitely a boon to developers."
In It’s Only Money residents of Rockhaven, who have been dispatched underground by the mayor because their net worth is considered too low, emerge to the surface and learn to steal from the rich to buy back and reclaim their city block by block.
A 2022 New Zealand Game Developers Association survey showed Dunedin has 19 gaming studios, second only to Auckland and well ahead of Wellington (13) and Christchurch (5).
The increase in developers in Dunedin was credited to the establishment of the government-backed New Zealand Centre of Digital Excellence (Code).
While the New Zealand industry was growing rapidly, it was easily outstripped by Finland, which has a similar population of about five million.
In each of the last two years revenue generated by Finnish game developers was €3.2 billion ($NZ5.62 billion).
The Finnish government invests €500 million ($NZ879 million) a year into gaming research and development with €135 million of that directly to start-up companies.
While the Australian government’s $A1.2 billion ($NZ1.3 billion) rebate scheme proposal is more attractive than that offered here, it is still tied up in its legislative stages.
Applicants will have 15 working days after the end of the financial year to submit their application. An earlier version of the story incorrectly said the application process required 15 days for applications to be audited.
