If you’re a Canadian media maker, you probably know about the Canada Media Fund, a pretty great institution and one which causes some folks from other parts of the world to express their undisguised envy.

I found the application process quite intimidating at first, but having been through most of it, I’m at least somewhat more comfortable. I figured maybe folks might appreciate a slightly simplified treatment of the process.

What makes the CMF so great?

Let’s assume, for a moment, that you don’t know about the CMF, or perhaps you’ve heard of it but you’ve never really looked into it in any detail.

“What makes the CMF programs so great?” is one of the first questions I asked when I started looking at funding. There are a few different answers, ranging from “they’re pretty unique in their setup” to “FREE MONEY!”, but the really important thing for someone focused on funding a game in development is the specific way they approach funding.

The CMF, see, isn’t like a regular investor. They don’t buy equity in your company. They don’t offer you a long-term loan. They directly invest in the project under development, and they recoup their investment when and if that project starts to receive revenue. But that’s not all!

They also have a time limit on how long they lay claim to those revenues. With CMF you’re never in danger of having some dude show up at your door with a sledgehammer and an unsettling familiarity with the anatomy of the human knee. After several years, if they have not yet recouped their investment, they basically relinquish their claim to further residuals.

All of that sounds amazing to me, so I should put the one big caveat down for balance: The one thing they don’t do is provide 100% funding. Different programs, projects, and yearly cohorts will have different conditions, but in 2022 CMF limits their investment to roughly 75% of expenses, including labour and assets. They also have total investment caps, which tend for the early-stage programs to run well short of the full “runway” budget for a game,

So this isn’t years-of-runway money. But it’s a substantial stake with generous terms, and every Canadian media creative should at least have some familiarity with the program.

Choosing a Program

Now let’s imagine that you’re going to ask them for money someday soon. Like, say, September 6th.

You’re very quickly going to notice there’s a bit of a problem: They have a lot of programs. Which ones even apply to what you’re making?

The big divide is between more “traditional” media, mostly covered under the Convergent stream, and “new” media, which is the focus of the Experimental stream.

If, like me, you’re a game maker, you will thus want to focus most of your energies on the Experimental Stream. There are still a bunch of programs to consider, but this cuts out more than half of the information CMF provides in its very ample documentation.

The key programs for 2022-23 in the Experimental Stream are:

1. Conceptualization
2. Prototyping
3. Production, which is now broken down into two separate programs
   1. Commercial Projects
   2. Innovation & Experimentation
4. Accelerator Partnership

If you’re just starting out with CMF and/or a new studio, it’s likely that you’ll want to focus on one of the first two.

Conceptualization is targeted at extremely early-stage projects which don’t yet even have a working demo. The funding cap ($15,000) and pool for this program are fairly limited, and a significant portion of the pool is reserved for Diverse Community applicants. If your team meets one or more of the DC category criteria this should be helpful, but otherwise you’ll want to get your application in early, as the program is first-come, first-served. Conceptualization is also usually framed as a way to get your project ready for a more significant investment via the Prototyping program.

Prototyping is meant to help companies build a full-scale working demo of their project. This won’t be a full game, most likely, but it should be enough to attract attention from other investors. There are still diversity targets to consider – there’s an evaluation matrix that takes into account most of the same factors as Conceptualization – but the pool of money available is a little more forgiving, and the funding cap is much higher ($250,000 [but remember – 75%!]).

I mean, also, it’s. probably just a good idea all around to work with diverse groups, but I say that as an Old Cisstraight(ish) White Guy Working Alone, so I’m not about to give anyone a hard time about it. Just trying to help you present your team and/or project to the CMF in the best possible light!

Applying to the Conceptualization Program (2022-23)

My intention this year is to apply to the Conceptualization program. I have a few different projects on the back burner, and it would be great to be able to be able to offer folks some money to start making art and composing sound for one of them. The funding in this program is limited to $15,000 (remember, this means I’m on the hook for other funding up to $5,000), so it won’t be a LOT of either, but it will be a start.

Theoretically I could make everything myself – theoretically – but I wouldn’t be even slightly comfortable sharing the results with the public. I’d much rather work with other folks, folks who bring great skills in those areas, and I’d be very happy to see them paid for their work.

The timing is tight at this point – as I hinted above, the Conceptualization opening date for this year is September 6th:

Also, before you even start filling things out, you need to sign up for PERSONA-ID. The TL;DR of it is, Persona-ID allows you to disclose possibly sensitive details of your team’s personal lives and identity in a way that protects their privacy. This seems, to me (admittedly a relatively naïve soul in the area) to be a reasonably elegant solution to the problem of wanting to incentivize diverse creators without putting them at risk unnecessarily.

You can find out which of your team members need a PERSONA-ID account by checking the “Who should participate in PERSONA-ID?” and “Can other roles or key personnel sign-up to PERSONA-ID?” sections on the main PERSONA-ID reference page.

Once you have your id(s), there are a few basic things that you should check with respect to your project.

1. The project needs to be Canadian, which means the majority of the team is Canadian, most of the spending is in Canada, and creative control resides in Canada.
2. You’re ready to incorporate. You don’t actually have to incorporate to apply – this is a common misconception, apparently – but you do have to incorporate to sign an agreement.
3. You’re working on something that’s recognizably a game and that’s intended to eventually reach the market.

These are brief distillations of some key considerations from the full Conceptualization Program Guidelines. If you decide to go ahead with an application, you should definitely spend some time reviewing the program guidelines.

Beyond the basic eligibility criteria above, there are other factors that can play into an application’s success or failure – graphic content is a big one – but these folks work with media creators all the time, so there’s some flexibility there, and those considerations are evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Still, it’s worth keeping in mind.

Application Documents

You could be forgiven if you got tripped up here for way too long. I know I did. The first mention of documents on the Conceptualization Program page is the hot-pink-highlighted Guidelines and References section. Here you’ll find a link to the Conceptualization Program Guidelines mentioned previously as well as the download link for Reference Documents. The Reference Documents download is a zip file containing two appendices and a number of important-sounding-but-definitely-not-an-application-form PDFs.

It took me way too long to realize that if you move down the page to the very next section you’ll find the blue-highlighted Application Documents. Here you’ll find another download link. This one also downloads a zip file, and it’s in this zip file that you’ll find the three key PDFs:

1. List of Required Documents
2. Budget (template)
3. Declaration of the Corporation’s Canadian status, and its Shareholders and Directors

Again, don’t panic about #3 just yet. In fact, don’t even panic about #2 just yet. Focus completely on that first PDF, because it will tell you all about the application itself, and in particular what you actually need to write and submit to apply for funding. There are several items listed here, and for 2022, these are as follows:

1. Team Description (1 page)
2. CVs (<= 3 pages each)
3. Concept Description (<= 3 pages)
4. History (1 page)
5. Budget (template provided)
6. Financing commitment letters or agreements

Let’s remind ourselves, first, that #6 is to be expected since CMF doesn’t do 100% funding. #5, as mentioned, is part of this zipped package.

#1, Team Description, has a fairly rigid structure, and we’ll get back to it in a sec.

The others, however, are relatively free-form. You’ll want to actually read through the descriptions, but you’ll notice that there really isn’t much guidance provided. Some of the Reference Documents may help here, but in reality these documents are an opportunity – your team should work to come up with the best possible version of each document using clear, evocative language.

You may even benefit from hiring someone to review your documents or even to help write them. Don’t look at me, I’m new to this too. But I understand there are folks who can help. Check your local gamedev community!

Now let’s return to document #1 in the list, the Team Description. This is one of the places (along with the budget) where you need to make sure you include any and all factors that might qualify your team for consideration under the Diversity Criteria.

Critically, you need to make sure anyone who is in one of the roles listed on the PERSONA-ID page has signed up and that their ID is included in this document and in the budget. You also need to make certain the people and IDs listed here and in the budget match.

When filling in the application in the Telefilm Canada Dialogue system, you’ll notice that there are several places to list folks as well. I’m not completely clear, yet, why the application page isn’t an acceptable Team Description, but I suspect the Team Description gives a chance to “sell” your team a little more than the Key Personnel and Directors and Shareholders sections of the application.

To be honest, it’s a little frustrating and nerve-wracking to have to cross-check three places (TD, Budget, application), but, again, this program is pretty generous, so the hoops seem worth it.

For me, though, the team description is likely to be something like:

Mike Murphy-Burton is the founder and sole developer behind Perfect Minute Games, a game development studio in St. John’s, NL. Since the founding of the company, Mike has worked with numerous independent developers on a variety of projects, including Disastrophe, a ROBLOX game released by Orange Slip Studios in 2019.

He is the Director and Senior Programmer for Powered A(r)mour.

It’s not exactly impressive, I guess? I’m not sure how to evaluate that. But it gets the point across. Part of the goal here is to find the best version of things to present to the folks at CMF, but that still means presenting reality.

Plus, I’ve been assured by folks at CMF that they do, in fact, consider projects from humble teams, so I’ll try to remain optimistic as long as I can.

Now that I’ve written the Team Description, I feel like I should at least take a first crack at the Concept Description as well.

Powered A(r)mour is a playful take on romance, shop management, and tactical RPG gameplay.

The game puts the player in the role of the owner and operator of a mechanic shop specializing in the pseudonymous powered armour suits. In the course of running the shop, players are tasked with hiring mechanics and attracting clientele, and helping the two groups navigate relationships between mechanic, pilot…and armour!

Powered A(r)mour’s romance elements attempt to tackle subject matter around gender and sexual orientation through a science fictional lens. Using such a lens has been suggested to provide a level of distance that allows people to avoid habitual or socially programmed responses to uncomfortable ideas. By presenting relationships through the shop mechanics rather than the player’s own character, the game ensures another level of distance. Using this framing also allows the player to watch multiple relationships of different types to develop, progress, and conclude throughout the game.

By immersing the player in a setting where relationships impact other gameplay elements, Powered A(r)mour tries to encourage players to invest in and explore aspects of identity that may not be part of their everyday experience.

Conclusion

So, that’s the process, more or less. There’s an application inside Telefilm Canada’s Dialogue system that you’ll need to fill out, as I mentioned, but it’s mostly information you’ll already have at hand.

I’d love to hear about who else is working on an application and for what, as well as whether you thought this guide was helpful.

Good luck!