"I literally built an investment firm that wouldn't have funded my own pitch" – Why the money isn't reaching the games that need it

A roundtable workshop at Madeira Games Summit put studio leaders and investors through a simple but revealing exercise: pitch a game, design a fund, then build a portfolio. Once the group had to think like allocators, the priorities changed fast. With $1 million to invest, almost nobody built a fund that would have backed the kinds of original games they had pitched at the start.

Instead, the hypothetical capital flowed toward tools, infrastructure, platform tech, and Roblox creator ecosystems. Across the fund designs, less than half of the money ended up in traditional game content. That gap is the practical problem for developers chasing funding: the people writing checks are often optimizing for downside protection, return structure, and portfolio math, while pitches usually lead with creative ambition and emotional conviction.

The workshop’s most useful advice was blunt. Developers were urged to lead with return expectations and timelines, identify the exact capital type they need, and research a fund’s remit before asking for money. A pitch for content sent to a tools-and-tech fund is just wasted time on both sides. Attendees also suggested validating demand with demos and playtesting, and using local payment structures to reach emerging markets.

The broader implication is that studios may need to treat fundraising like a long campaign, not a single meeting. One suggested sequence was to start with friends and industry contacts, then work through likely rejections and long-shot backers before approaching the real targets after 9-12 months of iteration. The room’s...