Published by Dutch Game Garden

Funding
Strategies
Vertigo Games CoolGames ISOTX
Page 4 Page 8 Page 12

Tover Stolen Couch KeokeN Interactive

Page 16 Page 20 Page 24

1
 Table of
contents
Foreword by JP van Seventer Page 3

Never give up Page 4

Richard Stitselaar • Vertigo Games

CoolGames’ cool mobile strategy Page 8

Laurens Rutten • CoolGames

Know when to walk away Page 12

Vincent van Geel • ISOTX

Tover: launching big by bootstrapping Page 16

Hester Le Riche • Tover

Stolen Couch’ monetization machine Page 20

Eric Diepeveen • Stolen Couch

Finance your game, but keep the company Page 24

independent
Koen Deetman • KeokeN Interactive

Perspectives on the growth of the Dutch Page 28

games industry
Christel van Grinsven

Epilogue: Key takeaways Page 30

2
Foreword by
JP van Seventer
Managing director Dutch Game Garden

For a long time, game developers in the Netherlands have

been reluctant to work with investors. Dutch game developers
bootstrapped their companies and made them grow organically.
But times are changing and so is the industry. Some dreams cannot
be achieved without help and some game concepts are too big
to be self-funded only. Over the past few years, we have seen a
growing interest from game studios to expand their businesses
through investments.

Good investors don’t just provide funding. They can be a valuable partner in expanding
your business and provide a network that enables you to achieve your goals more quickly.
They have everything to gain with you being successful. Furthermore, finding investments
in the games industry has become more accessible. The games industry has proven to be
consistently growing, even through hard times. Successful game developers have started
reinvesting in the scene from which they came and outside investors have learned how to
navigate the sometimes volatile nature of our business.

The main idea of this publication is to inform game developers about outside investment
as another valid way of growing their businesses. We want to show you a few ways in
which external funding can be of benefit, while preserving valuable lessons learned by
others who went through the process.

That’s why we collected stories from Dutch game companies on how they handled
their funding, which enabled them to grow their businesses in addition to hard work,
determination, and skill. Some show how investments helped to grow businesses. Others
are cautionary tales of how things went wrong. But all are inspiring narratives that will
help you in your own quest.

Regards,
JP van Seventer

3
 Interview • Richard Stitselaar

Never
give up
Running a game studio can be messy. The creative process alone is
challenging enough, but there is also the business side which can be
downright daunting at times. Richard Stitselaar, co-founder and CEO of
Vertigo Games knows all about it. He had been struggling for years to
keep his studio afloat and his dream alive. And when he finally struck
gold, that messy road to success wasn’t suddenly forgotten.
Vertigo Games

4
 “Believe me, I know how hard it is to create a successful, sustainable
business”, says Richard Stitselaar smiling. “I started two companies,
one went bankrupt and the other took a long time to become
successful.” The young CEO has enough reasons to be smiling. His
Vertigo latest game After the Fall had just been released a month ago and

Games sales figures went through the roof. The game made more money
in the first 24 hours than the previous smash hit Arizona Sunshine
managed in its first month.
F OU N D IN G Y E AR

2008 So, business is good and has been good for a while now. In September
2020 the Embracer Group bought the studio in a multi-million euro
PL AC E OF OR I G IN deal and labeled the Rotterdam-based studio ‘the world-leading VR
Rotterdam, specialist’. With an iconic VR game that is owned by 10 percent of all

The Netherlands VR players worldwide, a whole division dedicated to VR arcades, and a

publishing department that supports VR games from indies around the
world, that claim is no hyperbole. Vertigo is on top of its game.
NU M B E R OF F OU N DE RS

CUR R E N T F OU N D E RS

2
“
You learn so much from your mistakes, and going
bankrupt was one of the most valuable lessons I had.”

Vertigo Games
CUR R E N T S TAF F

140+ But for a long time, it was struggling to make ends meet. Vertigo
Games rose from the ashes of Stitselaar’s first company Coded Illusions
CUR R E N T OF F I C E LO C AT I ONS which went bankrupt in 2008. It was a stressful time for everyone
Rotterdam, Amsterdam, involved because it was the first time Stitselaar had tried to set up and

Los Angeles run his own company. He evolved what started as a hobby project with
a couple of friends into a professional game studio with around 30
employees and interns. No mean feat, thanks to outside investors that
FIRST FUNDED BY
ended up putting a million and a half euros into the company. Things
n.a. were looking good until the financial crisis hit in 2008 and everyone,
from publishers to investors, stopped taking chances.
F I R S T G AM E

Adam’s Venture - PC Startup culture

“My dad always told me to become my own boss”, says Stitselaar. “so,
NOTAB L E S U C C E SS when I found myself at home for 6 months due to an RSI ailment, I
Arizona Sunshine, started working on a prototype for a game together with a friend. After

After the Fall a while, we had a proper demo and decided we wanted to continue
working on it.” At that time, we’re talking about 2004, the Netherlands
was lacking a decent startup culture. Up until that moment, Stitselaar
PR I VAT E F I N AN C ING ROU NDS
had been working for Guerrilla Games and that’s where he got his first
No
taste of professional game development. That company was funded
with money from an outside investor, so it was clear: if they wanted to
make this work, they needed money.

5
 The game that Stitselaar had been working on had
a Christian theme. It was not a game about religion
per se but carried a strong moral code as a non-
violent adventure. That attracted the attention of a
real estate developer that went to the same church.
“Christian faith played an important part in the deal”,
explains Stitselaar. “Our investor really liked the idea
of supporting our little endeavor because of the ideas
behind it. It allowed us to beef up production. We got
an office in one of his buildings and went to work.”
Coded Illusions grew to a medium-sized game studio
with around 20 full-time employees and 15 interns.
They were all working on a game demo called Haven,
which later changed to Nomos. The investors gave
a fair amount of creative freedom to Stitselaar, who
acted as Creative Director at the time, and his team.
Since none of the investors were actively involved in
the games industry, or even the entertainment sector,
they couldn’t provide much useful guidance or advice.
Meanwhile, no one on the team had ever produced
a full game from start to finish. As a result, the demo
was becoming more and more bloated like a fully-
Vertigo Games
fledged game, with little room for adjustments.
“
“We really had to be creative with time,
money, and even networking.”
Financial crisis
“The investors had the majority share, which made
total sense because they made it all possible. I think
the split was 70 - 30, with 71% needed for big decisions.
Initially, we had a good working relationship. We did
our thing and they watched from the sidelines. There
was not much interference.” But in late 2007/early
2008 that situation changed drastically. The worldwide
financial crisis started in America with the collapse
of the housing market. That was where the investors
made most of their money and now were at risk of
losing it. “The investors became nervous and wanted
a quick return on their investment”, says Stitselaar.
“But that’s not how it works in game development.
The game was not finished and we started shopping
around for a publisher that could finance its
completion.”
6
There was interest in the game, and some praised the
young team on the state of the demo, but uncertain
economic times made publishers reluctant to sign on
new, unproven IP. Now all of a sudden, with money
drying up, Stitselaar realized the power the investors
held over his company. With no games released, there
was no revenue coming in. And when the investors
pulled out in the end there was no other solution than
to declare bankruptcy. It felt like a personal defeat
having to let go of the 30 employees that worked
so hard to make the dream happen. At that time
Stitselaar had a hard time dealing with the situation,
now he recognises the bankruptcy as a defining
moment in his career. “You learn so much from your
mistakes and this was one of the most valuable
lessons I had. There’s a good reason why people wish
you many mistakes in business.”
One of the lessons Stitselaar took to heart was not to
take on outside money for his next company Vertigo
Games. The failure of his first studio didn’t stop
him from wanting to pursue his dream of a life as a
successful game developer. “My number one skill is to
never stop believing. In myself, in the path I choose,
and in the people around me. I was never in this
business for the money. It was -and is- always for the
love of making games. It’s my true passion and the
reason why I kept going, even when things got really
tough”, explains Stitselaar. And things did get tough
with Vertigo Games. No outside investment meant
that they had to make money before they could spend
money. 1 Euro in, 1 Euro out. The newly formed studio
took the demo for the game Nomos and created their
first complete game Adam’s Venture. Two sequels
followed with moderate success. Then they tried their
luck at serious games and survived by doing project
after project. These were difficult years when money
was always tight. But with every game and project
completed and every year passed the team grew
closer and got more and more experienced.
Building VR prototypes
The real turnaround came when Vertigo Games
started experimenting with the VR goggles that
Oculus developed and presented via a Kickstarter
campaign. “I remember saying something like ‘This
is the future of gaming! We got to do something
with this!’ Since the device felt like a diving mask, we

started working on World of Diving.” Stitselaar’s gut
feeling was right. VR presented a way forward for
the studio. They secured a deal through Valve and
Intel to build prototypes for the HTC Vive and one
of these games was Arizona Sunshine. “It all sounds
so easy looking back, but it wasn’t! We really had to
be creative with time, money, and even networking.
We just did everything we possibly could to make
the deals happen, so we could build the games and
survive another day”, says Stitselaar.
There was one more occasion when Stitselaar seriously
considered getting investors on board. It was around
the time that VR was regarded as the new hot tech
property and investors were ready to jump on the
bandwagon. Vertigo Games went on a road show
doing a demo tour to wow big investment companies.
But it didn’t exactly work out. With around half of the
funding secured, they couldn’t find a main investor
After the Fall
to close the deal. Stitselaar knows exactly why there
was so little interest: “Call me Dutch. Call me down-
to-earth. Call me level-headed. The fact is I was way
too modest in my presentation. If you want to sell
investors on your idea or your company, you have to
paint them a beautiful picture of high ambition and
sky-high profits. Investors want a dream, they are
looking for that unicorn. They didn’t see that in our
game Arizona Sunshine.”
Richard Stitselaar wouldn’t advise against outside
funding for starting studios. “Do what you need to do
to survive and grow. I think everyone needs to realize
that game development is hard. Running your own
business is equally hard. It will eat up your time and
consume your energy, so only do it if you have the
absolute drive to succeed.”
7
 Interview • Laurens Rutten

CoolGames’
cool mobile
strategy
“To sell cola, find supermarkets.” This strategy worked miracles for
CoolGames, the Amsterdam studio that did things boldly differently.”
CoolGames

8
 Laurens Rutten may be the CEO of one of the larger game companies
in Amsterdam, he vividly remembers founding CoolGames in Utrecht,
in 2010, as one of the first inhabitants of the Dutch Game Garden.
These were eventful times, he says, as Apple famously opened its App
Store one year later, and with it launched the app economy that would

CoolGames change how we play games, and on what devices.

F OU N D IN G Y E AR
2010
PL AC E OF OR I G IN
Utrecht, The Netherlands
NU M B E R OF F OU N DE RS
1 stores, and tried to see what the rise of mobile gaming meant for
CUR R E N T S TAF F
40+
CUR R E N T OF F I C E LO C AT I ONS
The buzz this created was tangible in the Dutch Game Garden and the
industry as a whole at the time, Rutten says. “Most of our peers quickly
pivoted to building app games, as it promoted self-publishing and
creative independence. This suited most indies, and investors too, who
saw great potential in this new platform.”
At CoolGames, the thinking went in the opposite direction. “We were
making Flash games at the time, so of course, we looked at the app
us. One thing was very clear from the start: we needed a strategy
that would permanently sustain the company, and we did not feel
confident that we could seriously compete between hundreds of
thousands of games in the app stores. Initially, it felt like a place
where creativity would thrive and smaller companies could bloom,
but it soon developed into a fighting market where the guy with the

CoolGames
Amsterdam, Tokyo biggest marketing budget wins. As we knew we were not great at user
acquisition, we decided to leave the app stores to others.”
FIRST FUNDED BY

Truffle Capital This decision did not keep CoolGames from developing mobile games,
(Paris) and Solid Ventures far from it. The company embarked on a quest to launch mobile games
(Amsterdam) on other platforms, focusing on HTML5 technology-based games,
for social media, messenger platforms, and whatnot. Today, you can
F I R S T G AM E play PvP Angry Birds on Facebook Messenger, courtesy of CoolGames,
Battleship on Snapchat, or a cool, voice-controlled crossword puzzle
Bubble Fever
on Google Assistant… There are literally hundreds of games that left
the studio, launching on dozens of platforms, also in non-Western
NOTAB L E S U C C E SS
territories like Japan. This success is reflected in the company size:
Jewel Academy the Amsterdam office now holds 40+ people, with a handful of others
(HTML5 web) working abroad.
Battleship

“
(#1 on Snapchat)

Angry Birds multiplayer Building a studio and developing a quality game portfolio
(Facebook Instant Games)
are both very expensive things. Investments allowed
Guess the Drawing
us to select quality staff, and also — and this is highly
(Google Assistant)
important — make mistakes without killing the company.”

PR I VAT E F I N AN C ING ROU NDS

Yes But stepping away from the promise of iOS and Android alone does
not make a strategy, Rutten explains. “When user acquisition is not

9
 your forte, you need to go to platforms where players
already engage on mobile and web, but do not play
many games yet. Therefore, we first started making
HTML5 games that were already proven concepts on
other platforms, without the ambition to come up with
a fully new game formula. Our first games were for
example Sudoku, solitaire, bubble shooters, match-3
puzzles, and other classic game types that simply did
not exist on these new platforms yet! When we started
over ten years ago, there was just one other guy in
Japan doing HTML5 games already, so we needed
to set up our own pipeline of HTML5 games at Dutch
Game Garden.
To fund this “alternative strategy”, CoolGames talked
to investors, who, early on, ponied up around half a
million Euros in various investment rounds. “But of
course, I always got the question why we did not aim
to become the next Rovio or so,” Rutten remembers.
“As I said, everyone was looking at the app stores, and
Apple was simply very sexy at the time.”
Still, the decision to involve investors was an easy one.
CoolGames
“Building a studio and developing a quality game
portfolio are both very expensive things. Investments
allowed us to select quality staff, and also—and this
is highly important—make mistakes without killing
the company. Mistakes you will most definitely make,
especially in the ever-changing games industry.”
10
“
Working with an investor comes
with the pressure to deliver on your
promises of success, and you have to
be able to deal with that pressure.”
Of course, this also meant investors held a stake in
the company. “Of course, this affects discussions about
strategy or operational matters. Often this is very
useful and you’re glad someone is helping you reach
certain decisions. Occasionally you also bump into
differences and that can be challenging. Also, there’s
the pressure to deliver on your promises of success,
and you have to be able to deal with this pressure.
This is something I feel every young game company
should really be aware of when they think about
investing: there are big advantages for your company,
but also some disadvantages you have to learn to
work with.”
To sway investors, Rutten used an analogy: to sell cola,
find supermarkets to reach people. In other words:
when you don’t have the means to do proper user
acquisition, bring your product to places where users
already visit in large numbers. “Distribution is key.
Before long, we approached every “supermarket” we

could find online, saw they weren’t doing games in
any relevant way yet, and helped them build their own
gaming space, keeping their visitors entertained on
their platforms. It’s a win for them, and we sell more
cola.”
And the rest, as the saying goes, is monetization. “Our
goal has always been to find a critical mass of players
because that will yield enough advertising revenue.
This happened when we started, and is still the
case today, with games that run in the cloud on any
platform that wants them. The only thing left to do is
tweak the games to perfection, to optimize the yield.
And that’s a trick you learn by trial and error.”
Today, CoolGames enjoys a solid status as a games
provider for a slew of online platforms, working with
established IPs like Battleship, Monopoly, Angry Birds,
CoolGames
Jewel
Academy
and many others to find even more users. Strategically,
working with platform partners remains key: Rutten
is still bringing his cola to supermarkets. And yet a
lot of other things have changed over the years, he
explains. “And much of it for the better, fortunately.
HTML5 became an industry standard that helped us
greatly, and while mobile payment methods were a
huge problem in our starting days, these issues have
mostly been solved for current platforms.” The other
big change is in the content: CoolGames’ market is
such that deep and highly engaging HTML5 games
are now in great demand, providing high quality and
an experience similar to that of app-store games, big
production budgets, and much longer development
times than the simple match-3 games of yore.
It’s bigger, and better, but still the same cola.
11
 Interview • Vincent van Geel

Know when
to walk away
Fresh out of school, Vincent van Geel found himself leading an
international team of game developers for a big investor that saw
huge potential in the games industry and the young Dutchman. It
was a job he didn’t ask for but ended up pouring his heart and soul
into for 9 years.
ISOTX

12
 In his spare time, Van Geel was making mods for popular video games
which he released on the internet for others to play. That got the
attention of an American pre-seed investor who wanted to work with
him. The two hit it off and as a show of skill, Van Geel developed the

ISOTX Command & Conquer Generals mod MidEast Crisis. “He was doing a
lot of business in Israel and I ended up joining him on business trips as
an analyst of the businesses he invested in.” The working relationship
A C T IV E Y E AR S
turned into a friendship. Van Geel had no contract in place and there
2005 - 2014 was no formal investment done yet.

PL AC E OF OR IG I N
Panama
NU M B E R OF F OU N DE RS
3 Iron Grip. The first game set in that universe was the Half Life 2 mod
F I R S T G AM E
Iron Grip: Warlords - Steam
Minority shareholder
But that all changed when the investor got his business partner
involved in an ambitious project that Van Geel was working on. He
came up with a dieselpunk alternative reality setting that he called
The Oppression. The business partner was a more formal investor
group that operated out of Greece. They had been paying for the
development of the game and various other projects but still, nothing
was officially arranged. So, it was time to make this official.

“
NOTAB L E S U C C E SS

March of War
It’s a very simple concept, but an effective one that

PR I VAT E F I N AN C ING ROU NDS
Yes
ISOTX
could pass as a life lesson. Start with a simple step,
and take things one brick at a time. Before you
know it, you’ve built a wall. And after that, a house.”

Since Van Geel had no business experience he asked his father for
advice and guidance. That turned out to be a smart decision because
dad came up with a clause that would later help his son tremendously
when things turned sour. He stipulated the rule that all parties had
to sign off on future investment rounds. As a minority shareholder,
that condition gave Van Geel some leverage. The deal was signed
and ISOTX was in business. Because the largest investor had many
businesses and companies all around the world, the game studio was
initially registered in Panama. “That got me some suspicious looks
from customs at the airport”, says Van Geel laughing.

The studio at that time was made up of “a bunch of kids from all over
the world”, Van Geel remembers fondly. “We got into this adventure
together. Traveled the world, worked from the most awkward places,
and yet still built things together and shipped them. I will never forget
these people. I cherish these moments of comradery and how much I
learned from them.”

13
 Dilution
With the next Iron Grip game in the making, this time
an ambitious FPS/RTS hybrid called Warlord, the studio
needed money to expand. The investors decided to
do a seed investment round, which meant money for
shares in the company. “That’s an important lesson
right there”, says Van Geel. “Make sure you’ve got
this covered in the contract because at the time it felt
a bit unfair. Your share in the company gets diluted,
watered down, in order to free up shares for everyone
that invests. This is normal, however as I wasn’t
getting paid anything for years, I felt all my work was
valued at zero during dilution, which was pretty steep.
You’d expect there at least to be some value applied
to years of non-paid labor. So after that first round,
I had even less.” A situation that would occur a few
more times along the way.
Van Geel praises the ‘cowboy mentality’ of the studio
and the investors. “We dared to waltz into unproven
territories. Mixing RTS and FPS genres? No problem,
let’s do it! No game engine that could do this stuff?
Let’s modify Quake 3 so it could! This was something
the investors taught me at the time: ‘figure out a way
ISOTX
to make it work’. It’s a very simple concept, but an
effective one that could pass as a life lesson. Start
with a simple step, and take things one brick at a time.
Before you know it, you’ve built a wall. And after that,
a house.”
Crazy hours
With several games released, revenue came trickling
in. Not quite enough to sustain the growing studio,
but just enough to keep investors interested. Another
investment round helped ISOTX expand to a 55-person
game studio in two locations. One in the US where
most people worked from home and one in The
Netherlands, located on the top floor of the incubator
Dutch Game Garden in Utrecht.
The next Iron Grip game was a free-to-play MMO
called Marauders. “When you’re young you’re so full of
energy. I worked crazy hours without ever questioning
myself”, says Van Geel. “The setup is very clear. In a
game company, the value is in the product and the IP.
As a starting professional, all you can bring to that is
time. And you have plenty of that because you don’t
have many commitments. Investors put money in,
14
hoping the product will sell enough units so they’ll
get a big fat return on their investment. If that doesn’t
happen or takes too long, they will start to lose
patience or interest.”
With none of the investors having any experience in
the games industry, the projections for production
and sales were not very realistic. They promised an
8-month development cycle and a tenfold return
on investment, while Van Geel knew production
would be closer to 3 years. Pressure was applied to
paint shareholders a more positive picture than the
grim reality. “It’s a strange situation. I had this close
personal bond with the investors. I’ve been at their
homes and played with their kids. After working
so closely together, you just don’t walk away from
everything you built. And so I painted that picture.”
“
It felt like I was standing on the Titanic,
frantically trying to steer away from certain
doom. But we couldn’t get off the plotted
course.”
It became clear to Van Geel that the project was not
going very well. ‘A million lines of code’ were written
but it was not good enough. Yet again, a new round
of investments was needed in a desperate attempt to
recoup some of the sunk cost. In a nutshell, the sunk
cost fallacy says that people prefer to keep investing
in a project that already had a significant investment
because of a strong loss aversion. “It felt like I was
standing on the Titanic, frantically trying to steer away
from certain doom. But we couldn’t get off the plotted
course. There were too many captains with different
stakes in the project. I had a lot of responsibilities but I
was only partially in control.”
Drastic action
With his 30th birthday coming up, Van Geel did what
so many people do around that time: assess his life.
“I had spent my most productive years running a 50+
people strong game studio and that was amazing!
I learned so much in that time. But it also felt like in
the last couple of years the whole thing just got top
heavy and we needed some drastic action if we were

to survive.” He put his thoughts on paper and sent
them to the investor, hoping to kickstart a change. But
all it did was open up Pandora’s box. The investor was
not pleased and pulled Van Geel off the project and
threatened legal action.
Van Geel wanted out, but his business partners made
it difficult for him to leave in a clean way, putting the
situation in a stalemate. All he wanted was to cut all
ties completely so he could move on to pursue other
ventures. When the investors needed another round
of investments, they needed Van Geel’s signature
to go ahead. That was exactly the bargaining chip
he needed. He refused to sign off on the investment
until he was finally offered a way out of the mess. “All
thanks to the advice my dad gave me so long ago. I
remember back then it was a huge point of discussion,
but I’m glad I stuck with it. It goes to show that it’s
vital to put everything down in contracts.”
And so, after 9 years the working relationship came
to an end in a lawyer’s office. There he negotiated an
acceptable exit so he could continue working in the
games industry.
“You know, my relationship with my investors was
actually great, 95% of my time at ISOTX”, says Van
Geel. “I still hold fond memories of our years together,
our crazy early years of long hours, and the personal
March
of War
relationships that grew into long-lasting friendships.
All in all, no matter how an adventure turns out, it’s
like the cliche says; it’s the journey that matters.”
ISOTX
Other people’s money
Although in the end, ISOTX didn’t make it, Van Geel
would happily advise starting developers and studios
to work together with investors. “Use other people’s
money to make money”, he says smiling. “Having a
20 or 30% share in a million-dollar investment is more
than you would have if you would go at it alone.
The money makes it possible to produce games on a
different level. You have a bigger chance of making
that next hit. The games industry is a hit-driven
business, so invest in IP, not in building a studio.”
And as a final tip “if you want to attract an investor,
don’t be modest. Investors are a bit like gamblers
sometimes, they are looking for high stakes and huge
payouts. So, if you want to grab their attention you
have to present to them not only your business plan
but more importantly, sell them the ultimate dream.
So, set your goals high and then write a roadmap to
those goals that sound reasonable and doable. Get
sparkles in their eyes. You have to woo them.”
15
 Interview • Hester Le Riche

Tover:
launching big by
bootstrapping
Tover (formerly Active Cues) makes interactive installations for people with
cognitive challenges. While their “Tovertafel” (Magic Table) product line can be
found in care homes and special education centers worldwide, the company
was only looking for large investments recently. During the first seven years,
clever bootstrapping made all the difference.
Tover

16

(formerly Active Cues)
F OU N D IN G Y E AR
March 2015
(first Tovertafel installed)
PL AC E OF OR I G IN
Utrecht, The Netherlands
NU M B E R OF F OU N DE RS
3 surface, stimulating the cognitive abilities of users through play. Over
CUR R E N T S TAF F
70+
CUR R E N T OF F I C E LO C AT I ON:
Utrecht, The Netherlands
FIRST FUNDED BY
Self-funded
F I R S T P R OD U C T
Tovertafel
NOTAB L E S U C C E SS
6000+ Tovertafels
sold worldwide
PR I VAT E F I N AN C ING ROU NDS
Obtained an investment
early 2022
Hester Le Riche apologizes when we meet over video. She is happy to
talk about the investment strategies of her company, Tover, and all
that entails, but at the time of this interview can’t talk freely about
her conversation with private equity investors. “I’d love to discuss
this in more detail in a few years or so, as it’s such an interesting
conversation to find yourself in. But as of now, I kinda do not want to
jinx these talks. We have to close the deal yet, and this being the first
time we do this, I don’t want to discuss our strategies a lot.”
We’re hardly two minutes into the interview, and already Tover
surprised the interviewer—how is this blooming company not funded
by large investors? The Utrecht company enjoys great success in the
world of care homes with their Tovertafel product line: interactive
installations that project moving imagery and games onto a flat
6000 have been installed worldwide—a tremendous achievement for a
company that started in 2015 with just three people and an intern.
“
Jump from startup to scale-up too fast, and you damage
your service levels, risking the good name you have with
Tover
your target audience.”
In short, Tover quickly grew into one of the largest and most successful
applied game companies in the Netherlands, and perhaps the world.
And now Hester tells us her first seven years as a business were run
without external funds?
“As a matter of fact, yes,” she replies, smiling. “We bootstrapped
everything we did until now. Over the years, we did talk to investors,
but as we relied on our own cash flow, a deal never materialized.
Today, the situation is very different, as we’re eying a big expansion
into the United States, and we want to properly fund that expansion.
But that’s all you will hear from me on this, haha.”
Fair enough, but this triggers a new question: How exactly do you
bootstrap a successful company, for seven long years? Tover has
70+ staff at the moment—making payroll alone will probably be a
headache? “The answers lie in the specific history of the company,”
Hester clarifies. She explains that the company grew out of her Ph.D.
research on ‘Playful Design for Activation’, which showed her interest
in playful solutions to cognitive challenges in people with dementia or
Alzheimer’s.
17
 During her Ph.D., she took two years researching
the neuropathology of Alzheimer’s more, to better
understand how areas of the brain are affected by
play. The yield from this research was funneled into a
classic design trajectory, where Hester co-designed the
first Tovertafel with inhabitants of care homes. Next,
she validated the design using intervention studies—
everything was done 100% in a scientific way.
“If you look at it from a financial point of view, the
Tovertafel “R&D” trajectory was sponsored by research
grants, so there were practically no costs involved
there” Hester adds. “We also knew we wanted to rely
on existing technology, to not add to the budget.
Hence we work with a hardware partner to minimize
upfront investments. Of course, they demand upfront
payments for the hardware we use. So when we first
contacted care homes, we offered them a discount
if you paid us in full before delivery of the product.
And care homes being care homes, in a budget sense,
everyone agreed with this strategy.”
“
Whenever we posted a new promo video, it
would go viral in no time, and it quickly led
Tover
to new orders.”
This simple budgeting scheme got Tover through its first
couple of years. Small margins were used for advertising
the product, although most was achieved through free
publicity. “The care world is a tightly knit community, and
word about my research had reached most specialists
in the field. So when we wanted to advertise Tovertafel,
a lot of ground had already been covered. Whenever we
posted a new promo video, it would go viral in no time,
Postscript
At the time of this interview, Tover was
negotiating a deal with a private equity investor.
In the meantime, Tover has announced that
Karmijn Kapitaal from the Netherlands took
a minority stake in the company to support
not only financially but also with the right
knowledge and insights.
Hester: “Karmijn puts the same values ​​first as
18
and it quickly led to new orders.”
For the past few years, the company found new care
homes simply by reaching out. The company installs
the Tovertafel themselves, instructs local staff, and
offers service contracts for maintenance and upgrades
of the games. This means Tover relies on the work of
a relatively large service team, and this takes time to
build. “I am of the opinion that growth needs to be
organic, because of the importance of team building.
We service institutes with very specific needs, and
where trust is a big factor, so you want to be very
careful in your dealings with them. This is also why
we kept investors at bay: it simply takes time to build
a service organization, a distribution network, and a
tech support team, especially when different territories
are involved. Jump from startup to scale-up too fast,
and you damage your service levels, risking the good
name you have with your target audience.”
Idealism
Isn’t the funding Tover currently seeks for an expansion
into the US at odds with this statement? Surely
funding leads to a bump in growth, with all that
entails? “Haha, yes. But please interview me again in a
few years or so, and you’ll get your answer!”
Hester stresses the idealism involved in the process. “I
designed with a clear mission: to improve the lives of
people in these care homes. I’m an idealist designer
in that sense; leading a business wasn’t on my radar
for a long time. Even today, I see “building a business”
as a design trajectory, where you need to be just as
clever as when you build a bridge. It takes up a lot of
creativity, and social skills too, as you have to rely on
people who know more than you about certain topics.”
Tover and would rather go for the right balance
than for quick gain. Such a long-term vision has
brought us together from the start.”
Investment manager Karmijn: “Tover’s diverse
team has one thing in common: their love for
helping their target audience and contributing
to their quality of life. Together with great
ambition, we are convinced that Tover will also
be a success overseas.”
The
Tovertafel
19
Stolen Couch

Interview • Eric Diepeveen

Stolen Couch’
monetization
machine
Game company Stolen Couch looked at game design primarily from a
business perspective. Their title Castaway Paradise was specifically geared
towards optimizing the yield in a free2play mobile game. Co-founder Eric
Diepeveen explains how it was Stolen Couch’ adaptive monetization system
that drew investors, and not his Animal Crossing clone.

20
 “Stolen Couch was founded on ideas we developed while in university.
The HKU program for interactive design had a strong focus on artistic
expression, and not so much on business. From the get-go, our group—2
biz dev-oriented people, and 3 developers and artists– had this instinct

Stolen that we wanted to go in a different direction than our peers and were

Couch
quite dogmatic about it, haha. We felt much of what people wanted at
school was risk-averse, while we wanted to “maximize our chance of
success,” as we kept repeating to ourselves.”
A C T IV E Y E AR S

2009 - 2021
PL AC E OF OR I G IN
Utrecht, The Netherlands
NU M B E R OF F OU N DE RS
5
NU M B E R OF F OU N DE RS AT C LOSI NG
“I remember having conversations about the strategy for mobile, a
platform on the rise back then. Would we go for a premium model and
set ourselves up for, say, 10 million installs at price X, or should we go
for free2play, and have one hundred million users? I mean, that was
our way of looking at things, even as students, however far-fetched
it sounded to everyone around us, including our teachers. To give us
a decent runway and be able to hire staff in the future, an external
investment would be the best option, we felt. Work for hire wasn’t for
us as this would just distract us from our goal.”

4
Being a business
“To set ourselves up for any success, we tried to plan ahead and do

Stolen Couch
FIRST FUNDED BY
things like using school projects to try things out. We also wanted
Art subsidy (WWIK) to move out of the school buildings, and into offices in the Dutch
Game Garden, to show how serious we were about running a proper
F I R S T G AM E business. We just had that very strong sense we needed those steps
Kids vs. Goblins to get somewhere. Also because the rift with our fellow students was
growing. You’d ask them “what’s the go-to-market strategy for your
NOTAB L E S U C C E SS game?,” and you’d be greeted by empty faces, mostly.”

Castaway Paradise

PR I VAT E F I N AN C ING ROU NDS

Angel investors
“
Go big or go broke was our motto by then,
and so we started looking at trends.”

“After school, we released Kids vs. Goblins, a Diablo-like game for iPad.
We swiftly realized this was not what we wanted: it was a game-game,
much too focused on the fun of it, and not on the monetization. It
made some money (about 10k Euros), but nowhere enough to sustain
ourselves. The same was true for the next game, Ichi, a puzzle game
our friend Jay van Hutten had built the prototype for. We squeezed
it for all it was worth, monetized it, optimized it, ported it to various
platforms, but we only made something like 30.000 Euros off of it.”

21
 Animal Crossing
“We could have gone on just like that, but all felt
we didn’t want to flatline like that until retirement.
Remember: most of us were still on art subsidies at
the time, but our government grants would end soon.
Go big or go broke was our motto by then, and so
we started looking at trends. What is happening out
there, and how can we take a chunk of that cake? And
what would be interesting to investors? It was then
we looked at Animal Crossing, a highly successful
game only available on Nintendo platforms, and we
thought: yeah, but what would happen if that would
be free2play on mobile?”
“We all felt we had a viable game idea, but we also
knew monetization was key if we wanted to have
success. We focussed on that in our pitch to investors,
whom we met at an industry event in Hamburg, and
played to our weaknesses first, before selling ourselves
on our strengths. First, we told them we made terrible
mistakes with our first few games but would make
good through a killer monetization strategy for the
next one. Our “special ability” was we could tweak
Stolen Couch
the monetization of a game for any platform, and
react to any new trend, we told them. This adaptive
monetization system was to be the basis of the new
game, Castaway Paradise. Two ”angel investors” said
yes to that idea, both offering more than 200.000
Euros in seeding money. I remember being super
22
surprised at how easy they came to their decision.
Apparently they liked the pitch! Another surprise
was how hands-off they were. We kept them up to
date on releases and met during the shareholders’
meetings once a year. As founders, we had a majority
share in the company, so there were never any large
discussions with them about our business decisions.”
The right idea
“What they saw in us was: we had the right idea,
at the right time, and we had a team that believed
in the pitch. That system was our product, not the
game! From the outside, the game was all about
scheduled (weekly) content, and social interaction for
the players. But investors were much more interested
in how we could tweak the in-game economy for
bigger yields. And we had everything to offer to them:
our system recognized what device you played on,
say the latest iPad model, and tweaked the pricing
of items according to what we thought these users
would want to pay for in-game items. For Android
users, we offered more ads, as they tended to pay less
in-game, et cetera. Other factors included geography,
where people lived, and what we could expect from
them in terms of expenditure, but also the way a
player responded to pricing in the game. This meant
our system serviced the full range of f2p players, from
people who opted for a monthly subscription to users
who paid by seeing ads.”
Castaway
Paradise

“The 400.000 seeding money first went into new
studio hires, then into the game. When we soft-
launched the game, the early state of the game meant
not all KPIs were as high as we’d liked. After improving
the game for more than a year we launched it
worldwide. Initially, we had hundreds of thousands of
organic installs per month. The monetization worked
pretty well, too. What worked against us, was people
expected Animal Crossing-levels of polish, and we
obviously didn’t have that. Our game also deviated
from Animal Crossing in terms of gameplay, alienating
a large number of people who wanted a f2p carbon
copy of their favorite game.”
“
They stood to lose a lot of money, but
they shrugged it off and said: “tough
luck guys, better luck next time.”
Bleeding money
But an even larger problem was in player acquisition.
As the mobile market was getting more crowded, new
players were hard to find without a large marketing
budget. Also, as a small company, we could not scale
in time to blast the competition out of the water with
improved content. In the end, it was too little and too
late. We tried to expand our IP, hoping it would enable
Castaway
Paradise
cross-promotion, lowering the cost per acquisition
with a new title, Castaway Home Designer. This more
casual game included a gachapon mechanism with
(randomly distributed) collectible cards, but it flopped.
Stolen Couch
And so we went back to our investors and showed
them we would soon be bleeding money, and why we
thought it wise to pull the plug. Of course, we were
nervous, because they stood to lose a lot of money,
but they shrugged it off and said: “tough luck guys,
better luck next time.” And that was the end of the
adventure.”
“Looking back at it, the fun to us is in the fact the
game still makes money for us. That monetization
system we uploaded is still doing its job, across
various platforms including Xbox, PS4, and Switch.
Now, eight years after launch, we’ve recouped all
development costs. Not exactly the “maximizing of
success” we had hoped for, but a pretty decent result
nonetheless.”
Stolen Couch disbanded in 2021. Eric is
currently senior producer at Ronimo Games,
where he continues to build games as a
service. Eric is also a member of the expert
panel at the Fors VC game investment fund.
Castaway Paradise is still serviced and runs
on various platforms.
23
KeokeN Interactive

Interview • Koen Deetman

Finance your
game, but keep
the company
independent
A couple of key moments defined the fate of KeokeN
Interactive. Founders Koen and Paul Deetman always
looked for ways to finance the development of the
game, but never for shares in the company.

24
 The history of KeokeN is both a cautionary tale and an epic saga. The
studio experienced its own Hero’s Journey with the development of its
debut game Deliver Us The Moon. They set out on a grand adventure,
learned valuable lessons along the way, were nearly beaten but

KeokeN never gave up in the face of adversity, and finally returned home

Interactive
triumphantly.

This particular journey started in 2013 at the kitchen table in their

F OU N D IN G Y E AR
2 0 13
PL AC E OF OR I G IN
Hoofddorp,
The Netherlands
NU M B E R OF F OU N DE RS
3 the horror indie game ‘Slender: The Arrival’ the team started working
CUR R E N T F OU N D E RS
parent’s house where Koen Deetman and his older brother Paul
decided to start a game company together with their friend Johan
Terink. And not just any old game studio, but a triple-A game studio.
“It might sound silly for a couple of guys with very little experience, but
we were dead serious. Why can’t we build a second Guerrilla Games?
The ambition was there from the start”, says Koen Deetman
Together with some friends and an artist he found on DeviantArt,
Deetman started planning their first project. Inspired by the success of
on their own horror game. With financial aid from parents and family,
Deetman secured a small office in a multi-tenant building. They had

KeokeN Interactive
2 enough money to pay rent for 4 months. And in that time, they had to
come up with something that showed enough promise to impress the
CUR R E N T S TAF F Dutch Creative Industries Fund.

25+

CUR R E N T OF F I C E LO C AT I ON

Hoofddorp
“
Money was tight and although they were
living the dream of making games, the reality
of running a business came creeping in.”
FIRST FUNDED BY

Self-funded (work for hire),

Subsidy Gamefonds Key Moment number 1
“I applied for a grant at the Game Fund”, explains Deetman. “I thought
F I R S T G AM E I had quite a clever business case. It was either €15,000 for a prototype
Deliver Us the Moon or €48,000 for the full game. Not surprisingly they went for the cheaper
(Steam) (2018/19) and on PlayStation option.” It turned out to be the first key moment for the young studio
and Xbox in 2020 (that got its name from the gamertag Koen used when his clan
became online world champion with the game Soldier of Fortune 2

NOTAB L E S U C C E SS
Overnight success of the
Deliver Us the Moon
Kickstarter
when he was 18 years old).
“That money was super important for us. We stretched that budget
to last us a year, maybe even more. We bought new computers and
extended the lease on the office. The grant allowed us to look further
ahead and establish ourselves as a real company.”

PR I VAT E F I N AN C ING ROU NDS The three founders didn’t take out any salaries for themselves. All three
No (Game publisher advances ) still lived with their parents and got a monthly allowance of about 300

25
 euros. Money was tight and although they were living
the dream of making games, the reality of running a
business came creeping in. They tried work-for-hire
projects to finance the game development but soon
found out that they couldn’t do both at the same time.
A big decision was made to focus solely on the game.
“It sounds cool and all but we decided to have an
income of zero euros for the foreseeable future.”
“
That was only possible after all the hardship,
and perseverance and a bit of luck.”
The studio got a lease on life for another couple
of months when one of the founders Johan Terink
decided to take on a well-paying freelance job and
donate his income to the game’s budget. Horrinth, the
prototype that was funded by the grant, was finished
by then and Koen Deetman was disappointed by the
way the game looked. He searched for an alternative
KeokeN Interactive
to Unity and found it in Unreal Engine 4. “We came
up with the early concept of Deliver Us The Moon
(working title MoonMan) through an internal pitch. It
was heavily influenced by Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 Space
Odyssey and Duncan Jones’ film Moon (2009). We
decided to do a Kickstarter campaign for the game.”
Kickstarter Rollercoaster
The Kickstarter was another key moment. The team
spent 4 months building a prototype and setting
up the Kickstarter campaign. Tons of research went
into striking the right balance between showing an
interesting project and asking for the right amount of
money. “A lot of people called us crazy that we went
for €100,000, but we knew we had to go big.” Deetman
approached hundreds of YouTubers in an attempt to
garner interest for their new project. They struck gold
when popular German vlogger Gronkh rallied his fans
behind Deliver Us The Moon. With special streaming
events, the game became an overnight success on
Kickstarter and the community carried the title over
the finish line. “We couldn’t have done it without him”,
says Deetman.
But the team soon found out that €100,000 on
Kickstarter doesn’t exactly translate to the same
amount in your bank account. Once the platform
26
share and taxes were deducted the sum was less
than €50,000. That was enough to give KeokeN room
to expand but not enough to finish the game. They
needed a publisher. Preferably a well-established one
that could pay for the rest of the development. So, a
search began and after a lot of bad deal proposals
from many risk-averse publishers, KeokeN landed a
deal with Swedish publisher Starbreeze. “We were
invited to present our case to the board of directors.
We hoped for €400,000 max, but apparently, they
liked us and offered a €500,000 deal with full recoup
and then a 50/50 revenue split. IP rights remained
ours.” Yes indeed, another key moment for the ever-
expanding game and budget.
Shoestring budget
Deetman felt that the dream of actually building a
triple-A studio might become a reality. KeokeN grew
fast, from 5 to 22 employees, a mix of full timers and
interns, and work on Deliver Us the Moon went well.
They were hitting all of the milestones and payment
came promptly. But publisher Starbreeze was taking
on far too many projects and saw some key titles
underperforming. And so less than a year after the
deal, Starbreeze was no longer able to help KeokeN to
release the game. The brothers Deetman renegotiated
the initial deal and retained the publishing rights. It
was agreed upon that the €500,000 would be paid
back in installments with revenues of the game.
With no money coming in KeokeN had to let go of 12
employees and try to finish the game on a shoestring
budget and with a core team. “I felt terrible,’’
remembers Deetman. “When you work so hard as
a team, you really grow close. And now I had to fire
them. Just awful.”
When part 1 of the saga finally came out as Deliver Us
the Moon Fortuna, KeokeN fulfilled its obligation to
the Kickstarter backers. But the game story was far
from finished. To complete the full game the studio
was in desperate need of money. So, Koen and Paul
went on a final search for a new publisher. In two
weeks, the brothers went to several conferences and
pitched their game to more than 60 publishers. They
were close to exhaustion when they finally landed a
deal with English publisher Wired Productions. “To be
honest, we were really hoping for a larger publisher,
but in the end, we couldn’t have been happier.” Wired
Productions paid for the completion of the game
and ports to other platforms. “They did a good job at
marketing the game and produced a great-looking
collector’s edition. It kept the studio afloat.”
Business Intelligence
With the complete game released, revenues started
coming in. “The game did -and does- pretty well, but
it’s not enough to finance a medium-sized studio”,
says Deetman. The game was well received by critics
and gamers and that got the attention of larger
publishers. “Our ambition to become a real triple-A
developer is as strong as ever.” For KeokeN’s next
project they looked for upfront investment in the new
game Deliver Us Mars and that’s exactly what they
got from publisher Frontier Development.
“We’ve learned so much on this journey”, says
Deetman. “We now know our path to becoming the
best possible studio. But that was only possible after
all the hardship and perseverance and a bit of luck.
Along the way, we got some good advice from people
we trust and developed our own business intelligence.
We learned how to be agile and nimble. We have
become so efficient, so cost-effective. We are quite
disruptive if you look at our budget. We can deliver a
polished game for a very competitive price.”
Koen Deetman is now in a position to say that money
isn’t the most important factor in the success of the
studio. “It’s always people and time over money. Take
good care of your employees because they determine
the worth of your company.” So, what’s next for
KeokeN Interactive? “We already had people inquiring
about buying the studio, but we haven’t yet decided
how we would like to go about this. We’re in this
business for the love of games, so that’s what we will
be doing for the years to come.”
KeokeN Interactive
Deliver Us
the Moon
27
 Perspectives on the
growth of the Dutch
games industry
by Christel van Grinsven

The worldwide games industry is growing fast, and Dutch

companies profit from the worldwide growth in games as well.
Dutch Game Garden – together with some partners - collects data
about the growth of the Dutch games industry and insights into
trends and developments. Below are some data about growth
and funding from the Games Monitor 2022 edition. A full report
is available on our website www.dutchgamegarden.nl/games-
monitor.

The Dutch games industry has grown from roughly 320 companies in 2012 to 630 by
the end of 2021. The number of employees has increased from around 2700 in 2012
to 4560 in 2021. The total revenue of game companies has more than doubled since
2012 to € 420 - €440 million in 2021. Alongside a growth in numbers, how the industry
grows also has changed over the last ten years. Initially, the sector increased mainly in
the number of companies. Between 2015 and 2018, growth could be seen mostly in the
number of employees, while the last three years’ revenue showed the most noticeable

28
increase. Also, the number of companies with more
than 50 employees has grown significantly over the
years. These data reflect what we see in the current
investment climate: the Dutch games industry is on
the road to maturity.
Since the first edition of the Games Monitor report
in 2012, funding has been part of the surveys we
sent to developers. Over the years, we have seen the
attitudes towards potential forms of funding change.
External funding, specifically a private investment
(Angel investor or Venture Capital), has slowly become
more interesting for developers: from less than 20%
in 2012 to more than 40% of the companies in 2021
gave private investment as an option to finance their
ambitions for growth. This also shows in the type of
arrangement companies are willing to accept. Project
funding is still very relevant, but a growing number
of companies are also interested in equity-based
arrangements. Over the years, we have also seen
the amount of money companies are looking for has
steadily increased.
Although finding a sufficient amount of capital to
grow remains a challenge for a large group (between
40 and 50% of the respondents), over the years these
challenges have changed. In the 2015 edition of the
Games Monitor, two main challenges were described.
On the one hand, professional investors want a proven
business model before they invest and on the other
hand, game companies are not used to the idea of
giving up control or IP and have never thought about
a potential exit strategy.
A few developments helped change the perceptions
about external investments:
• There are more examples of successful investments
available;
• These examples show it is possible to maintain
your creative freedom;
• Not all investors want a quick exit and investors
have gotten used to the rapidly changing business
models in the games industry;
• The idea of ‘smart money’ has become more
widespread: investors do not only offer money but
also a useful network, experience, and knowledge.
29
 Epilogue:
Key takeaways
In this edition of “Game Biz Stories”
about funding strategies, we have
provided you with insights from
experienced entrepreneurs in the Dutch
games industry. It is not a blueprint
on how to fund your company. Many
different stories can be collected
about that. It is clear, there is not
one road to realizing your ambitions.
Some companies want to remain fully
independent and will choose a path of
small steps and organic growth. Others
realize they need external funding if they
want to fully accomplish their goals.
External funding can take various forms
and can vary according to what you
want to achieve.
The stories in this publication show a lot of variety and
each one of them has a unique focus. All entrepreneurs
have experienced ups and downs. One of the things
they have in common is their perseverance. Being
an entrepreneur involves making difficult choices,
and running a business is hard, especially in game
development. They had to be versatile and show
resilience. Some were more successful in the endeavors
described, others are still on their path to growth, and
others had to cease their activities. All of them have
learned valuable lessons.
30
These are the key takeaways
we’ve collected from the six
interviews:
• Be aware of the differences between project
funding and funding based on equity;
• The start of your company may not be the best
moment to start with equity funding. Depending
on your business model, it may be better to have a
sound structure (employees, service model, etc.) for
your company first;
• Be prepared to run your company on a shoestring
budget for a while;
• Get advice from older or experienced people when
you negotiate a deal;
• Think carefully about which share of the company
remains yours and how this potentially may dilute
during future investment rounds;
• Try to find an investor who is knowledgeable about
the entertainment industry, or otherwise be careful
about unrealistic expectations;
• A good investor does not only offer money but also
knowledge and business insights;
• Be prepared to deal with external pressure and
deadlines;
• Don’t be too modest in your pitch to external
investors: sell them a dream;
• Show investors what you have learned from
previous mistakes;
• The quality of the team is very important to
investors;
• External investors do offer the opportunity to grow
faster than if you try to finance everything yourself;
• External funding lets you make mistakes without
killing the company.
You will make your own choices and your own faults.
But we hope these lessons will help you along the way.
Colophon:

Game Biz Stories

Funding Strategies
Q4 2022

is a publication by
Dutch Game Garden
Europalaan 400-1, 3526 KS Utrecht, The Netherlands
T: +31 (0) 30 204 0227
M: info@dutchgamegarden.nl
www.dutchgamegarden.nl

Authors

Interviews
Eric Bartelson
Arjan Terpstra

Foreword and epilogue

JP van Seventer
Christel van Grinsven

Editing & support

Christel van Grinsven
Krista Hendriks
Aryeh Loeb
JP van Seventer

Design & Layout

Defigners

All rights reserved

© Dutch Game Garden 2022
This publication is made possible with
the support of Province of Utrecht and
City of Utrecht.

31
 Game Biz Stories is published by Dutch Game Garden

32