News Valve wants community-funded games

its just like pre-order just longer, lol catz

 

I could see this work, especially on IP's that are already working or doing well, you could invest in the funding of the project and get a return at the end of the day. So you can choose either you get a game as dividend payout + extra from the proceeds or just the proceeds.

It could work, if Gabe ran with this he might see some of my cash ;-)

 

btw here is full interview by goodgame exellent interview, i agree its like gabe is a gamer just like us
http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/tv/goodgame/vodcast/valve_web_iv.mp4

 

we are allready doing pre-orders of valves games so hehe, i bought half-life 2 before it was released lol

 

Has Gabe heared of the saying, "Too many cooks spoil the broth". Thousands of people putting money into a specific game, and expecting a direct say in how it should be made and a return on their investment. Sounds like a total nightmare. Nothing will ever get made for all the fighting.

 

If I invested in a game I wouldn't release it via Valve.

 

Why not?

 

DUDE! INTERSTELLAR MARINES CAME UP WITH THAT FIRST! WTF!? GABE NEWELL IDEA STEALER!

www.interstellarmarines.com

I joined the spearheads. What it is is that you pay for the game before its released and you, as a community, help develop the game sharing ideas to make something new and cool.

Sounds very interesting and they really got to me with a video posted on GT:

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/exclusive-for-interstellar-marines/49543

 

Learn English please, thanks.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/thief

 

Thank you captain grammar! Without you i would have had no idea what he was talking about! .....No insults please! Insults are bad. --Nexxo...

As for the idea I don't see how it could possibly work and be fair to everyone.

 

I wouldn't mind paying for a bit, if we were to get a share of that game, and get a income.

 

I dont really understand this, would you get a share afterwards? but think of it this way... what % of players actually spend time on fourms like this, spend time in communities - what about casual gamers etc.. how would they know and why would they bother investing into something which they usually try before buy.. or buy 1-10 years down the line.

 

In response to Zero_UK and for anyone else reading up - if you've never dabbled in stocks and shares then its only a matter of time before you are a customer of a business who happens to be issueing shares to existing customers or you even decide that you have some cash to spare and you need a good investment.

My point being, say the price of an investment is £50 or $75 ... and at the end of it you may or may not get a return on that investment in some way ... who knows, you may even be offered the option to keep any return in the business and re-invest.

Worst case scenario ... you lose £50 or $75. I'd risk that to see what could come out at the end of it. I think we all could.

 

and those $75 are much more valuable for the dev in the beginning of the game development.

 

I dont get it... so you pay £40 before the game is made and then eventually get the game for free?

And if it gets cancelled you get your money back?

Man, I'd like to see Valve contend with fans during its inevitable delays when the fans actually have a vested interest! I can see it now, "I'm paying your salary Gabe, bring my game out NOW!"

 

Answer: no. We're talking about the egg that hatches the chicken, not the egg the chicken lays. Like DXR points out, early development funds are more important. Furthermore, if a faction of people invest funds early on, it will confirm certain aspects of a game's potentail market. Developers can trust and rely on this to a greater extent than usual, and be less likely to water everything down to appeal to everyone/no one.

Also, getting players to invest in games has the business advantage that those players are far more likely to talk it up to other people and get other people to buy the game upon release.

Correct, but that is not how this would work, if implemented wisely. Just because someone is an investor, it neither automatically means that the person has a direct say in product development, nor that they own stock in the company. A likely implementation of this concept would give the investors a forum and maybe a few votes/polls, but this would not be used as binding for the developers.

HOWEVER, having a block of gamer investors would offset the power of traditional developers. It is very likely that traditional developers would still be involved in producing a title that is also gamer-funded, though their contribution would be less. It is likely that those annoying publisher decisions that piss off gamers would happen less often or be mitigated under this proposed system.

This concept has no inherent connection with open source.

This is not true if small share holders are seen as a voting block. The implications behind this idea is exactly that -- these gamer-financiers would be motivated by their drive to play the game. This unites them as a group and will be seen as such by the company. Any company doing this would recognize the value of these people as also coming from their being a willing source of marketing information (very relevant to game design --i.e. what will the players want?) and on promotion of the title. For these reasons, almost any company implementing this idea would have a forum system for these people at a minimum. Implementing a forum would further cause a company to see these people as a voting block (addressing your small share holder concerns), and it will very likely come with built in tools to have them express aggregate ideas.

 

The way I understood it:
Essentialy it would be like preordering, just with your credit card being charged immediately instead of once it ships and due to that it would help pay for the development, meaning the developer would not require a loan (which costs interest) or get money from a publisher who can demand things afterwards, because lets face it, it would be like someone owning 40£ worth of stock, it won't be enough for you to be able to demand anything, so unlike now where the funds often come from one source (the publisher) the developers would gain much more freedom of choice.

 

Can someone explain to me just why games are apparantly costing millions to make? Is it all going on paying peoples wages? Are dev-team sizes also getting ridiculously large?

 

Games designed by online committee... oh joy...

 

+1

have you seen the evolution of games? i think they are far more complex today than they were some time ago....

i doubt that they would have such amount of power... i bet it would go more or less the same way the open pandora console was made.