News Valve wants community-funded games

Gamers invest in the product. Negates publisher. Sweeeet.

Or better still he floats Valve on the markets and I'll be at the front of the queue to buy into it.

 

He stole my idea!!!

I had the exact same idea but then for tv series (I have this idea for over 4 years in my head).

Tv series with a large fan base (for example stargate) get funded by the viewers. Its on 'pay after viewing' basis. With a minimum of 2 dollar per viewer per episode and up to what the viewer wants to pay. If it is a good episode a viewer can reward what ever he/she want for it and if it is a bad episode the viewer can pay the minimum. How more viewers pay how better the next episode can be made. (more effects etc) . so actors, directors, script writers get better payed if they work better. This way a series does not have to be stopped after bad ratings but bases on fan commitment. Viewers worldwide can download per episode and it has no adds. Its also a very good anti piracy method, if the viewer don't pay the series can't go on...

 

lol.

Never going to happen.

Fan-Mods with donation options either flop around and die, or get bought up by the big companies.

This would go that very same way.

 

very good idea, shame it wont work, to many things that could go wrong.

@liratheal isnt the same idea as donations and fan-mods. they dont get anything back for investment

 

ACTUALLY...

"What I think would be much better would be if the community could finance the games. In other words, ‘Hey, I really like this idea you have. I'll be an early investor in that and, as a result, at a later point I may make a return on that product, but I'll also get a copy of that game.'"

 

It's a cack idea.

I can see why it may appear to be a good idea, but it's not.
This would effectively remove most or all of the finincial burden from the developers but still give them profit, they'd have almost no incentive to turn out good games that are on time because there will always be someone ready to invest a bit of cash in the hopes of making a bit of extra cash no matter how absurd the the title sounds and there's no reason what so ever why the developers should listen to 1000's of "investers" once they have your cash.
It's the same as owning shares in a company except it's shares of a game idea, and small share holders NEVER get listened to.
And of course what happens if the game does fail? never actually makes it to market? you lose your money, you lose your game and you lose any minor return, you get nothing, at least as things stand now you'll get a game out of it however rubbish it may turn out to be.

 

Woodspoon, if the public can invest then you can bet that the staff would be offered a reduced rate investment as well, thereby enticing them to work better in the hope of a great return.

Like a share incentive scheme.

 

I like the idea.....

As long as if it fails to come to market, the dev material etc is divvied up between all the investors, or sold and then the money divvied up...

 

I think this is a really good idea. Who knows if it will actually work in the real world but it's definitely worth a shot.

 

Seems to me that they just want gamers to take the risks instead of them.
So if they make a crap game we lose instead.

 

Devs get the money to dev from pubs, so its actually the pub that gets most of the risk.

 

wait... isn't this what happens when we, like, buy the game?

 

hmm only concern would be in the case of DNF where by they take forever then keep asking for more money then fold, whom would be auditing the work done / making sure they are working hard to get the investors a good return

Also how much information about the game would be released before a single line of code was written, hoiw could they stop some ideas being stolen?

 

Let me think... what games would I have invested in a few years ago? How many people would have, for example, invested money in Duke Nukem Forever?

"Ooh, that John Romero guy's making a new game called Daikatana! Let's give him money towards the Best Game Ever 1997!... er, wait..."

"OMG, I love playing Starcraft! Wonder if that third-person shooter they're gonna make turns out any go... What's this? They're asking for ground-floor funding? Those geniuses! I'll give them money, so when it comes out, I'll own it (sort of)! Oh, boy, and the sequel's in development! 2003 is gonna be the best year ever!"

And let's not mention Valve's own cock-ups in getting games out to schedule/near-vaporware incidents. Imagine how annoyed you'd be if you waited a decade for a game to come out, that you'd already paid for and invested in, while it was just starting its development (That's Team Fortress 2, folks!). Their trilogy of "bi-annual addon packs" have taken the best part of 5 years so far.

If games developers want my money, they can have it. As soon as I get my copy of the game, they can have my money. Isn't that how it works? Isn't that the sensible route?

 

It is an interesting idea and I'd certainly sign up for a pilot scheme. £20-£30 up front wouldn't break the bank, even if the development did go belly up it would be little worse than spending that same cash on one of the frequent disappointing titles.

Some thoughts...

While you'd be contributing to the development costs of a game this would in no way guarantee said game would contain all, or indeed any, of your favourite features. A game built around the whims of 10,000 fans would be a nightmare/disaster.

Remember this would be a pay now, play in 12, 24, 36 ... months time (perhaps never)

I like the idea of releasing the development to the community if the game fails to see the light of day. One fly in the ointment could be third party licenses.

I have no problem with the developers making a profit from my investment. I either pay £30 for a game off the shelf or pay £30 in development costs. This is not to say that any additional return would be unwelcome.

'Just buy shares in the company'. Almost always wrong. The only share holders who invest in a company are the ones who buy part of an initial issue. The company does not see a penny from the sale of previously issued/owned shares, though a favourable stock price may attract real investment. The fact that the current 'casino' stock market is so far removed from the goal it was originally designed to achieve can be left for discussion on some other day but it is a fact that makes this personal investment idea all the more appealing.

It would be interesting to see if there were a change in attitudes towards pirates.

For quite some time the current publisher centric model has delivered a plethora low risk tie-ins, remakes, re-hashes, dumbed down regurgitations with major investment decided by a list of NextGen and lowest common denominator check boxes. I'm not saying anything could be better than this but will suggest something different would be worth a try.

 

I would invest now on HL2 ep3, i know it will rock and i would have a return on my investment.

This will work like a really early pre-order, it works the same way for the buyer but for the maker it is far better.

 

Dragunov, Nukeman is talking about the fan-moders, fan-moders dont get anything in return. Investers do.

 

Misread. I thought he said that This IS the same idea when in reality he said it ISN'T. Whoops.

Although that sentence can still mean two things.

 

So you can be the sucker to plop down 1,000$ to get your copy, and the guy next to you waits for release and gets the same game, same return, for 50$.






Here's a better, totally radical, never thought of idea... make better games that are worth buying and are so full of DRM that paying customers can't even bloody enjoy the game. Nor announce sequels 2 weeks after the first game came out.

 

It has been done before, with some good success, in the Apricot Project. A game called Yo!Frankie was released as an Open Game.

It was the offspring of an Open Source (also Community funded) short film, Big Buck Bunny.

The Blender Foundation (the company starting all the projects) uses it as a way to spark interest and development of the Blender 3D software.

So, if Valve wants to take this route, it had better live up to the promises it makes (as with the Blender Projects):

1. Deadlines will HAVE to be met.
2. The "investors" should get a little something extra for their early committment, eg. named in the credits, extra free content, tee, etc
3. Actually releasing the game *wink*Episode 3*wink*

That's my 10cents worth, anyway!