Topic: Valve is thinking about letting gamers help fund games

[MysterD]

Well, this is interesting.
Gabe Newell is thinking about having gamers be the ones funding games, NOT publishers.

Valve on Community Funding
   
[Jul 20, 2009, 4:36 pm ET] - 2 Comments
A Gabe Newell Interview on Good Game is a video conversation with Valve's managing director as well as John Cook and Jason Holtman. The conversation with Gabe has him recounting the history of how Valve got started back at the very beginning and also includes an interesting take on piracy representing under-served customers and how copy-protection is a step in the wrong direction. A topic highlighted by Kotaku is Gabe discussing the idea that there may be a way to develop games with the community investment, rather than publisher funding. It seems the community does this when buying games, but Gabe is talking more about up-front money and how it may help with the creative end. He says:

    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 that you have and I'll be an early investor in that.' In venture capital there's a concept that your best investors are your customers, because they have 'secondary gain.' If you are successful they not only want a return on their money, but they're incredibly happy if you actually make a great game that they get to play. It would be really great if we could evolve Steam in a way that made it possible so that a developer could say, you know, 'if you want this game to start moving forward, here's the sort of 'seed round',' were people can sort of opt-in and say 'I'll pay thirty dollars and I own a piece of this game going forward.'

[sirean_syan]

We do fund games already: we buy the fucking things.

[MysterD]

We do fund games already: we buy the fucking things.

I think what Valve's looking for is gamers to pre-order WAY, WAY early on in development here.

But, it looks like Valve is trying to convince more companies to just cut the middle-men out -- such as the publisher and maybe the retail outlet.

[idolminds]

There is so much wrong with this its hard to know where to start. I could see it maybe working with smaller titles like PSN/XBLA type stuff. For example, I'd love to see Mirrors Edge 2D fleshed out into a full game. But there you've already got a working and well made "prototype" to play. Are they really going to do that for some big budget $20million game? Those tend to change drastically during development. Will we get milestone demos to judge if we like those changes? What if I don't, do I get my money back? I mean, if people are funding your game they are going to want a say in its direction.

This has worked for some bands in the past. They collect funds, once they reach a certain amount that covers the cost of producing a new album, they go and make the album. Though there when its done they usually release it for free to everyone. I doubt Valve would do that.

[MysterD]

There is so much wrong with this its hard to know where to start. I could see it maybe working with smaller titles like PSN/XBLA type stuff. For example, I'd love to see Mirrors Edge 2D fleshed out into a full game. But there you've already got a working and well made "prototype" to play. Are they really going to do that for some big budget $20million game? Those tend to change drastically during development. Will we get milestone demos to judge if we like those changes? What if I don't, do I get my money back? I mean, if people are funding your game they are going to want a say in its direction.

This has worked for some bands in the past. They collect funds, once they reach a certain amount that covers the cost of producing a new album, they go and make the album. Though there when its done they usually release it for free to everyone. I doubt Valve would do that.

Those who help fund the game should get it for free -- as long as they say pay at least the game's original retail cost of $50.

[scottws]

Good luck, Gabe.

This is pretty laughable.  I think the only dev I would trust with my money at all is Stardock and even then if Wardell came out and made this statement I'd pretty much laugh at him too.

[MysterD]

3DR would probably take the money and run.
All we'd be left with is a fake trailer of DNF

[idolminds]

Interestingly, Stardock does a slight variation of this. You could pre-order Elemental right when it was announced. You get access to the alphas and betas for the game, and Stardock is the kind of company that actually listens to its fans. The use the pre-order money to help fund development, and you get a game at the end.

But then Stardock does pitch in their own money and isn't entirely dependent on the pre-orders, and their game budgets are usually much much lower than most everyone elses games. They also tend to be extremely open in talking about what they are currently working on, how its working out, etc keeping people in the loop. So it works.

Thats way different from Valve who apparently needs $10-30million up front to get a game going. I'm pretty sure you could combine the dev budgets of every Stardock game and not hit that number.

[PyroMenace]

We do fund games already: we buy the fucking things.

/thread

[Xessive]

Valve is thinking about letting gamers help fund games

Define "letting" ...

This is clearly a play on the ideas surrounding L4D; we paid full price for it early in the hopes that we'll get the complete product later.

From the developers perspective I can't see this fanning out too well. Gamers bitch a lot already, just take a peek at forums, imagine how intense it can get if they actually had a say in the development process. It'll just turn into a typical shareholders vs board of directors vs "the people".

Either way, as Que Sy so righteously put it: "We do fund games already: we buy the fucking things."

I'm just curious as to how far bullshit will carry this rad new idea.

[Cobra951]

Well that was Sy who said it, though it sounds like something Que might say.  I agree it's everything that needs to be said.

[PyroMenace]

Heh, I can see why you would mistake that statement as Que's, but yea, look again.

[Quemaqua]

I will righteously say this in relation to Sy's statement instead: I concur.

But yeah, everyone else said it already.  All I'll say is this is yet another notch on Gabe's idiocy counter.  Maybe all the hookers and fried chicken finally made some of his brain noodles pop.

[Xessive]

Haha I was looking at Que's enormous sig while I was typing so my mind went straight to Que

Sorry Sy!

[gpw11]

No shit they'd want that. Don't have to worry about funding being pulled if they don't make dates or miss milestones.  No accountability.  I like Valve and all, but what a fucking clown statement.