Let Fans Fund Games Development?

clearing on 21/7/2009 at 13:51

Interesting idea.
Gabe Newell:

Quote:

One of the areas that I am super interested in right now is how we can do financing from the community. So right now, what typically happens is you have this budget - it needs to be huge, it has to be $10m - $30m, and it has to be all available at the beginning of the project. There's a huge amount of risk associated with those dollars and decisions have to be incredibly conservative.

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.'

So move financing from something that occurs between a publisher and a developer... Instead have it be something where funding is coming out of community for games and game concepts they really like.

(http://kotaku.com/5318368/valve-let-fans-fund-games-development)

If they could put together a good system for this...

N'Al on 21/7/2009 at 14:00

As long as the fans' funding doesn't automatically result in the fans having a say in the games' design.

A game designed/ altered/ dumbed down to 'market research' is bad enough, a game designed by (hundreds of) thousands of 'fans' would most likely be a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

242 on 21/7/2009 at 14:21

The idea is not new, but it's not realistic because the needed sum will never be achieved.

I'd agree to invest some money in CoSaS project f.e. to get the finished campaign or official Dark Mod campaign, but realistically we wouldn't collect more than 5-10 grands (that is if we are lucky) and that's not nearly enough to interest the teams and get them work full time or even half time.

With projects like next Duke Nukem or Stalker much bigger sum could be accumulated, but they require MUCH bigger funding like hundreds of thousands and millions, no way fans will give so much.

gunsmoke on 21/7/2009 at 14:23

Oh, God. I smell DISASTER. Interesting idea, sure, but imagine BioShock. The game promised was making us froth at the mouth. Sure, it ended up decent enough, but it appealed to an entirely different demographic in the end than was initially interested in it. Those initial fans whom invested in the project early on, would have been a LOT more pissed when it shipped. Though, some of the sting may be lessened somewhat by the financial returns since it was so successful.

Renault on 21/7/2009 at 14:31

I really want to believe an idea like this could work, but can't see it happening in a million years. Beyond the above stated reasons, what would happen in a DNF scenario? 10 years worth of people donating to get the game finished, and nothing to show for it. Class-action lawsuits and the like. I suppose if anything, if could provide increased motivation for a dev to actually get the job done as opposed to getting millions from a publisher and just sitting on it.

But in the end, the bottom line is there is no way enough money could be generated through donations to actually fund a project of any size.

Shakey-Lo on 21/7/2009 at 14:50

This is exactly how Mount & Blade was funded.

gunsmoke on 21/7/2009 at 14:51

BTW, clearing, thanks for the link. Very interesting and thought provoking. Much better than some of the typical convos in GenGame

Renault on 21/7/2009 at 15:14

Quote Posted by Shakey-Lo

This is exactly how Mount & Blade was funded.

Slightly different though in that this was shareware, so most of the end product was already completed by the time the donations started coming in. It's a whole other story if the dev wants to get all the money up front before anything is even past the concept stage.

I do still like the shareware idea though, hell, it put id on the map.

Ostriig on 21/7/2009 at 15:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by (http://kotaku.com/5318368/valve-let-fans-fund-games-development) Kotaku
May not be entirely practical for AAA games, whose budgets can run into the tens of millions, but for smaller games - or even a demo for a larger game - hey, why not, this could totally work.

This sounds about right. I don't see it working for full-scale AAA projects, either. It's basically a form of "buy before you try", and I don't see large enough sections of a target demographic regarding their entertainment - games, movies, whatever - as a risk-worthy investment rather than a consumer product. Small scale projects... maybe.

clearing on 21/7/2009 at 16:14

What about (http://www.1944game.com) this game? I think this game is made by donations but I may be wrong.