Valve wants community-funded games
Valve's Gabe Newell has suggested the idea of community-funded games as a way to offset dev costs.
More specifically, Newell's idea is that gamers as a group consider funding development of a title before release in the same way that a publisher might - effectively creating community-published games.
Speaking to ABC, Newell suggested that community-funded games may be a great way to offset the huge costs and risks that developers and publishers face when creating a new title, saying that it may be a good way for gamers to get more involved in the way a game develops too.
"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," said Newell.
"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."
Hmm. It's an interesting idea, sure - but for AAA titles we're not sure it would ever take off to be honest. Plus, it all sounds a bit too hippy-ish for us, so we might have to consider taking some anti-hippy action as a result. You tell us what you think in the forums and, in the mean time, we'll get our guns and pepper-spray ready.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyIt would effectively make the whole industry more accurately representative of what consumers within it actually want.
Another way of looking at how the existing setup fails consumers/gamers is the existence and practises of publishers like EA.
Let's get the guitar out and have a good ol' pow-wow...
... HIPPIE VIEWS FTW!!!!!!
Stop making crap games, then life will be better.
How so?
This radical suggestion by Gabe Newell, effectively does away with the current setup of large publishers (EA et all) who are just accountants out to bleed as much as they can, with the best interests of their consumers a distant second from their own bottom line interests.
Exactly why it likely won't take off.
It's a nice idea, but what happens if the game gets shelved? Then consumers are taking the risks, not the companies.
A lot. But would you really have invested in a start-up company like Valve who, at the time were very small and focusing on several projects at once after leaving MS - all but one of which were abandoned? You'd kick yourself if you invested in Valve's (cancelled) game Aleph and not Quiver (which went on to become HL).
I like the idea in theory but how would you make the devs accountable to millions of small investors?
Kinda reminds me of that football team that was bought by the fans.
What ever happened with that?
I would have taken one look at Mr Newell and knew I was in safe, yet flabby hands.
This'll never work, but it's still a sound idea. The fact is, the majority of consumers (which they'd need to fund the game at the levels they are today) are morons and for that reason alone it would never work. They'd rather leave the situation as it is and then pirate the game or pick it up a month later at £15 from Play or wherever.
Football team owned by its fans - that'll be Barcelona then, they kinda do OK!
I like the idea of allowing investors to buy a share in the development of a game but the risk is high so the share of profits also needs to be high. You would be best to invest in a portfolio of games to allow for the cancelled ones.
Or better still he floats Valve on the markets and I'll be at the front of the queue to buy into it.
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...
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.
@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.'"
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.
Like a share incentive scheme.
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...
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.
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?
"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?
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.
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.
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 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!
http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/funny-pictures-cat-has-feet-on-table.jpg
It could work, if Gabe ran with this he might see some of my cash ;-)
http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/tv/goodgame/vodcast/valve_web_iv.mp4
Why not?
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.
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.
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!" :D
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.
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.
+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.
Wait... wait... investing in a corporation is ... hippy now?
what ever is the world coming to!?
Jokes aside... can't think of a way of this working. I support games by buying them, not putting 1*** in it.
Tell you what Valve, YOU make the games, and if *I* want to, THEN I'll pay for them. You want investment capital? How about looking into your own vastly overfilled coffers, we filled those ourselves already.
All of which Valve is very experienced in doing themselves. Someone mentioned earlier why games cost so much. How about 3-4 year development with a team possibly 50 people (very likely much more) so thats a minimum of £5.25mill - £7mill in wages, then add accountants, lawyers, all the expenses mentioned above plus the usual utilities and rents, R&D. It soon adds up. It would be interesting to know how much Valve has in the bank but when you pay your team a decent wage to stay loyal to your company I bet Valve isn't as rich as you think.
Anyway if it happens, I'm in for £50 tops, I love a little gamble now and then and honestly I wouldn't trust any other company with this idea and my money.
Or maybe we could take the other standpoint, and say that their creative freedom is now unhinged and unfettered by the publisher's "unwelcome" input, by not having taken anyone else's opinion into account. Do ALL publisher's have this unwelcome, stifling input? You would think that if the publisher wanted to receive a decent return on their investment that they'd attempt to provide sound guidance, not "stifle" creativity. I mean, it's their business, wouldn't you like to have a say if your company had just lumped down a seven figure investment?
If the minimum development costs are anywhere in that region (5-7 million pounds), just how many people do you expect they're going to need to be able to "community fund" this? Just how much do they expect us to pay? What if they don't get enough to cover the development costs entirely, will I be refunded? If this is like any other "investment" I've heard of, I doubt it.
I don't have to assume that Valve is rich either, good ol' Gabe said that himself already. Nice article right here on Bit-Tech if you want to go read it. http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/02/20/valve-steam-is-making-us-rich/1
Plus, I would've thought that development costs for a company that's only made 2 proprietary engines, reused for nearly a decade each, wouldn't have had such a struggle to finish a game that's essentially the same thing. Left 4 Dead 2 anyone? How about finishing the first one, and I'll think about paying for the next one.
From my experiences in the past I would say that most publishers have been a pain in the arse. Adding unnecessary workloads, creating confusion about their requirements, 'stifling' the creativity, and not forgetting changing their minds on a weekly basis. But I guess from your experiences you found them a bit more helpful?
To pull the finest example of a bad publisher would be Funcom and Conan. That was a disaster because Funcom wanted to push the game out in an unfinished state.
I don't however feel as if Valve could offer me anything more than a decent game at the end of the day, demo's are of little interest to someone who's already paid for the full thing. And what do I owe Valve? I've already paid for the games they've produced, as far as I'm concerned the transaction has been made. If anything they should thank me for supporting them. I think Valve is big enough that they don't need any more support from me than I've given. If they want testers, sure, release a demo. Otherwise they could just pay for them like everyone else does. QA testers exist for a reason.
The biggest problem I can see would be getting the business model out to the people with a clear explanation of what the terms are and that they are making a long term gamble with a chance for complete loss but also the possibility of seeing some return on top of receiving a copy of the game.
No an investment would mean a returns on that investment, buying a game is purely a consumer activity.
Really would need to see how all the legalities of it plan out before i could say how much of a good idea it is, but on principle, yeah, good idea.
(as for the investment in ep3, don't forget investment in that would be sky high, so everyone gets a free copy of the game, so less sales ergo less overall profit :P)