Gabe Newell wants Fans to fund your game!

[Tripamang]

Valve: Let Fans Fund Games Development - Gabe Newell - Kotaku

I think it's a cool concept, but far too open to exploit people. Brad McQuaid would of made a killing with this model :P

[Ashes Emberblade]

Microlending for software developers?

Don't we already have this in the form of stock IPOs?

[Kiksar]

Originally Posted by Ashes Emberblade

Don't we already have this in the form of stock IPOs?

Not really, as most developers are either privately owned or owned by a publisher which if you own a part of uses your money as they see fit to make more money, not to make games you want to play. The idea is to open it up to the community so there's sort of a "vote to make" aspect, where if you choose you're able to put a little bit of money toward a product that you'd like to see made.

They haven't talked much about the details, but there are several good solutions for how this could work. For example, a small development team could put together some pitch material. A few pieces of concept art, an outline, maybe even a prototype. When they felt they had enough to show people, instead of going to a big publisher they could put that material up on Steam. It would be free to the community, and people could individually decide if it was something they'd like to invest in. There could be a "starting amount" (say, $5,000 or so, depending on the project scope) that the donations needed to reach before the team was able to take the money and start working, just to allow for a little bit of a buffer so people could get their money back if it never got off the ground. There would be contracts in place that said those involved had to use the money to directly aid development. If the game eventually started making money everyone who helped fund it would get a small return on what they put in and a free copy of the game if they contributed above a certain amount (maybe $20?). Like most standard development though publishers, the developers would provide milestone updates so the community could see where there money was going and decide whether or not to keep funding the project. That might make things a bit too transparent on the development side, so maybe newer content would only be provided to those who had donated. They'd have to work that point out.

That's all speculation, but the general idea is sound. People were a bit turned off by Steam at first, but they've been doing great in providing a platform that helps take focus from the big publishers for some types of development. Valve makes tons of money, and I don't think they'd mind making more, but a few of the commenters on Kotaku seem to think it's a bit shady which is unfortunate. As far as evil companies in the game industry go, Valve's not even on the radar. I hope this idea pans out, it could help mod teams, start-ups, and small developers a lot.

[Surlok TP]

I could see them starting off with mod funding, the next CS or whatever. Take L4D for example, despite it's length the Death Aboard map is brilliant, and I would love to see more maps from the guys that produced it. These guys have jobs though, if they could be funded to the point where they cold work nonstop, and release a 10 dollar 3 campaign download or something? They could possibly make a decent profit.

It's a good idea, biggest problem I see is funding getting spread out over to many different IP's and nothing being produced.

[Kiksar]

Originally Posted by Surlok TP

I could see them starting off with mod funding, the next CS or whatever. Take L4D for example, despite it's length the Death Aboard map is brilliant, and I would love to see more maps from the guys that produced it. These guys have jobs though, if they could be funded to the point where they cold work nonstop, and release a 10 dollar 3 campaign download or something? They could possibly make a decent profit.

It's a good idea, biggest problem I see is funding getting spread out over to many different IP's and nothing being produced.

I think you might be confused on the fundamental point. Valve doesn't need your money to fund their IPs, this is for aspiring developers that are having trouble getting funded or don't want to be funded by a big publisher. Or maybe I just read what you wrote wrong?

[Surlok TP]

I mean as a starting point to test it. I worded it poorly.

Valve releases game content pretty glacial, with TF2 they have started including community maps with their updates. Maps made by regular people , this adds more to Valves games. The people that make the maps though receive nothing for this, or at least nothing publicly other than a note on the blog and a weapon.

Starting out funding an entire new game is a tough starting point. Instead people could choose to fund well known modders and such, and then Valve; rather than releasing these maps for free, could bundle 3-4 maps of said modder and sell them as a DLC. People fund this and profit via DLC profit.

Obviously this wouldn't work too great on PC but it would on console versions of games, not necessarily Valve games.

It seems like it would be a little easier to get off the ground if you were putting your money into already established games via add-ons, rather than start up's that sometimes take years to produce anything.

Then you have the teams/studios that produce not only maps, but skins, models etc who could then use the DLC profits as a jump point into a full game. Like the guys that modded full new games like Dystopia with source or project reality or Forgotten Hope in BF2. Where they then have an established portfolio that has proven to be profitable . Use the DLC more or less as a way of filtering developers. Give them something "easy" to work on to prove their mettle, get them established within the gaming community to a degree and then they can jump into their own game where again people can invest in. That way you don't end up with 900 would be games that never amount to anything and instead end up with 20 or so "indy" studios with a decent amount of work in the industry already via DLC content and thus a much cleared focused group of developers to choose from.

[Kiksar]

Yeah ok, I can see your point now, using modders making DLC as a gateway is good and something that would probably happen naturally I think. But I think there are a good number of small teams and independent developers out there that wouldn't want to be starting out with mods or content for existing games that could use the funding just as well. That's why I think the pitch material would be important. You could have developers put together a package before being eligible for funding where they'd provide team bios, concept art, design docs/ideas, any prototypes or assets they've created as a proof of concept, etc. so that the community could decide how to spend the money.

That does bring up some issues with copyrights and undermines the need most games have for an NDA, though. It's a fairly complicated concept, you don't really want to put all of your plans and ideas out on the table before you've even began work on them. Vavle's smart though, I'm hoping they come up with a clever solution that allows this to work for small independent developers trying to do something new as well as modders/DLC providers.

[cyanbane]

This theory already works surprisingly well on KickStarter. It isn't game centric, but Gabe Newell's idea already has an edge on kickstarter in that the final product that people would be investing in will be available for everyone via steam and the distribution method is already in place.

[Erumaron]

Should rally the public to fund a PS3 game just to spite Gabe.

[Quineloe]

Fans fund the game?

Wait, aren't we already funding the whole thing by paying for it?

This sounds like preordering a game that doesn't even exist.

[Horse]

kickstarter is just a donation page, an organized version of facebook causes.

what gabe is envisioning is instead of splitting venture capital up for a $10 million game amongst a small number of investors shouldering more of the risk, they could open that up to 100,000 people at $100 a pop investment up front. I'd expect that you'd get the game AND become a shareholder in the game.

The problem here is that it is removing the investors' voice nearly entirely by spreading it out so much. It's a lot easier to set up an arrangement where the plug is pulled if things aren't done to 1 or 2 investors' liking. What happens when 49,999 people don't like something and 50,001 do? Do all 100,000 investors get together and have to give the thumbs up?

There is also typically structured investment approach, he says "it has to be all available at the beginning of the project." I think he's bullshitting or paraphrasing.

Having $10M rolled out along 10 phases is true, so if at phase 4 you've spent $4M and the investors don't like where things are going they step in and dangle the remaining 6... that would not be possible in a micro-investment setup.

He wants us to buy into him shitting on paper, because he thinks without a few real investors cocking up the works and imposing concerns as to the marketability of games games will be better (and that if he shits on paper its good).



TLDR: hellgate. fuck off with this bullshit.


ps> Is someone going to make hellgate not shitty? I "invested" in the lifetime membership because I believed they'd really have to be straight up lying if they didn't deliver the goods in the end, considering the state the game was in when those offers were put on the table... Because 90% of that game is great and if they had just rolled it out nicely, done what they said they were going to do, didn't have the absolute worst subscription model in the history of gaming, and actually kept up with the regular content it would have been just fine.

[Jovec]

Originally Posted by Quineloe

Fans fund the game?

Wait, aren't we already funding the whole thing by paying for it?

This sounds like preordering a game that doesn't even exist.

I think the idea is supposed to address the gaming industry's chicken-or-egg problem - games take a lot of funding but most companies aren't willing to fund unproven ideas, hence we are left with sequel hell and a general lack of creativity. Paying in advance would be concrete proof that gamers are interested in a game's concept and would in theory allow for some more creativity.

In practice though I can't see this working for any big projects for a variety of issues. Small ones maybe (under $250K?), but things like the iPhone app store already provide a fairly cheap barrier to entry. I wouldn't think Valve would need to raise money this way, but then again id software and Blizzard were sold too.