Valve Wants You to Fund Their Game Development?
July 20, 2009 by Polt
Consumers and gamers alike feel it’s their right to complain about the things they buy, and core gamers are most notorious for bad mouthing and slamming the games they hold so dear. But what if they paid for development out of their own pockets?
Gabe Newell, Valve’s head honco and big bundle of fun, has tossed a new idea into the fray: let the gamers fund development.
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.
What may sound good in theory most likely wouldn’t work out the way that Gabe describes above. Most gamers aren’t willing to give any developer money unless they believe they will definitely be getting something good in return (even if that is not the case).
For smaller projects that type of model would work, but if 50,000 people are interested in a game, a developer would be lucky if even half that were willing to chip in $5.
It’s sad, but we’re inherently cheap. I couldn’t see any gamer putting his own cash towards development unless they’re guaranteed the product will get finished and be exactly what they wanted. Would you?
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Might work, but yes I would want a finished product and i want my voice to be heard regarding features i.e LAN.
i would be willing to throw in money if it happened to be to a company i know will come out with a good product. right now the only two companies i would want to help finance would be blizzard or valve. so yeah, might work, but DEFINITELY not for smaller companies without established reputations.
It’s already happened! I sent a wad of cash to help finance Daikatana. Boy, was I screwed.
I’d be interested if the return was worth it, if I invested 1000$ into a game, what type of return could I expect, and would I get more than one copy.
I don’t think you can promise a “good” product to everyone since individuals have different concepts of quality.
I do think that gamers would be willing to give money towards a project that allows some input into the process.
That said, design by committee is a creative nightmare–the designer(s) would need to maintain full creative control or we could end up with something hideous.
Allow investors to weigh in, but not control the process.
Overall, I think this is a terrific idea. Here’s to a score of Valve games with LAN connectivity. ^^
I think it is a great idea, however using the numbers above:
Gabe states “$10m – $30m” budget needed, divided by say, the conservative 1/2 of the 50,000 gamers equals an $800 investment per person (assuming the mid-ground of a $20m budget).
Considering most gamers are likely just starting out in life as young teens or adults…I can’t see many hard-core gamers having that kind of cash to invest in something with no guarantees?!?
I on the other hand love gaming and I am 48 years young
Do I make it payable to Valve or Gabe? LOL
I was a game developer for 7th Level/Pyrotechnix/Sierra for 3 years, and for Acclaim for 2½ years before they went belly up, and I will tell you what I learned.
Two out of every three games that get into development never see the light of day! For a variety of reasons (schedule, financing, gee – it’s not as FUN as we thought it would be) two-thirds of all games get shelved at some point in the development cycle.
Add to that the mountains of games that are never profitable in any way, shape, or form because they just aren’t fun, and you begin to see the obstacles you face in “community financed” game development.
Now, if I came to you and said “I have this really COOL investment opportunity, but there’s a 2 out of 3 chance you’ll lose your money,” what would you do?
Valve, of course, has a really nice franchise. Half-Life has been berry, berry good to dem. But not every game is a half-life, or a Quake, or an Unreal Tournament. As a matter of fact, MOST aren’t.
I don’t see this going anywhere, other than the dustbin of ideas that just won’t fly – you’d be better off betting the horses with that $5. You’d get better odds in the lottery.
This sounds like a great idea, you’d have to follow what Chris said but I’m sure they would, I’d be all for this.
Yeah, I have strong doubts the model could work. There would at least have to be some kind of agreement that I could at least get my $5 back, but such is the risk that does reward, huh?
Well, you can look at the open source community, which historically has had a hard time putting games together. But, you have to find a way to monetize things. I would be curious if this is just an idea Valve is throwing around or if there is any market research that would support this approach; are there some other form of artists (movies, literature, music, games or otherwise) who have successfully managed this sort of pay-scheme?
I do see some potential in this system, particularly if it is made more granular. That is, if I can attach a reason for my funding then I am more likely to fund. I think funding may be necessary on two conditions. One, there is a lack of resources addressing a particular feature. Say if the company historically puts out good game mechanics, but the art is short, the art dept. could require more funding and if I wanted better art, I could specify that I wanted to support the art dept. On the other hand, instead of supporting R&D, perhaps I would want to reward the department most responsible for a feature of the game, maybe the sound. But, it sounds like Valve is mostly looking at the first approach (for now).
I think there are far too many details to work out and far too little information about what Valve would actually like to get out of this rather than just “see what happens.”
Here I share my thoughts on the matter ~ http://ff.im/5wvS7
This could work, but I would find it highly unlikely that even half would give 5 dollars. Getting 5,000 out of 50,000 to give 20,000 total dollars would be more realistic figure EVEN if there was some definite advantage to donating.
This wont work until something gets hammered out that allows gamers really feel they have some benefit to supporting the game. As a gamer, I have learned to always be suspicious of anything new coming to the table. I never trust an initial announcement on project ideas and would assume that most others feel the same way.
Duke Nukem Forever, anyone?
The ultimate new ponzi scheme that doesn’t even have to produce? Atleast in a ponzi scheme the first people in and of course the person leading it get something out of it. However in this only the people behind the scheme would be profiting. Let me elaborate.
Gabe is saying let us, the gamer, provide developer costs so that the risk of development is off of their shoulders and onto someone else. Investment doesn’t give you a refund button thus if something goes belly up well then that’s unfortunate. However this is one of the strong factors that keeps good games good because if they messed up they lost their money. And since the “investors” are really just gamers who trusted them to produce something atleast a few good years down the line, the gamers are going in blind with actually minimal investments (By market standards). There would be absolutely no legal protection for the gamers as the money lost for each individual investor would be too low to actually raise an eye brow within the economy.
For some companies it might work but with a large amount of the incentive gone the average game would go down in quality (Even more than it has been decreasing).
I think it’s a great idea. I’d invest in valve 100%, imagine having a say as to what features are going to be in the future games a company makes and then making a profit off of it, sweet!
Couldn’t they just go public? It doesn’t seem like they want input from the gamers by his description, just funds. And then you get a return on your investment. Sounds a lot like buying stock in a company to me.
See, what they *should* be doing is have community-funded patches. Like…the community sets up a list of changes and tweaks for the next patch. Then they vote for what they want in it; that and that plane to get a lower turn radius, the hours required for a certain bonus to be lowered etc. Each vote costs a bit of money – this discourages multiple votes from the same person, and it finances the patch. As a bonus, the gamers feel more involved and invested in the game. Then maybe you can have an “unlockable extra content” thing – a poll on “do you want extra content?”, wherein the answers are of the type “Yes – new weapons” and “Yes – a new map” etc. Once a certain number of votes has been reached, the choice with the highest number of votes is chosen and we enter a new round with votes on what exact content we want (which map out of a few suggestions, what weapons etc). Those who voted already to add more get free votes, others can still join in for the regular fee.
Gaming Stock Market… Be an investor.
Well, will take time for a player to understand the time, research and development on each game thats produced.
Gabe has too much money to ask for that, unless they really wanna step outside the traditional conservative development, and step heavily into the field of newly freshen ideas.
Even that the public has shown to be too much used to all concepts behind games.
They dont question:
1 – why mmos ask me to press 1 key and watch the whole battle without having to aim, duck, step forward, measure angle and strenght on a bow…
2 – why the SO CALLED rpgs like final fantasy have menus to produce actions, while i have years of gaming practice and can deal with instant action.
3 – why some games always show me pre-built ways to accomplish my objectives, instead of letting me decide, think and improvise on situations…
Well, i guess this COULD work, but WOULD need a lot , a HELL LOT to make it feasible and exciting for the investors (the gamers)
This could work and is an interesting theory. It really depends on the developer’s reputation for this to be successful.
Personally, I would blindly invest $100 a game if Valve, Blizzard, Bethesda, Bungie or BioWare were making anything and wanted the community to invest in their games. Because their reputation is, “It’s done, when it’s done.” Their polish and history of making great games is wortt the risk because it’s a very low risk proposition to an investor.
If EA did this for Madden I would invest because they sell millions of copies of Madden. However, if it’s some unknown developer with a good idea, they are going to have a tough time finding investors for games.
And I disagree that gamers are cheap. Young gamer’s parents are cheap not the gamers themselves.