Currently developing a game requires a stonking ”$10m - $30m” to get the ball rolling, and has to be available at the projects beginning says Valve’s Gabe Newell.
There’s big risk with that kind of capital and so it can lead to ”incredibly conservative” design ideas. Give gamers the chance to be ”an early investor” and things could get interesting.
”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,” Newell told ABC TV’s Good Game programme.
”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,” explained the Valve boss.
Gamers forking over cash for development - don’t we sort of already do that? Can community funded games ever really take off and lead to big time winners? Grand Theft Auto IV cost around $100 million to make… just saying.
Source: Kotaku