Gabe Newell: I had a terrible idea and I want to share it with all of you

[Blastoise]

http://kotaku.com/5318368/valve-let-fans-fund-games-development#comments

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 a fucking ridiculous idea all around. "It's not enough for consumers to buy our product, they must now become investors (without any of the benefits), bear all our risks and be party to almost none of the benefits! This is the best idea ever!"

Jesus Christ, the fact that Newell is saying it is the only reason it's being taken remotely seriously. This gen is fucking stupid.

[Doppleganger]

Sounds like Wikipedia.

[Jerichi]

Except for Wikipedia is free.

[Blastoise]

Sounds like Wikipedia.

Pretty massive difference between an open-source non-profit website like Wikipedia (not to say there isn't shady shit going on in the background) and a game that's going to be privately developed and sold on the open market for a profit.

[Doppleganger]

Perhaps not as massive a difference as you might think. The only notable change would be the developers make profits, and even then we don't know what Big Jim is doing with his donation money.

I can see both the merits and the utter phantasmagoria in suggesting such an option. On the one hand, Valve gets more control of its product and has more money to play around with. Such a case could untie Valve from that problem all video game developers who make a revolutionary or smash-hit: the demands of fans and investors to make more of what they're famous for.

Bioware, for example, re-inflated the high fantasy CRPG subgenre with Baldur's Gate, leaving the corporation almost stereotyped as an RPG developer. Would an investor go to someone like Bioware to develop a revolutionary Vietnam War FPS, when a company like Valve exists already and has the reputation to bring in a profit?

Additionally, this could give Valve the opportunity to be ambitious again with its games. Many of the greatest games were ambitious, but were also products of natural selection - how many similar games around the same time died due to funding, or development heck while Half-Life succeeded? With enough money, Valve could overcome development problems and allow someone's vision to flourish when an investor would already be screaming to bail out.

There are lot of problems though, not the least of which is Valve pulling through. I can't imagine people investing blindly for a game that never gives any info back out, although there are a lot of dumb gamers in the world. But it Valve turns into a 3D Realms and their DNF, people will feel like their money has been stolen, so the company will have to allow some transparency with their development or face potential lawsuits for fraud. Transparency allows other companies to benefit from Valve's work without having to oblige to the same transparency, which can harm Valve.

Additionally, there's the issue of payback. Newell is making people sound like investors, when this is really more of a "donate to Valve" kind of campaign - it's not only unreasonable to treat gamers like investors and expect them to shell out money, they have to shell out a lot for perhaps no gain. And a lot of people have to do this - shell out a lot.

There can't be a case of "everyone shells out a little" because at some point the value of per person donations is going to exceed any revenue gained from the sale of the product because so much of the market is already getting a "free" game back as a return on the investment. On top of any dividends gained.

So. While there are indeed benefits to companies having less oversight and having more money, oversight is a necessary evil to actually get the games out in a reasonable amount of time (see: Blizzard) and there are several moral hazard problem because Valve would either have almost free reign of its cash flow and no obligation to anyone, or some obligation that leaks their secrets to other companies.

Valve is basically asking for stool pigeons, investors who have money but don't know about how to see that money put to good use and to enforce that good use.

[Muyotwo]

"Everybody loved Portal, let's let them pay us to make another one!"

Wow.

[Raptor Jesus]

Buying their games isn't enough investment?