Slugbait

July 23, 2009 at 9:10pm

Let me give you an example: after v1.0, the MSN Messenger team never released betas. The reasoning was that this would give AOL and Yahoo clear insight into what they were doing, and allowed the competition plenty of time to develop feature parity...in other words, the competition keeps their customers from churning by offering the same or similar must-have new feature in the same product release time-cycle. You might recall that MSN Messenger was first to have a "The other person is typing" indicator during an IM session...this was enormously cool back then. MSN Messenger was also the first to personalize IM with display pics and background images...also later copied by nearly all other IM clients.

Once a customer has churned, there is less-than a 15% probability that they will ever churn back. You don't do feature parity to get people to churn to your product, because they won't...they already have that feature. You work new features that those people never knew they wanted in the first place, and you hit them square in the face with that new feature on RTW...that's what gets them to churn.

Then there was the Windows Live re-org, and suddenly the "new" Windows Live Messenger was releasing betas every other month. You can guess what happened next...

Which leads back to Gabe's idea. You announce a game, and you throw out specific information to get investors to finance your development. The competition sees this information, there is a brand new concept no other game has ever done, and they have an OMFG moment (previously known as the "Ah-ha! moment"). The competition is only a year or so into development, so they can take this revolutionary idea or twist to make their game even better, and release well before you do.

By the time the game you invested in is released, that one truly cool concept has already been done before.

Epic fail.

lien_meat

July 21, 2009 at 8:46pm

What happens when a game development company decides to take the dollars you invested in game X and utilize them to instead build a game engine that they "intend" to use for the game you invested in, but that goes vaporware, and you ACTUALLY just invested money in a game engine that nobody might even use. (read: duke nukem forever)  Sometimes it's necessary in a company to use money intended for another purpose originally to drive another area of development to keep up stock prices.  I smell a huge fail if this ever actually happens.  Gamers are gonna be pissed when the money they put forward isn't apparently put to use on what they had in mind, or they don't think the quality of the game was deserving of their investment.
### I'm an idiot, and I approve this message ###

aviaggio

July 21, 2009 at 2:00pm

Gabe needs to go back to his crack dealer and demand a refund, cause he obviously got a bad batch of smack.

Is it just me or does the stuff coming out of this guy's mouth get more and more batshit crazy every year?

It's bad enough that we poor schlumps known as "consumers" are forced into buying games that suck without being able to return such turds. Now we're supposed to invest in them as well??

Exactly what am I going to get for my money? Will I have a say as to what features are included or removed in the final product? Do I get a cut of the profits? Will I be able to demand progress updates, review artwork, story lines, and preview demos, to see how my money is being put to use? Somehow I'm thinking not.

It sounds like good 'ole Gabe wants to give us a one-page features list with some pretty pictures to convince us to "invest" (read: pre-purchase) his new game, and then wait patiently until we get the final product 2-3 years later for "free" (which aint' free cause you already paid for it in advance). And what happens if the game is scrapped? Ooops, your money is lost, so sorry, no game for you. And what if the game sucks ass? Oh well, better luck next time.

Sorry Gabe, I prefer to withhold my funds until the game is completed, reviewed, and demoed before I shell out my hard-earned greenbacks.

Trooper_One

July 21, 2009 at 11:44am

Doesn't this already exist? 

r3dd4wg

July 21, 2009 at 10:08am

If the company can get a good bond rating or has a good bond rating, you might as well issue bonds for the financing.

zioburosky13

July 21, 2009 at 8:38am

It might be a good move to get rid those bad game idea. We keep seeing the same old 'yeah me too!' game titles this day because game publishers don't have the cojone to try out new game and honestly, most of today's game are being dumbed down for the console market in hope to regain their invested money in a safe way.

MeTo

July 21, 2009 at 8:22am

Fan's do finance game development when they buy a game. When you make a game sell it and don't put all the prophets in your pocket put some back in develoment! Thats the problem too many big guy's at the top take all the cash.

MeTo

July 21, 2009 at 8:24am

For some reason this double posted.

jnutley

July 21, 2009 at 6:00am

I'm supprized to see people still pitching or tacitly agreeing to the Neo_Con line where Investors (read Wall Street) have some magic knowledge that gives them insight to what will or will not sell.  Take a good look at the current economic crisis, ask yourself if gamers as a group with specific knowledge of what they liked and didn't like could possible screw game development up more than the MBAs already have screwed the economy in general.

 That said, I suspect this version of fund raising will have plenty of pitfalls of it's own.  And the likelyhood of the developer going under or not getting enough money to keep going after already starting and taking a significant block of money from the community down with them is significant.

The way to sell it to fans however, rather than a two sentece text pitch as in the example is to pay a real artist to produce concept art.  Pretty pictures will rule this version of fund raising.

Oedipus_Rex

July 21, 2009 at 5:58am

"So says Valve’s Gabe Newell, and we agree with him. Fortunately, good ol’ Gabe also has a solution to the developer-solution problem, and is very handsome."

I mean, you are in San Francisco. o_O

Vegan

July 21, 2009 at 5:16am

The amount that they'd want is probably more than what I pay for games, anyway. I always wait for epic $10 sales.

Gailim

July 21, 2009 at 5:00am

Mount and Blade released a demo while it was still in beta, and if users liked it they could buy the beta for a reduced price, the early beta's costed about half the final price and the price would go up with each succesive version. I personally bought it for $25 and the final price was $40. now, I wasn't an investor but before the studio (a small turkish dev run by spouses) found a publisher, that was how they funded the game

 

it worked out pretty well for them

Hoboparade

July 21, 2009 at 4:55am

This is why the Jesus (In cahoots with Adam Smith) invented capitalism. The good ideas/games (aka the ones that will turn a profit) receive financing and the rest simply won’t. If game developers have excellent ideas/products but lack the capital to develop; they should go public and have people invest in the company not in individual games/software.

nanook

July 21, 2009 at 4:10am

Offering investment to something that will become a source of income or return of investment is how both mediocre and big ideas are realized, isn't it? But unlike professional investors, gamers want something else than return of capital.

I am not an able investor. My funds are limited, and I must therefore limit my investment to something with a overwhelming probability of being fullfilled. If a game costs 50 USD, I would be willing to invest let's say 40 USD for something that is much of the same.The fact that I am willing to invest at all would also be a benefit for the company in that my and other enduser investments can be used as a measure of how likely the product is to make money in the future. It is the demand for return and projected sales that makes the game cost 50 USD over the counter, not the costs for development.

Now, if someone could make an unrealised idea that I have dreamt of all my life, I would gladly cough up 500 USD if I had trust in that company. I doubt if any small indie-company could offer me that level of trust.

And by the way, where IS that game that combines CIV, SIMS, EVE and Half-Life?

sk8nrck2

July 20, 2009 at 9:23pm

Personally, Im a little nervous about this. I think that it is a great idea in theory, but that

assumes that the game makers, A) give us an acurate discription of what there idea is and

B) the idea will stay the same throught the project.

How mad would you be if you gave money to a project and it was never completed,

or the company went belly-up in the middle of it.

 

 

Geek Spot

bingojubes

July 20, 2009 at 8:48pm

he must have read info on the same group currently doing Interstellar Marines. right now, this indie group is doing this idea for their "community fans" that wish to partake (and donate funds) to be in partners in the development of the game. in this sense, Interstellar Marines will be a fan-game, because they put alot of input to the makers...and most importantly, they listened so far to their donators. Hopefully Interstellar Marines will be good, even if it looks a bit dated graphically.

More info for Interstellar Marines @ http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/adventure/projectim/index.html?tag=result;title;0

ferds7

July 20, 2009 at 8:31pm

I think this idea could be great for the industry. Though I also think a lot of games need to cut down there budget probably. There are way to many games that I see that look like they focus to much on nice graphics and not enough on gameplay.

Did he mention what kind of information would be shared with would be investors?