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Time:   03:11:02 CET   18:11:02 PST   21:11:02 EST   10:11:02 Seoul   09:11:02 Beijing

NEWS
Could you be an investor for the game you want?

By Elke 'Binteh' Mahy
Jul 21, 2009 15:10


ImageGame publishers have been going bust left and right after investing in games which were only good for the bin. Gabe Newell, a Valve co-founder, thinks he found the perfect solution to resolve that problem, where the public, you gamers, will only pay for games worth developing.

The big idea is to help publishing and development companies with resources (which depending on the game, can vary from 500 euros to 30 million euros). The potential client, or gamer, is presented with an idea, if the idea is appealing to that gamer he then decides to invest a small amount of money into the game allowing it to be developed and published.

In return, the gamer will get his "free" copy of the game, and if he's lucky, a benefice out of it. This is what Gabe Newell describes to Kotaku:

"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."


This sort of "project" is nowhere near ready to be put in place yet, but remains an interesting idea, for developers and gamers who will only make and receive the games they want.


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