I’m a huge fan of Gabe Newell, as much as I may appear to criticise Valve for their shenanigans. At E3 he spoke to Good Game and said some interesting things about getting the community to fund a game, rather than having to get money elseware. Whether these things are a perfect mesh of the Open Source mentality and realistic game design business, or just lunacy, I’m not too sure.
Kotaku AU have a full transcript of the interesting part, but the key section is this;
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.’
Which in theory is excellent. I’m a huge fan of open source software (I’m using Open Office, FireFox and GIMP right now) and the idea of community funding goes almost hand in hand with this. Though the open source world is different in a subtle, yet fundamental way: Transparency.
If you were asked to invest in an idea, but weren’t allowed to see its progress until the PR people you paid for said it was fine, would you? What if, when it was revealed, you weren’t happy? The projects I’ve seen that use this model are always incredibly open, as they have to be to allow everybody to work together to build the final product. With games, the current model is incredibly secretive and private.
If Gabe is talking about embracing the open source ideas and morals, then I am all for this. As he notes though, there are a lot of rather large issues blocking the path. One big one I see is the trust issue. Large game companies make a habit of stepping over all we love for that last buck.
The drama, legal complications and fallout from the smallest complication or hickup would be huge, and I wonder if Gabe’s suggestion that community funding would free the conservative shackles of current game funding are a little idealistic. It’s a topic I hope Gabe and other game companies look into, but it would take a true visionary (and genius/miracle) to make it work as well enough to succeed.
Via: Kotaku
