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Gameguru Mania News - Jul,20 2009 -

Valve: Let players fund videogame development - interview
(hx) 11:23 PM CEST - Jul,20 2009 - Post a comment / read (2)
Some would say that the games industry would be better for everybody if publishers weren't around. Similar to how record labels helped kill music and become an unnecessary middle-man between musicians and music fans, so too can publishers feel like they get in the way. Co-founder and CEO of Valve Software Gabe Newell, may have found a way around it, but you'll need to dig deep into your own pocket if you agree.
In interview

In this interview he explains: "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."

last 10 comments:

gx-x	(02:56 PM CEST - Jul,21 2009 )
How about you cut salaries? Find people to work for 30 grand per year instead of those that now work 150 and you will need 3-4 million instead of 30 million $. Isn't it obvious that salaries in PC game industry are overrated? There are young people out there willing to work for less and learn in the process.

Stumpus

(03:19 PM CEST - Jul,22 2009 )

What a muppet of a comment from Gabe, We already have ideas bounced about for game content by way of expansions or patches on forums etc for decades. Do we get what we ask for? Very rarely is the answer. So how on earth do you satisfy 100,000+ people that plough cash into a project, when others in the same project, with their cash, object to your ideas???
Everything is about making money at the expense of the gamer, DLC -the worst PoS ever to come out since Apple Itunes.
Expansion packs required WORK and input to be tempting to be able to sell them at SHOPS. Now we get a 4mb download that gives 4hrs 'extra gamplay' and cost 12 bucks or whatever. YET not more than ONE copy is ever made and they sit in their offices watching the download ticker spinning making a fortune from something you can't even sell on, or make a copy of!
Gabe, you may pull the wool over this generation, but not mine. Plonker!!
Bring back old fashioned games that require REAL skill to prog and put them in SHOPS. Monkey Island rehashed for another generation that don't know better? Exploitation more like. You can play ANY of the old DOS games on an old legacy machine for practicaly NOTHING. Why is it that game sales on PC are at their lowest again? Oh it's that saviour comment from Gabe et al at VALVE, PC Digital Distribution is the way forward for the future. Yeah, just like 95% of digitaly downloaded music is illegaly distributed.
That and the fact that the average programer can only work on an XBox SDK lol
How wrong can you get eh? VALVE will still be saying PC game sales are healthy in their own wee world, but the real gamer know's the truth :roll:
Wages and egos need a reality check.

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