Gordon wants you, to fund great ideas

Gabe Newell of Valve Software had a few words to share about the current state of the publisher and developer relationship.  Basically, Publishers can be extremely conservative when it comes to funding projects.  You know, since games usually cost $10 – 30 million to develop.

“One of the areas that I am super interested in right now is how we can do financing from the community,” explains Gabe Newell. “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.”

So, he’s not exactly asking for the gamers to fund the huge projects, but rather demos and game concepts.  Valve, for one, welcomes their consumer overlords.

For more info: Source article