Gabe Newell Floats Micro Investment Game Development
Valve founder Gabe Newell suggests the idea of having fans pay in advance for a new title, during this video interview (relevant bit starts at 7:20) with Australian video game show Good Game, Basically the player would pay somewhere in the neighbourhood of $30-40, and have a say in the direction of the title as well as get a copy of it when it’s released. Another perk would be if the game became a success, you would actually have a chance to make some money when it’s all done.
I don’t think there would be many game developers that could get away with suggesting this, let alone pulling it off, but Valve has a sterling reputation when it comes to making quality titles like the Half Life series and Left 4 Dead.
Of course, to make a top tier game with a $9 million budget, this would require 300,000 investors at $30 each. They wouldn’t necessarily see the end result for quite some time, and the old chestnut of ‘too many cooks’ would certainly be a factor, but would that stop you?
