http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/02/09/double-fine-kickstarter/

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http://www.onlineuniversalwork.com

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Margaret

http://grantfoundation.net

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The “ransom model” is also popular with some, but I am not sure if that would work as well for larger computer game projects – smaller ones might be ideally suited to it though?

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That one has been going on for a while now. I think they were actually in talks with Vale at some point so this sort of tarnishes my respect for Valve some.

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Apply same argument to charities, third world aid, medical research…

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There are so many “interesting” statements, like the “micro investors wouldnt work, they would need to be syndicated!”, what about countries then, they dont work ?

And direct funding wouldnt really change anything but the amount of money we are putting in a game and the quality of the game. The games would be a lot cheaper to buy and we would have a more direct say in the game development.

And as some say “it would be mayhem” and “a full asylum of fans” ffs, the whole worlds an asylum, so shut it. There are perfectly good ways to get to know the micro investors via complex polls etc.

And the so called micro investors would syndicate naturally like in real life. Someone would put forth a concept and people would support that or not and offer their own ideas upon that concept. You can even look at it as a huge tree graph as you progress through development there are “branches”(concepts) to choose from and continue to develope those, each one would have a price tag etc.

So for the closure – the publishers must go or change their perspective on game development. The main flaw is that the publisher wants to make money, the developer and the end customer just want a great game. So its pretty obvious who is the fifth wheel.

Plus for the funding, do they eat money ? Lets say we have a 1000 person studio where everybody got payed 200$ per day, every day, even weekends. that would be 200*1000= 200 000$ per day so if at least 0,003 percent of the people on earth would give the, like 1 dollar a day that would cover that budget. And we can go on from there if at least 1 percent of the population could fund more than 100+ EA s. And these are just rough estimates. 1 percent of the population donating 1$ per day would come to 67 million $ per day, make it one cent that would be 670 000$ per day.

Any comments on that ?

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2D Boy
ACE Team
Bit Blot
Bohemia Interactive
Flashbang Studios
Introversion Software
Number None
TaleWorlds

or

Ubisoft
THQ
Take Two
Microsoft
EPIC
EA
EIDOS

On the one hand you have games and people you want to support, but who are a far higher risk financially speaking.

On the other are some massive, soul-less and faceless mega-corporations, who while having produced some great games, and containing within them some great development teams, have also behaved like complete arseholes at various times. The financial risk is harder to assess – while they will bring in lots of revenue they also have lots of costs. You would also need to buy shares that have the risk/return factor already priced ino them. At this level you might as well just choose FTSE or NASDAC shares purely on investment grounds regardless of any connection with game development.

It is interesting to see if any new independent developers/games arise in the aftermath of the lay-offs and cancellations by the big developers…

(from wikipedia: “On November 7, 2005, Take-Two Interactive announced that it was acquiring Firaxis. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but according to the SEC filing it amounted for USD$26.7 million in cash, stock, and development advances, with almost $11.3 million of that figure coming in the form of possible considerations based on future product sales.” >>> does this mean for $30 million we could have bought Firaxis and got them to making a new Alpha Centaurii instead of the console version of Civ?

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Myst Online: Uru Live

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