Games =/= A serious financial investment. Ever.

Sure, the cost to make games are going up, but there is such a thing as sucking the money out of the everyday consumer.

Suck a lemon, EA.

When Gabe Newell suggested this everyone said it was brilliant.


"One of the areas that I am personally 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 ten million to thirty million dollars; it has to be all available at the beginning of the project. And then there's a huge amount of risk associated with those dollars so all the game 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 that you have and I'll be an early investor in that.' In venture capital there's a concept that your best investors are your customers, because they have 'secondary gain.' If you are successful they not only want a return on their money, but they're incredibly happy if you actually make a great game that they get to play. It would be really great if we could evolve Steam in a way that made it possible so that a developer could say, you know, 'if you want this game to start moving forward, here's the sort of 'seed round',' were people can sort of opt-in and say 'I'll pay thirty dollars and I own a piece of this game going forward."
- Gabe Newell to Kotaku a little while ago.

Giller, I'd say there's a fine line between "investing in the game and owning a piece of it" and "investing in the game then being charged full price for it once its out but thanks for your input oh beta-tester of ours"

Gabe's idea is way different. There's a difference between and I would never pay for a demo of a game. Ever. I just wont do it. I have pre-ordered a game to get in a beta a few times before. That was fine with me, although some would disagree. I think the ones who disagree are ones who just use beta testing as a free ride until the game is released, then just ditch the game when they're asked to fork over some money.

Being able to invest in a game idea I like, then be able to help influence it from the very beginning is an exciting idea. You aren't just testing for bugs, you're helping design the game itself. I would seriously consider doing that.