Comments on: Crowdsourcing a video game's design

Can design by committee make for a fun, cohesive game, or just another tragedy of the commons? Roundhouse Interactive and Frima Studio aim to find out.

[krizhek]

Can I put $50 down on them overriding when the last boss end up being Stephen Colbert?

[gsigas]

I imagine plenty of people would be willing to spend the $50, but I doubt it would be more than 10,000 people. I like the concept as an alternative way to help fund game development.

[deepcrow]

This is gonna take some big time marketing to get off the ground. Someone who plonks down $50 will want the game to go the direction they want, and eventually if the votes go the wrong way for them enough times, they are gonna want their money back. Because of this, anyone who puts in about 10 seconds of thought into the whole process won't put up their money in the first place. The devs are going to need to put up some big time guarantees to get this project rolling.... IE "money back guarantee if you lose 5 votes within a week" or something similar. And then even if they do that, they will have to figure how many people they will have to redeem in their profitability calculation. IE 100,000 people but only 50,000 stay on = 2.5mm which means a $500,000 loss on 1.5 years of your life

[Sourdust]

What will they do if a majority of participants get frustrated with the direction the game goes and decide to get their moneys worth by sabotaging the game? If the participant agreement says that the board can override the majority to prevent this situation then fewer people will participate.

[DannyMD]

It's really sad the quality of writer at CNET has been declining over the years. The amount of mistakes and lack of research is really pitiful.

"There seems to be no precedent for such a project,"... hum i wonder what David Perry 'sTop Secret project was all about. Hum... I wonder!!!

Do your research mate. This has been done before and failed spectacularly.

So the answer the question. No 100.000 people will not be designing the game. 100.000 people might sign up, but about a dozen will be making all the final decisions, and actually designing the game. Crowdsourcing does not work for game design.

[lance77777]

I agree that this is only for a small club of people who will pay their 50$.

<a href="http://survivingallergy.com">surviving allergy</a>

[Commd]

You know what else functions as a committee? Government. Raise your hand if you think your government is doing a good job.

The problem here is that making games is as much a creative process as it is an engineering problem. Take, for example, going to a fancy restaurant. Do you want the patrons arguing about how your steak is going to be made, this information is then filtered through to a few sous chefs who then decide how your food is going to made using the decision making strategy of "making the least amount of people unhappy" or do you want the expert, the chef, deciding ahead of time how each dish is to be made and then his non-celebrity experts prepare the food?

Either you'll get a watered down mish-mash of first person-over-the-shoulder-GTA-sandbox-shooter-also-spiderman-super-powers-in-the-middle-east-fighting-terrorist-also-maybe-Osama-and-Saddam-underwater-and-finding-the-lost-treasure-of-the-arc-of-the-covenant-and-the-lead-is-a-big-breasted-treasure-super-model-from-the-future-in-tight-shorts. Or you'll get a game no at all designed by the fans because fans are fickle trend-chasers.

My suspicion is that Roundhouse is actually bereft of any ideas and is hoping that someone will do the creative work for them and cash in on the "recession proof" game industry.

I predict shovelware.

[RoundHouse-Interactive]

As noted above, the game will have to be heavily marketed to make this concept viable, and to ensure it's ongoing survival as a true alternate to traditional game play. It is important that we show the gamers the value they get above and beyond game participation for their trusted investment. So where the fist game may be cheap to develop at 3 million+, there will be upfront marketing expenses to geneate that kind of interest. We see this as more of a break-even game changer than a money play as the article may read to some.

Please correct your article, it is NOT likely to be some console game. The way voting is going now, it will likely be a multiplatform release focusing on the PC platform, with a port to a yet-to-be determined console. Being a paid member of the Cartel, my vote will be 100% PC and will devote all my persuasive ability to pushing the Cartel towards a PC release.

With that being said, I'm really looking forward to working with the Cartel on making a truly unique game in a market of re-makes, sequels, and shovelware.

[ruby1235]

Please don't make the mistake I made and numerous others have made. This is a total scam! They are taking money and will release a horrible game and walk away with the profits. Someone working on the project told me that there are numerous 'plants' in the forums driving the direction of the game. They are staying away from costly and complicated features so they can save money. Just look at the new direction - what was initially an XBOX game is now a PC game? The list goes on and on.
The company behind it claims to have released games before but really never has. They also claim this game will be out 1 year from now. Anyone who has ever worked in the industry can tell you that a QUALITY game can not be made that fast, especially seeing as the direction has yet to be established.

At the end of the day it is your money and feel free to spend it as you see fit but please be careful. It is scams like this which hurt the industry and the notion of crowdsourcing.