(Very, as the idea is barely thought out and I'm probably missing about 332,028 issues, but let's run with the thought anyway.)
Has anyone else been following the story of
Double Fine trying to crowdsource funding for an adventure game... and getting a million dollars in pledges in under 24 hours. I know a number of smaller indie developers have done this to raise a few thousand dollars, but this is just nuts. It's something I've thought about in previous instances (am I the only one that remembers Konami doing something similar for Tokimeki Memorial 3 several years back? Am I having a senior moment?)... but what if the FGC as a whole had the opportunity to try something like that?
Melty Blood: Current Code has some really weird issues. It's almost impossible
not to pirate it at this point if you want to play it -- the bundles of Carnival Phantasm have long since sold out, so even people who live in Japan would have no shot. I almost have to be missing something either, in terms of unaccounted for economics, cultural issues, who knows what. It's not like Type-Moon is below whoring out their properties for money. :p (whereas I don't think this would work for, say, Touhou -- Zun already has FU money and would probably turn down a $10m royalty check).
Would you be willing to pledge money in advance for a copy of the game?
What if it had the potential to actually make money back,
like Gabe Newell has brought up in the past?
Just thinking of the possibilities makes my head spin. Pledge $20 for a copy of the game on Steam (and a beta release), $75 for a physical copy of the game, $200 for a Sion hugpillow, $1000+ for an active stake in the release (where you earn some fractional amount for each copy sold), crazier shit for even higher amounts... I don't even know.
There would be a lot of questions to answer: How much money would be needed? $50,000? $100,000? More? How much more would it take to call Mauve (or Ponder, or whoever else) to upgrade the netcode? Who would translate it? Who would be responsible for making sure it passes all of the QA requirements? Would French Bread/Ecole/Type-Moon ever agree to something as non-standard as this? Isn't there a reason the game has never seen release even with interest from publishers? Or maybe the opposite -- maybe the game has already been licensed elsewhere? I think some of these could be solved by partnering with a publisher that's forward-thinking enough -- it would reduce efficiency, but it would be a much lower risk profile knowing that someone else (or lots of someone else) are paying for the project. Wouldn't be the first time a lot of traditional publishers have badly misjudged the market, especially for a more niche game.
I'm actually serious about this -- if this was a real thing with an investment opportunity, I would drop five figures on it. Am I out of my mind? (Yes, but ignore that.) Or am I underestimating how poor the FGC is?