The many ways that developers can effectively fund development

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Interested? Apply now.About the Gamasutra Job BoardWhether you're just starting out, looking for http://www.rsgaming.com/ something new, or just seeing what's out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.Gamasutra's Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the Runescape game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple A.Looking for a new job? Get started here. Are you a recruiter looking for talent? Post jobs here. In this reprint from the June issue of Game Developer magazine, Peter Molyneux breaks down the many ways that developers can effectively fund development at the dawn of a new generation of consoles.The hype surrounding the next generation of Runescape games is at fever pitch. But with quality comes big expenses and long development times. Developers need money and publishers need products. Somethings got to give. Any number of seasoned game Runescape players knows about the next generation of hardware. They have a good idea of its speed, power, and versatility, and therefore not only expect but demand software to be worthy of it. The public wants ever more accessible, better looking, more compulsive, more immersive, deeper Runescape games. And every development studio, big or small, is going to try to give them exactly what they want. Of course, this is exactly how it should be.But theres a price to pay for these new, better in every respect Runescape games. Unparalleled innovation costs dearly. It takes a lot longer to create software of this magnitude and it costs a lot more money. I have witnessed a great many game concepts recently and virtually all are attempting to implement brave, sometimes outstanding ideas. Some of these are original, some are born of licenses, but the one thing they have in common is that all are very expensive. And industry wide, they arent going to get any cheaper.So how is funding currently arranged? A lot of existing publisher developer contracts are based upon the music industry model. A publisher, perceiving greatness and predicting success in a group of talented individuals, hands over a wad of cash. The Runescape team then goes and creates a hit product. While this model has worked well with a few exceptions in both the music and gameindustries , its a risky prospect, and really only seen in cases where Runescape game will be indevelopment for less than two years and will cost less than $ million to produce.The truth is, with the new Runescape games being conceived now, figures of three years and $ million will become the norm.The Problems Developers FaceWere all starting to compete like crazy with each other in every aspect of game creation.