The Story Games forums focus on the creation of independently produced roleplaying games. On October 2nd, 2009, forum member Valamir started a thread asking members to hypothesize about how they would use $1000 to produce their game.
On a whim, DivNull Productions decided to take this out of the realm of hypothesis, with Wordman posting:
This post started with the following hypothetical:
Posted By: Valamir Imagine said benefactor announced “Pitch me your game ideas and the designer whose idea I like best will get $1000 to bring it to fruition”
Other popular game design forums maintain, however, that debate about hypothetical situations are useless and only “actual play” matters. So, let’s play…
As of now, there actually is a benefactor (i.e. me) saying “Pitch me your ideas for how you would use $1000 to either make a new game or improve an existing one that hasn’t been released, and I’ll donate $1000 to the idea I like best to help make it happen”.
Conditions:
- Only pitches made on this thread, publicly, will be considered.
- No pitch made after 15 October 2009 will be considered.
- Donation will be made on or before 31 October 2009.
- If your pitch is selected, you have until the last minute of 31 October 2010 to make good on the idea. At that point, the world will know if you are person of your word, or a failure.
- This donation in no way affects any rights you have to your work. Nor does the donation create any liabilities from your work for the donator. Succeed or fail, you’re on your own.
While this pitch process was neither widely advertised nor, to be frank, particularly well run, a number of compelling proposals were submitted. These remain visible in the thread linked to above, but have also been reproduced as the first 11 comments of this thread as well.
We are no longer accepting pitches; however, there are likely to be more of these “DivNull larks” in the future. This one was something of a trial run, so was deliberately kept somewhat quiet. Future larks will be more public.
DivNull will announce who receives the gift in a few days, both on this blog and in the original Story Games thread.