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You can solicit input, but I think that at some point, someone has to play dictator decide what to actually create. Then, they can see how many people will actually invest in it. At that point, you’re pretty much doing what companies do already – with more or less emphasis on the market research aspect. I would be interested in seeing the mechanics of how such a project would work, e.g. how much money, the feature decision making process, handling of funds etc.
 

This is pretty much how (given my admittedly limited understanding) crowd-funded projects work. The developer is still having to make a reasonably structured pitch to a potential audience and the project is either supported or not - at the ideas stage. The difference from existing models as i understand it is that at least some of the damaging politics involved in putting a product to market can be lessened if not avoided. There's less of a possibility that a smaller group of individuals with good ideas and demontratable skills are going to fall under the controlling shadow of big company politics. Risk is potentially lessened to the developer in terms of over-investment of time in a project that no-one will end up buying. Its not at all a 'project-by-comitee' model. Thats not to say there isnt room for perhaps more openness to ideas from end users than we currently have.

Its never going to be a perfect system however. Trust is always an issue, as it is with big businesses with all the baggage they bring along in terms of managing projects, appropriation of funds etc. One thing I quite like about the crowd-funded model however is the idea that artists/creators who are passionate as well as knowledgeable about their ideas can lay their cards on the table and potentially gain real support to actually action them. Whether they get that support is at least in part down to how well they can convince a potential audience that they have something to offer above and beyond whats already out there.

Consider for a moment that bb was proposing a project to develop a Poser plugin for creating his interior room geometries, complete with windows and doors and furniture etc, with all the versatility that he's already demonstrated in many threads in this forum. Very possibly he wouldnt  get the support from a major company to develop that idea - perhaps no-one from that company has seen his work, or sees the potential in that idea, or agrees with his approach to making it. Maybe they dont like how much he wants to charge to make it - making it just too risky for their business model. That's now one small set of individuals from one company that have put a stop to a potentially great idea that could be of great use to a lot of people, because they didnt 'get it'. Were that a crowd funded project a much larger group of individuals get a chance to get behind bb and source the funding to make it happen, perhaps even with some kind of perk (beyond getting the product itself) depending on how much money they pledge or raise. bb has built himself a solid reputation here and on other boards (whether you 'like' him or not you cant deny his input to Poser in terms of materials but also debate in general). Although other reps from the Poser dev team have been visible, it just doesnt compare to bbs. I know I'd be helping to fund him on that project, and I'm much surer he'd deliver something cool.

My feeling is that when people feel personally invested in making things happen the results can often be far better than remaining in the cold showroom of the current marketplace structure. I find the crowd funding model a refreshing counter to the typical system of putting projects to market and there have been a number of campaigns I've supported that I know would'nt have happened in th same way or been anywhere near as successful had they been done in the tratitional way.

 

PoserPro2014(Sr4), Win7 x64, display units set to inches.

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