Hi,

I am a stay-at-home game developer. I am considering purchasing a home in Kansas City, Kansas to take part in Google's new Google Fiber Gigabit Internet community. The real estate is very cheap out there and because geography *shouldn't* be an issue with game dev, I am seriously considering purchasing a house out there and putting up whomever wants to devote their life to game dev and all things geeky/techy.

Think of it like a school. At this school you would have the internet and your fellow housemates as instructors/fellow students. It would be ideally suited to very bright, self-started, young and eager game developers who don't want to worry about financial concerns, but want to focus all their time on game-dev.

I don't know how big that demographic is so I'm putting this post up as a ping to see if anybody would be interested. I would only ask that you pay for your own food expenses (and perhaps split the electricity, depending on the bill that all the kick ass hardware in the house would generate).

As a personal aside, if I decide that this investment is not worthwhile in the long run, I will be moving to San Francisco to be as immersed in the game dev community as possible. The upside of this as I see it is a built in community. I can't imagine another place with as many eager game devs in as geographically limited a space as SF. However, the game devs and other tech people in SF may all be 30's plus, and may all be firmly ensconced in a corporate environment, with no desire to "get more indy."

What do you indies out there think? Would building a home for the indie, devoted to the indie, and free for the indie, be something that you would take advantage of? How long would you like to stay there? How would you use it to kickstart your ideas and generally enjoy your life to a fuller extent?

If anyone has any thoughts or comments, please leave them here. I am very serious about this opportunity, and if it sounds like something you would also be interested in, please let me know. Feel free to also PM me or contact me at my number one email address:

dottley@ottleygroup.com

I look forward to hearing from you.

Best,

Dave Ottley

As a personal aside, if I decide that this investment is not worthwhile in the long run, I will be moving to San Francisco to be as immersed in the game dev community as possible. The upside of this as I see it is a built in community. I can't imagine another place with as many eager game devs in as geographically limited a space as SF. However, the game devs and other tech people in SF may all be 30's plus, and may all be firmly ensconced in a corporate environment, with no desire to "get more indy."

Seattle?

I think it's one thing (and definitely intriguing) if I were the only person partaking of such a service, when I was at a point in life where I could partake.

But get a few people together, and you're dealing with all the usual room-mate scenarios: shared bathroom space, kitchen access, recreation-space; divergent schedules, noise issues if you have a night-owl and an early riser...

With the right group I'm sure it would be nice for a while. But I've had multiple room-mates before on less-than-ideal bandwidth scenarios, and we still didn't really have any issues (even with heavy MMO usage and data streams), so I don't see the gigabit pipe as enough of a draw to move there.

Also, unless you're all successfully funded indie developers (who could likely find their own apartment/flat anyway) you're going to have to find work to pay the food/utilities bills. Reality quickly devolves this into a standard housing scenario.

All that being said, if this just nets you a few like-minded housemates, it might be worthwhile anyway. Good luck!

Thank you for your responses. I also think that SF is far too expensive for what its worth, which motivates my desire to move to Kansas City. I truly believe that it will be worthwhile to own a home and devote it to gamedev and indies rather than spending all my hard earned cash trying to "make it" in SF and realize that everyone else is doing the same. Please let me know if you have any more suggestions as I am totally an open book right now.

-Dave Ottley

Think of it as a "family" lolz.

Why are you moving just for fast internet? The vast majority of gamedev has no need for gigabit web in the first place.

The decision is not made. I am trying to gauge interest in the idea. I think fast internet is invaluable for many gamedev and related activities, but I'm not sure if people will go out of their way to get it, even if it is free. Would you?

I really don't see gigabit as invaluable for gamedev, 20MB/sec is just fine no need for 100 or 1GB, it's nice of course, but definately not something that should affect where you go