I don’t think Seth, Vincent and Luke draw their money solely from the pool of people that constitutes this mutualism they’re talking about. It goes beyond that. For these other people, we could see the buying of the game as a form of mutualism (hey, your game is great, here’s some money so you can go on designing, I can’t help you otherwise given my priorities in life).
The mutualism I hear them talk about is quite small-scaled, as the interview seems to suggest. Perhaps (overlapping) groups of 20 people, say.

In this way, mutualism is still quite healthy, especially when one considers that those who make the most cash out of their activity usually also sponsor the most things (Forge Booth, community website hosting, competitions with prize-money (Ronnies), etc.) Some game sales even sponsor charity funds (Drowning and Falling for example).
Perhaps not absolute mutualism, but hey, it’s quite neat compared to other sectors where money flows.

Now, I can’t speak for churches and how this could even remotely relate to them.

Fair comment – mutualism as a phenomenon is not dead. Mutualism as an organised social norm is, however, rather unstable. For mutualism in general (whether P2P file sharing, game development, anarchic self-government or counter cultural religious groups) there must be an underlying spirit of giving that does not depend on merit (success, social standing, etc.). A church that sees success only in the material success of its leaders does not have mutualism, it has a pyramid marketing scheme. A game development group that encourages success of the few is similar – but this is the lesson of capital. Money flows towards those who already have it and the money magnet holds the responsibility for what to do with it (e.g., fund a Forge booth, fund a soup kitchen or neighbourhood tutoring programme).

When mutualism creates success, the success needs to feed back into the group that spawned it, otherwise the group will be unbalanced and unable to sustain its own advancements. There is evidence of that in the interview, but also evidence of a frustration that comes from the clash of a desire to bask in the success and the desire to use the strength of that success to help the group. To personify: “I have money because of my participation in this group. I like having this money for myself, but I also like to use money to help others in the group.” The conflict is clear. At least in a game there is a mechanic to help resolve the conflict. In real life, there is only choice.

For Vincent: If I hadn’t found Seth’s quote I would have started this myself somewhere. You expressed precisely my own frustrations with churches. The clash of church and capital hurts a lot of people.

For what it’s worth, I don’t see mutualism as dead. For example, Ralph Mazza is in my gaming group, and currently we’re playtesting his latest game. Conversely, when I was working on Dirty Secrets, he was there in the middle of it, offering helpful advice and playtest. We’ve helped other designers with their stuff, and, flipside, Emily Care is helping to test my latest project.

And, when Luke Crane won the Origins Award, I thought that it was awesome for him, especially because of the associated rockstar moment. But I’ve seen Burning Empires, and I was thoroughly impressed, both as a design and as a physical object. The only reason that I haven’t run it is because I’m not sure that my gaming group wants a game that heavy. Well, and I really want to play it, not run it.

(The story goes that he’s in the middle of running Burning Wheel when Paul Tevis and…um…someone else come in with the statuette. They go up to him and say, “Hey, this is for you.” Which is pretty awesome all itself. The room erupts in cheers…and Luke goes back to running his game. Which is definitely metal in my book.)

So, I’m not persuaded that mutualism is as dead as everyone says or that the Forge model failed somehow because the money got in the way.

And, yeah, it’s a serious question. I mean, I like being part of the indie scene and all that. I can talk about mutualism and wave around both how I’ve helped others and how they have helped me. But, really, they are just games. If games have more of a pull than the Person at the center of my faith…well, something isn’t right.

Oh, I finished listening to the interview, and it was a lot of fun listening to the both of you trying simultaneously to be honest with each other while still editing yourself to try to avoid being misunderstood.

The key the whole thing was in the idea that money ruins mutualism. I think there is more truth in this than they realise. Vincent said it well right near the end when he said, “f*** the money.” In fact, in a pure expression of mutualism the profit from one game would go to developing another. The entire exercise (Forge, Knife Fight, whatever) would only be about the cause of creating games. If one person gains a benefit for themselves, they break out of the mutualism. What this says is that it’s not genuine mutualism. It is mutual exploitation until someone makes the money and then the illusion is broken.

Genuine mutualism is not about helping each other for one’s own success. Genuine mutualism is helping each other for no benefit to the self. As Paul writes, “Give, and expect nothing in return.” This is where the Forge-ist “mutualism” stops and where a genuine mutualism would continue.

Is Jesus enough? Sure. As long as Jesus isn’t a magnified self-image (you know, a handsome white man for the white believer, etc.) and is about love for the sake of love rather than for self benefit, it will work. But like Adiel said, there are too many who are using Jesus as a path for self-fulfilment. And this is also probably what went wrong with the Forge. People abused the trust of mutual help for the sake of self-fulfilment and as soon as they had it, it collapsed.

This is something of a ramble – and I apologise for the incoherence – but my thoughts are so tumultuous after listening to that interview.

Apparently not. In the indie roleplaying scene they all have a similar goal- creating art- but the average American church doesn’t have a unified goal. Some church-goers’ goals are extreme evangelizing, some have goals of success and comfortable lives and others have the goal of keeping the pew nice and warm. We’re just not willing to give everything up to be unified in the goal of glorifying Jesus in a broken world and showing His glory through our love for each other.

Please excuse the brief rant- can you tell this is a sore spot for me?