How many fans do you need to support you if you're an independent game developer? Apparently, only about 10,000 a year.

For the last year, Arizona-based game developer Flashbang Studios has released a game every eight weeks free of charge to play online on its Web site Blurst. The games have often been bizarre and cartoonish. "Jetpack Brontosaurus" and "Off-Road Velociraptor Safari" play exactly as they sound while "Blush" allows players to control a jellyfish-like creature through a glowing undersea world. On Friday, the company release its newest game, "Paper Moon," a monochromatic jaunt through a dreary landscape as players control the scenery to advance through the stages. "It's based on a pop-up book and the song by Ella Fitzgerald," says Steve Swink, Flashbang's game designer.

Later this year, Blurst games will conduct an experiment. In addition to giving away its games for free, it'll charge $20 for a six month subscription for additional features such as a downloadable version. Blurst will also be taking requests from fans to add features over time. Mr. Swink and his team calculated how many people they'd need to keep a staff of six and cover a $20,000 per month budget. They arrived at what they considered to be a reasonable goal: only 5,000 people every half-year.

The new business model is a real-world test of an essay published by Wired magazine founder and technologist Kevin Kelly entitled "1,000 True Fans." Mr. Kelly argues that artists could make a living with a small group of dedicated individuals who would fund their work. "A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They can't wait till you issue your next work," he wrote. Mr. Kelly argued that such rabid devotees would create outsourced version of the patronage system that's funded artists for centuries.

Joining Flashbang was a much-needed change of pace for Mr. Swink. For more than a year, he had toiled in a Los Angeles office complex working on the newest release of skateboarding game "Tony Hawk Underground." As an employee for Neversoft, Mr. Swink was working 16-hour days during the hectic end of the production cycle and had thrown personal care to wind. "I had hair down to my waist and I was getting fat," he says. "I was a disgusting, ragged hobo."