Thoughts Solicited!

Hey team,

Last week I solicited your thoughts on what our best ways of interacting on Patreon are. I got a lot of feedback, so thanks to all of you who shared your thoughts!

The strongest running theme was folks saying, in essence, "Hey man, I'm not here for perks, just keep making the videos." Which is certainly encouraging. And most of the folks who wanted anything simply said they'd like a bit more free communication. And I agree - that would be pretty cool.

Before I talk about that, let me address a couple things that came up.

Sometimes I don't respond to comments. Don't take this personally. I make it a policy to only comment if I have something to say. Some folks write some in-depth and often very intelligent comments, but they either stand on their own or they are outside my experience enough that I just don't have much to add. And fun as it may be to get embroiled in conversations about heady game concepts on Patreon, really what y'all are paying me to do is put that time into the videos themselves. ;) Rest assured, until the day I'm getting a much, much larger volume of comments here, I read them all.

I do like you. Some folks expressed that, more or less, I seem like the kind of person they'd like to get a beer with, and what communication they'd be interested in would be along the lines of getting to know me better. And, rest assured, so far you've all proven to be pretty cool people as well. I think you're all great! But I do keep things a bit close to the chest. If you've seen This Is Phil Fish, you understand that I'm skeptical of just how much you can know about someone from their work or their Twitter profile. (Heck, you know why it wouldn't be fun to get a beer with me? I don't drink beer.) There is a kind of relationship we are able to form through this channel, and it's valuable to me, and I want to respect that. But I think we can all agree that friendship is not something you purchase on Patreon.

With all that said, I think the best thing we could do is create some more omnidirectional communication. Right now, I make posts, you comment on that post, and you get notified if I or someone else replies to that comment. So most of our communication is pointed at me. And every time I make an update like this, is goes out to everyone, and Patreon has a pretty all-or-nothing email system - you either get emails or you don't, not a lot of in between.

I think what would benefit us most is a forum of some kind. Or, I dunno, a subreddit or an occasional IRC or something. Let people opt-in to how much conversation they want to have, and let people talk to each other without going through me, and free ourselves up to get more off-topic. This is tricky, because I don't really have the skills or the time to build a website and a forum, but I'll put some thought into it. Also, if we start thinking of this as more of a community, well, communities require moderation, and the only way I'm going to moderate a community is to cut into the time I make videos or cut into my resources by hiring someone. Neither is super feasible right now.

But let's think on it. If y'all have any suggestions for omnidirectional communication, throw them in the comments.

Cheers,

-I