About DC being silent, well, I guess it depends on how everyone sees it, but I think he is not silent at all. He may not be giving all the details, but overall we can keep track of what is being done and what is going to be done next in the near future, he answers a bunch of questions during streams and all. That's already far more comunication and transparency than most patreon game devs.
well, more opinion stuff from my side I guess
It may very well be that he isn't silent when doing his livestreams and answers questions there, but that has another flaw in itself if you ask me, namely this:
If I need to consume a second piece of media, especially one that could potentially be extremely time consuming, since (here we enter speculations, I haven't watched any of his streams so please, enlighten me) questions are usually asked randomly about the entirety of the length, making it a huge hassle to look for information when I am not that interested in the media he's using, say a livestream, then this will happen - I am straight up missing information because the distribution was on a second hand platform.
Sure, listening to it as a podcast seems like a nice way for killing the time, or watching it live, maybe getting your own questions answered, but what if I'm not interested in the media of livestreams itself? Information, common questions or a discussion section regarding a project should, atleast in my opinion, be easily accessible on the main project platform, here Patreon, not a side in another media. This will lead to straight up missing information that may or may not have been answered a hundred times, yet people will still ask about it, since it's nowhere on the main platform to be viewed quickly.
So, short story even shorter - have the main gist on what's going on/how everything is holding/some commonly asked questions up somewhere available on the main distribution platform, not as a sidenote inside a drawing stream.
Then about the 30k. I think there's a few things to take into consideration, but let's just get to the most importants. First, even if you have the money, there's an amount of work that needs to be done that takes time no matter what. And yes, you could get more people on the theam, but that takes time as well and you would not take just anyone of course, and the bigger the team the harder to manage. I think they are still polishing the workflow and teamwork, they got the new coder not too long ago. Then there's the ones saying that 30k is enough to not be called "amateur", but that makes no sense whatsoever. You could get all the money in the world, you skill level is what it is, your pace is what it is, you just don't suddenly work faster and better if you get more money.
On this one, again, more or less my personal feelings about the entirety of it:
Yeah, some tasks will take time, regardless on how much money you will throw at it, time can't just be bought down, regardless on what publishers like EA would like you to believe with their brand-themed casinos they conceal as games. Nontheless, projects this good and open with it's soon-to-be content will gain traction easily and believe me, this game is good, really damn good. Has some of the highest quality in the entire scene on Patreon. Probs also the reason why Patreon decided to go after DC in particular when it comes to enforcing this policy (atleast this is where I noticed it's main focus, are other projects hit by this as well?)
(after this follows a bit of what I would suggest is theorycrafting? so, from this point onward, careful when reading, it just contains my view on this topic, which can be straight up wrong)
However, with this traction that you gain, your product will just straight up generate a certain hype by it's own merits, especially when development continues and especially when it includes your audience by means of voting. this'll mean that more and more people will support it, so more money gets thrown into the project. Obviously you can't expect to just half the time it'll take to continuesly provide updates, that is just wishful thinking. However - here's the but, and that's a nasty butt: if your community grows, especially the way it did with DC, then your team >will< also need to grow, either to adapt for the new influx of messages coming in (people hate being ignored), or to hire another person in order to split up the available tasks to them, which does reduce the time taken, though the amount of hours used up will still be the same, just distributed along more members, reducing the time by how many people are actually working in their fields, what they are being put in charge. (heigher at the beginning even, since new members will have to get used to certain nuances, either language, programming style, whatnot, or even simple things like how normal situations are handled within the team)
A growth of the devteam carries risks of it's own however, which needs to be balanced - more workforce may mean more time, however, handling a team can be a real struggle. If critical parts are given to new members, them missing their schedule will screw you over, either because of sickness, personal issues (death or whatnot), or just something else entirely. On the other hand, it'll speed things up by splitting tasks onto more people, therefore reducing the workload each person has to carry, also reducing stress to a degree. And before you know it - BAM, you got to manage even more people, because you may need someone in charge of tracking everyone's work, then some QA, and then some more. So it's an extremely finnicky balance on a tightrope probably hanging over a pit of lava, spikes, and a part of the community ready to tear you a new one.
And alas, the 30k issue I brought up as well - it was more or less meant as a means to the end; you, a layman of the topic, look at that amount of cash and think "man, why does it take so long with that amount of money on a monthly basis? Shouldn't they potentially hire someone else now with that nice batch of extra cash coming in?" - but oh well, this leads back to what I said earlier.
To conclude, and this is just how I feel, really. Though I admire DC for how they handle the product considering Patreon decided to screw them over heavily with their new guidelines, I feel like some aspects that could easily lift some tension, or just clarify certain aspects could be handled better.
and as a sidenote to anyone who managed to read down this far - thanks for allowing me to waste your time with something that probably has no coherence and/or deeper meaning behind it. I just want to get stuff off my chest.
