Would be nice if Patreon had a function that patrons could activate, that paused payments if an artist broke a deadline by more than X time, and/or if the artist post-poned a deadline and then broke that one too. The point to this would be that the artist would know that there is a consequence to stringing along people, if that happens.
Could let the patron choose to still pay monthly (maybe lower amount) and hold those funds to be payed to the artist if and when the overdue content is released. And the point would be to let the artist know that if they finish content there will be pay.
Generally, I think there should be options on Patreon and other likewise platforms for patrons to pay a little extra for content delivered, in addition to only pay for content promised.
That would be a legal nightmare for patreon. There are shit tons of abandoned projects, and this kind of system would incentivise continued support for those. If the money is never paid out, what do you do with it? Let it sit somewhere and take a dip in it like Scrooge McDuck? How is it taxed, does it collect interest, what about transparency? Artist forfeits his claim to the pot when? Pages get closed for TOS violations, what happens to the floating cash?
Better not to get into that. Withholding cash from delinquent creators is already possible: Stop your pledge. I am not advocating for it, frankly I don't care what you do with your money, but to expect a complex solution from a platform for a problem you can solve with three clicks is kinda... lazy.
Thats what irritates me so much about the milking patrons thing. It's their choice, I am not taking it away from them, and neither should anyone else. Financial independence means making your own mistakes.
That said, I am a little sad to see another delay, it will be hard for the update to be amazing enough to fully make up for the last three months. Are any Discord users in here willing to share if there is a discussion going on about returning to shorter update cycles? He does seem to have issues with time management, and shorter update cycles force tighter constraints on him. Since I am a pretty scatterbrained guy, I prefer shorter deadlines for exactly that kind of reason. Might a good avenue of approaching the topic with him as well. (we talked about that in this thread about 70 pages and 10 lifetimes ago, I think, but then a tidal wave of delays and griefing rolled around)
Ultimately we all want the game to be finished in the best possible state, and for the creator to be rewarded for his work. But it might be a good idea to think about how the community, esp. on discord, can support him in other ways than money. Have a frank talk with him, see what can be done. Bad time management and lack of discipline are not one shot kill flaws, they are quite manageable, to be honest. But most of the strategies I know to combat them are external. Thats where you guys can come in.
Edit on a more funny note:
There's always the old trick used in college of using bigger font and spacing. hahaha
Arial 12.5 pt with 15 pt leading, 100% expanded and 1.125 margins can gain you up to 40% larger yield on your documents.
I taught at a college for a few years, and some of my idiots actually tried shit like that. Thats one of the reasons why I demanded digital versions on top of printouts and told them to go by wordcount. That was an automatic failing grade btw, so whoever thinks this is a good idea, it is not.
Also, yes, my students despised me.
