DISCLAIMER: I'm not talking about this game specifically. I'm not talking about this user specifically. This admittedly incoherent ramble is to everyone who supports anything.
I myself understand perfectly the concept of patronage: You support someone financially so they can concentrate on being productive on a field of their choice. It's a marvelous concept. When you go to an art museum,
everything you see exists solely because of patronage of some entity, private or public. Sponsorship in sports is essentially the same thing. Most scientific research is done with grants and backers. But I'm willing to make a claim that it has
never come without expectations. Even if a piece of art or scientific breakthrough has taken years to finish, eventual results have been expected.
Patrons, sponsors and what ever you wish to call them, have always monitored their dependents. Maybe not always overly actively, but at least to some extent. Everyone who has received support in this form, has always known it's not unconditional and it stops if you stop. Until Patreon.
With sites like Patreon, you can become a patron without being wealthy enough to be able to support freeloaders. Quite often simply throwing in $1 a month is enough. Wonderful, right? Wrong. Well, not completely wrong at least on paper, but there are some massive flaws. When you subscribe to pay $1 a month, it's easy to shrug your shoulders if there hasn't been any progress this month. Or past three months. Or past two years. Heck, you might even forget the whole damn thing if you're supporting multiple projects. Who cares? It's a dollar. But when supporting someone takes a substantial amount of money, you care about what's being done with it.
It's kind of counterintuitive how with increasing amount of patrons your accountability actually decreases. If you have one patron who supports you for $1K a month, you're accountable for $1K. You have to show results worth $1K. If you have a thousand patrons who support you for $1 a month, you're getting the same amount of money but you're only accountable for $1. For a thousand people, but still just $1. You have to really let people down for them to say what you're doing isn't worth even $1 a month.
And this results into something you see in every ponzi scheme: Denial. You spent a dollar? Huh, who cares. Not you, you can afford it. But in a year that's $12. Still not much to most of the people with access to internet to read this ramble. But it's $12 for nothing. The more you spend on nothing, the stupider you look. And you can't look stupid. So whatever you're funding, it
has to come through. If it does, you'll look awesome for trusting in it the whole time. If it doesn't, you'll look like an idiot. You're not an idiot. You can't look like an idiot. Therefore, this
has to work. And you have to convince everyone it will work and everything is going wonderfully, otherwise they'd think you're an idiot. You're not an idiot! And that's how you get those angry defenders who lash out at everyone for not sharing their blind faith and/or denial; that cult-like mentality you see around failed projects.
Maybe you don't care if you get any results, but you should. The less people care about results, the less they'll get any. When you're ignoring what is being done with your money, you're enabling all the milking.
And hey, who am I to say what counts as results? Maybe you are indeed happy with what you see. In that case, do go on. If supporters of games like
Summertime Saga are truly fine with funding a guy doodling in a stream every now and then, well alrighty then. Like I said, you have to really let people down for them to say it isn't worth even $1. But I highly suggest that every now and then you take a hard look at yourself and what you're supporting. It may not be easy to admit to yourself that you've been had, but it won't stop until you do so. Take
Happy Summer for example: That dev is running an experiment on how low you can push the bar before people get mad at you. And it's going astonishingly well. Like, every SMH-meme you've ever seen well. As long as people refuse to admit they're getting nothing, they'll get nothing.
If you want to keep supporting projects without requiring results, you're of course free to do so. But by doing so you're doing a massive disservice to everyone who does expect results. And don't act surprised when those people call you an idiot.
