3MA has a Patreon

[TheLastBaron]

I totally get why Patreon does it, but I signed up on the 2nd of the month which is really unfortunate as Patreon collects money on the first of every month. Oh well.

[Procyon Lotor]

If my wife asks, Patreon is some kind of credit protection service.  Okay?  

[cornchip]

Really happy to see the Patreon, and backed, of course. I of course would like to see the stretch goals exist, but I am concerned that they'll take too much ongoing extra work. If you decide to scale back to making the rewards quarterly, I think that would be totally fair. (I also dislike Kickstarter stretch goals that have a variable cost per item!)

[Michael]

The first poll should be visible as a post on our Patreon page. If you've backed at the $5 tier or higher, you should be able to see it. Post here if you run into any issues!

[Gaizokubanou]

I listen to 3MA more than I use Netflix so it only seems fair.

[Vesperan]

Thanks guys, keep up the good work.

 

Question: any timing on the Q&A session as yet? Also - how will those sessions be distributed?

[Jarmo]

Hello gents,

 

The poll requires a Google account. Could you please make the poll with a system that does not require a Google or other account not related to 3MA patronage? Thanks!

 

I don't have a Google account nor an Facebook account. Requiring an idlethumbs.net account for the poll would be OK now that I've created one . Requiring a Patreon account for the poll would be the logical choice, obviously.

 

Anyway, thanks for the show! I've listened to it from the start and have received countless hours of knowledge and pleasure from it. I appreciate your hard work and the high standard of discussion you bring to it.

[Roah]

I'm in! And just wanted to say - keep up the great work guys. I only started actively listening to the podcast this year after knowing about it for a few years now (work family etc.), and am having a blast working my way up from Episode 1 

[Michael]

Hello gents,

 

The poll requires a Google account. Could you please make the poll with a system that does not require a Google or other account not related to 3MA patronage? Thanks!

 

I don't have a Google account nor an Facebook account. Requiring an idlethumbs.net account for the poll would be OK now that I've created one . Requiring a Patreon account for the poll would be the logical choice, obviously.

 

Hi Jarmo,

 

I'll see what I can do. The login is required in order to keep people from voting more than once. You can use Google Forms and remove the login requirement, but then people could spam the votes for whatever they really want to see and we would end up with 1,000 votes from a 100 people. Just like a Chicago election!

 

I will look around for a viable alternative. Patreon does not have a built-in polling capability as far as I know, so we need to use another service. I have a feeling (but I'm not positive) that any service used for polls will need some kind of verification to prevent people from voting more than once. I'll do some searching.

 

In the meantime, feel free to send me a PM through the boards with your vote and and I'll add it to the tally. Were you able to see the poll options, at least? Or does it lock out you of the poll entirely without an account?

[ShadowTiger]

Those poll choices are all very good... I hope at least second place carries over to next month!

[Jarmo]

Were you able to see the poll options, at least? Or does it lock out you of the poll entirely without an account?

 

Thanks for your trouble, Michael! The latter, I'm afraid.

 

By the way, thanks for your excellent work on the 3MA and The Game Design Round Table podcasts! My ears thank you every week for the ease of listening! I've had occasion to listen to podcasts which blast in one ear only, are filled with noise, unedited entirely or recorded over the net and not locally. I appreciate your what must be quite considerable efforts in making it so that when listening to these podcasts, I can concentrate on what is being said and by whom, not on where the sam hill are the word-bearing waveforms among the scratches and the whines. Michael, my hat is off to you! Long may you reign!

 

Oh, and the dudes talking are okay, too.

[utilitarian]

Contributed! Thanks for the great podcast. I enjoy it depsite the fact that the last strategy game I've put more than 5 hours into was probably the original Colonization.

[Michael]

Thanks for your trouble, Michael! The latter, I'm afraid.

 

By the way, thanks for your excellent work on the 3MA and The Game Design Round Table podcasts! My ears thank you every week for the ease of listening! I've had occasion to listen to podcasts which blast in one ear only, are filled with noise, unedited entirely or recorded over the net and not locally. I appreciate your what must be quite considerable efforts in making it so that when listening to these podcasts, I can concentrate on what is being said and by whom, not on where the sam hill are the word-bearing waveforms among the scratches and the whines. Michael, my hat is off to you! Long may you reign!

 

Oh, and the dudes talking are okay, too.

 

Yeah, they do okay. I guess.

 

Thanks for the kind words! Also, check your PMs on these forums.

[Turrican]

Come on guys, pull your fingers out!  

 

You're all Patreon millionaires now and it's been over two weeks since the last proper episode!

[Michael]

Come on guys, pull your fingers out!  

 

You're all Patreon millionaires now and it's been over two weeks since the last proper episode!

 

Well, one week and three days. But anyway - the new show is up! Many apologies for the tardiness. Rob had to deal with a minor surgery and we had a few cancellations for various topics. We are back on schedule, though, and will still have the next episode up on Thursday as normal.

[Turrican]

Well, one week and three days. But anyway - the new show is up! Many apologies for the tardiness. Rob had to deal with a minor surgery and we had a few cancellations for various topics. We are back on schedule, though, and will still have the next episode up on Thursday as normal.

 

I don't count the episodes about board games 

 

Anyway, I'm only kidding.  Thanks for the latest.  I really hope the guys take a look at Thea: The Awakening - it's quite extraordinary! 

[Rob Zacny]

Hmm, this is the second time I'm hearing about Thea. First time was from Troy, so I guess we should take a look.

[Turrican]

Think you should Rob.

 

It's a fantasy 4x inflected with elements of Pillars of Eternity, Sunless Sea and Gwent on steroids.  I've only played a few hours so far but it's a possible GOTY contender in my book. 

[Troy Goodfellow]

Yes, Rob. Check out Thea. Not entirely sold on it, but it does a ton of New Things.

[Michael]

The new poll is up, using a new service that should not require a login. Let me know if there are any issues!

[Troy Goodfellow]

A REMINDER to Patreon subscribers to check your email for notifications about rewards and events that are tied to your pledge level. A lot of you are new to Patreon, so you may be missing these things bumped into your Social Inbox on Gmail.

[Rob Zacny]

Following-up on Troy's point...

 

I have an email list of every Patreon subscriber and was going to send out a thank-you and housekeeping message in the next few days. But in general, I've been hesitant to send out emails because I know people hate spam. However, what I'm noticing is that we're having a hard time finding another channel of communication that works.

 

On the Patreon bulletin board, only a few people have noticed or responded to posts meant for their backer-tier. We just had someone asking about the Q&A episode because we mentioned we'd recently finished recording it... and that listener didn't know we'd solicited questions! Ironically, when I tried to solicit feedback on this issue via Twitter, no backers responded, but we did find a bunch of people who apparently didn't know we were running a Patreon!

 

[The Backer Q&A episode is going up this week, btw]

 

In short, it looks like trying to talk to backers via a forum thread, Twitter, and the Patreon page isn't really reaching people and it's causing some frustration. So until I hear complaints from you, I am going to rely a little more on direct email via Patreon. Because right now it seems like backers are in the dark about what we're doing, and that's no good.

 

Question for you backers, however: when a post goes up that's relevant to your backer-tier, do you get a push notification? What about when a new episode notification is posted to Patreon?

[Procyon Lotor]

I get an e-mail.  

[murdocj]

I became a backer in early November and since then I've gotten a couple of notices that new polls are up, and a notice each time a new episode is posted.  So about 6 in just about a month, which is fine with me.

[hexgrid]

I've gotten push emails.

 

For me, if I back something like this, I don't mind getting relevant updates and occasional summaries.  It crosses the boundary into spam if the updates are too regular ("Daily Update: Nothing Happening Today, so Let Me Tell You About My Lunch"), or if it runs to cross-promotion and feels like someone has stuck a Marketing Channel tag on things (eg: it's fine to mention eSports Today in updates, but if you were to start sending out regular 3MA Patreon updates whose clear and only purpose was to pimp eSports Today, and if those cross-marketing updates were to be a significant fraction of the traffic, it would cross the spam line for me).

 

A weekly "state of the world" summary email (this week's episode, any relevant news, polls, goals, requests, deadlines, whatever) and the occasional special bulletin would be firmly on the proper side of the line, at least for me.