Poet1960 wrote:That's all true, but I fear you may be underestimating the impact of peer pressure. Whether you understand it or not, WE have more impact on him than you might think, or even he thinks. Partly it depends on the strength of his personality, but I don't think I've ever met a human that was completely immune to peer pressure.
We exert pressure on him. Don't you see that? Sure he is doing what he wants to do, but at the same time, he knows we are all here because we like what we see, and he wants at least to some degree, to gain some validation from us about what he is doing. It's always a nice feeling to know people agree with you.
Suggestions and ideas are a different matter, not the same. While it is true he is under no obligation to do anything we say, he still considers what we say and it has an impact. Whether he acts on that is another matter, but it still impacts him. If enough people express "concerns" about things taking too long, is it possible he may leave out something that would have been awesome even though it may not have added much dev time?
Nobody said he isn't his own boss, but if someone besides himself tries to impose a time constraint on him, or hurry production, what would you call that? I was pointing out that he should take full advantage of being his own boss by taking his time and doing it right.
Sure, but is that necessarily a bad thing?
At the end of the day, Josh wants to build a game people will like. Some validation and feedback is a valuable tool to making that happen. The fact that those interactions come with a certain impact is probably unavoidable, but I'm sure that developing the game in a vacuum, hearing no input or opinions from anyone else, would probably be worse in the long run with respect to the game's quality.
Don't forget as well, that a healthy percentage of fans would also be Kickstarter backers. Helping to fund the game may not entitle a backer to dictate to Josh about his decision making, but it does make them a stakeholder in a unique way that fans usually couldn't experience before the advent of crowdfunding, and puts Josh under some legitimate pressure to deliver on his promises.
I'm sure that whenever you display your work publicly, you get a mix of negative and positive responses, but I'm sure it all contributes to motivating Josh. And a motivated Josh is not the worst outcome in the world.