Anx2k

Self-promo successful - just bought your book on Amazon! ;)

I actually did Zombies, Run! over the pandemic and we had a great time doing it - honestly one of the few examples of gamification that works. Really it's so good that I didn't even think of it even as gamification, which is saying something. I also worked in the game industry for years and gluing on trophies or points onto some otherwise irrelevant task is not true gamification, it's just the most basic example of "if you measure it, they will do it".

Looking forward to reading your book.

On first blush I thought the same thing - what, you're going to have to blow into some tube to start your car? I can understand this for people who have been convicted of drunk driving, but for everyone? But looking around it appears they have some mechanism by which they can determine with some degree of accuracy via touch, and it's integrated into the ignition button on a car:

https://www.dadss.org/touch-technology

They also appear to have other approaches as well, but this one seems like it would be almost transparent to the operation of the car.

Honestly I have zero objection to something that worked in this fashion - I suspect it would save a ton of lives. I think the knee jerk reaction that it's somehow a big brother kind of thing is a bit disingenuous, like saying "The government shouldn't interfere with my ability to drive drunk and potentially hurt people". I think this is much more akin to when wearing seat belts became the law - people moaned and complained but at the end of the day it's better for both themselves and others in the vehicle.

The speeding thing is completely unrelated and really shouldn't be mixed into this - how about solving one problem at a time well, instead of lumping a bunch together and solving none. I've had friends badly injured by drunk drivers, and in all the cases the drunk driver wasn't exceeding the posted speed limit. In one they just smashed into a parked car and hit them on the sidewalk, in one they swerved into oncoming traffic and collided head on, and the last drove into a store at full speed. Thankfully these were three different people I know, and not one incredibly unlucky person. ;)

In the case of Apple you’re really paying for access to the platform, as you don’t have a choice. But in the case of Patreon, I don’t think they offer anything in terms of reach - by this I mean I’ve never made the decision to support a creator because they were on the platform. Typically if I decide to support someone, I just go to whatever they point me to - and I think this was the authors point (especially for very narrow/vertical creators).

A better example of a more ‘reach’ offering would probably be YouTube’s similar offering (although I don’t know their fee structure), which goes beyond just reach and has very low friction for creators who make content on that platform.

Honestly I feel like Patreon as a platform is pretty underwhelming from the donator side of things, nor do I see much in terms of what’s changed to improve the experience over the years as their fees have increased - but I have no idea what has changed on the creator side.

I think the big takeaway (no surprise) is that the creator really owns the donator, not the platform - vs someplace like Apple where they have a much stronger relationship with the customer than your typical app developer does.