I think EZA is at their best when they are doing their own unique things, especially in regards to the time and resources they have. Not necessarily what Giant Bomb is doing. And Patreon subscriptions go up and down, such as the nature of that kind of business model. Their patreon alone is bringing in over half a million dollars. That built success shouldn't warrant concerns, I don't think. Agreed on game sleuths / retrospectives. I think they need more people / resources to put them out in a more regular fashion and if anything, they should let patreons know up front at that tier that they should only expect one per year, if not longer.
I don't get what you mean by promotion? Do you expect them to allocate a big budget aside for an actual advertising campaign? Furthermore, they did tweet about it, and I for one appreciate them not spamming twitter every hour within the same information. EZA's audience is their patreon audience. It's a smaller, yet more highly engaged audience. That's how they are structured. And they've been having a lot of success with that method. Furthermore, they were getting 1,000 + views throughout the weekend, which is in line with their group stream days. Meaning the audience showed up. Remember the whole point of having a patreon is that they don't need to be thirsty to get every single random guy to watch their stuff. And to be honest, the audience, content and fan base is a lot better for it because they can better control things on both ends.
I get your concerns but you shouldn't be worried. I think these guys know what they are doing, as they've been doing it for years now. Of course naturally there is always room for improvement, and those improvements will come over time. In fact, I'm pretty sure everything you've said are things EZA has already internally discussed among themselves already.
EDIT: Also check out their website more often. It does a pretty good job of letting people know what's when and where.
I think I worded it weirdly, I didn't mean "copy" Giant Bomb at all. I meant more I enjoy the long play group thing which isn't really a Giant Bomb exclusive thing at all. They're just doing an excellent job at right now. Right now the vast, vast majority of group streams we get are 2 hour bits of games with no continuation. Love to see multiple of them dig into a meaty game where time is really no hindrance, which a studio might make that exponentially easier.
Also, probably worded it odd as well about the Patreon stuff. I'm not really concerned about the ebb and flow necessarily, just that people respond well to goals and clarity, and I think their next major goal, the studio, has been unclear.
About promotion, no didn't mean to actually use $ to advertise. I meant basically the only time they mention Patreon is 2 hours into a podcast. They also very, very rarely mentioned it all during Easy Livin'. They all have Twitter accounts that are strangely mostly silent when they're in the business of "putting themselves out there" so their content can get some eyes on it and the audience can support their careers.
I'm also not advocating "spamming" twitter whenever they do something, but they had a 50 hour 9 person livestream that they posted about once (real late at night for most) during the entire duration of the stream. Honestly, I would have posted once for each time they switched games. Like, it was nice seeing 1k plus during the stream, but there's no reason that this needs to be an "artificial" cap or anything. They make incredibly great content and there's no reason they need to be "under the radar."
Also, i'm not worried about them financially at all if it came out that way. But ask anyone in the world, probably especially people that live in an expensive city like LA, they'd like to be making more money. And frankly, they deserve to be making more money considering the beloved content they put out. More money means they can get out of Jones' garage, maybe travel more for events, more resources and other things that would serve to improve their product and their personal situations.
And yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree I need to check the website more. IT IS a great resource. It's just that a reminder multiple hours in advance rarely helps me out. Unlike the website and I'm sure this true for many others, Twitter is an open tab on my computer all day long. So many times one of them or the official account has posted a minute or two before going live that I completely forgot about that I'll just click the link and tune in.