Three questions...

As development time has been stretching on, maybe it's time to address that head on and discuss some of the questions that have been coming my way lately, and the answers I gave, and hopefully that answers some questions you may have. 

Here's three of those questions (well, technically four).

Where's the release Naughty? Aren't you making enough money by now?

This one kinda puzzles me to be honest. I'm not some kind of coin machine where you put in money and bits of game drop out, and if you put more coins, you get more bits of game. 

As you can see in the info graph, I report the amount of time spent on Light of my Life weekly (it's in the lower right corner), and it's pretty stable at around 50 hours a week, with some spikes into the 60+ if there's for instance a national holiday or something that gives me some extra free time to spent on the game. 

That's going into the game regardless of the support. It would be going in if support was half of what it is now, or double, and it's literally all I have to give.  I'm not holding back for anyone to put in more coins before you get some more work. 

Not really sure what more to say about it other than that it really puzzles me.

Do it in smaller pieces then?

This one came up in the comments today, and it's a pretty interesting question.

So let's break it down into two parts: have shorter chapters, and cut up chapters:

Shorter chapters

Chapters themselves can't be shorter than they are in terms of plot that happens. They have an arch, and stuff that needs to happen and needs to be concluded, and that needs to go in. So, if they have to be shorter, then content has to be cut. And that means ending up with less game in the end. 

Is that a bad thing? It happens all the time in the industry; there's budgets and there's a set timespan in which things take place, be it a season or a feature film length. Hard choices have to be made. And that sound pretty professional of course, making hard choices, but I'm not running this as if I have a three season contract with Netflix, and hard choices means that something you might enjoy ends up not getting made. 

From the perspective of Light of my Life: if something adds something special to a chapter, I'm not going to kill that darling just to release a month earlier. And while that may suck when you're at the start of that month and you want to play something, anything already, in the end, it'll make for a better game.

So, cut it up then? 

It seems a better choice. At least, we're not cutting out anything for the sake of time-to-market. Of course it's quite simple to take a point halfway through a chapter and just release that and go "to be continued." 

But then you just played through a whole bunch of build up with little pay-off before being stopped dead in your tracks, and now you have to wait many months more, and then when the second half is out, it'll drop in right into the middle of a whole bunch of action without any build up, and the pacing's all off. So, that's no ideal either. 

Again, I get that stuff like that happens a lot in the industry where some book ends up being two feature films, but the theatres want something around two hours in length, etc. But this isn't going into any theatres, and I don't want to cut it up and throw off the pacing just to get something, anything out early, because it's not going to be the best way to play it.

But Naughty, surely there'll be more support if you release more often?

Eh, well... you got a point there. In fact, every release usually sees a significant bump in support for the game, and some of the bigger earners out there seem to be on short cycles. So I'm probably not being really smart, financially. But if I'm honest, if it means skimping on content, I don't mind. I never really started this for the money anyways.

So in conclusion, a valid question, but in the end I choose not to compromise on content even if it means longer waits. I'm not sure if that's a satisfying answer, but it's the one I have to give.

So why don't you get some help?

Another interesting notion. The short answer there is: for the moment, the money just isn't there. 

Even if there were, there's a few more snags specifically for this project, that mostly have to do with Light of my Life being very much a product from my mind, and that means few tasks could be outsourced without extensive briefings, instructions and review/rework cycles that would eat up my time and the contractor's, and severely limit the amount of time gained by hiring on extra help. 

It comes back to that old adage that goes something like: if one woman is able to produce a baby in nine months, can two do it in four-and-a-half? And the answer there is obvious.

It might work for a new project, where you start out with a clear division of tasks, with one person doing the writing and another doing the artwork, or maybe they divvy up the characters between them. 

It might also work if the goal is to run this as a start-up, with the end goal of having a game studio of sorts with a dozen or so people working on it. But I don't think I can think of more than one or two VNs out there that generate enough income for something like that. There's others that do it, but they have a different end-game in mind, easing the road while their pay-out will come from a steam release.
But I'm not really interested in going down the track of building a game studio right now; I've got my hands full at actually making this game.  :D

So how will we get it faster then?

At the moment, the answer's not. 

I'm sorry about that, and I fully understand you're fed up with waiting and want something already. 

To be honest, I'm fed up by the long development time as well at this point. By this time, you've had to do endure a lot of waiting, and that's a drag. But all that time you were waiting, I've been putting every available minute I have into this thing, and it is starting to burn a little I must admit. I really, really wish I could wrap it up and push it out already.

But this baby will come out when it's time for it to see the light, and until that time you have my assurance I'm pushing for it to be done as hard as I can without compromising on content, in exchange for just a little more patience.