I can't blame em for wanting to pull the plug but this is also an example of why not everyone who has the ability to be a dev should be a dev. It takes more than just skill. It takes patience, tolerance, money and alot more. This dev has the skill but clearly lack everything else and that's why the game wasn't successful.
I fully understand why ending the game so early comes off like "we don't have any patience to let it grow". But it has more to do with our lack of financial stability, than a lack of "patience" or "tolerance".
What I'm about to say next is not necessarily directed towards you. But is rather an attempt at explaining the broader picture for anyone who's thinking we jumped the gun.
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Here is a list of games I worked on in the past two and a half years (after quitting my day job - to pursue writing VNs as a full-time work)
1. Corrupted Island Remake - A large-scale sandbox game I was meant to take over the writing for (starting from 0.2).
However, after around two months of script development and a single update release, the original dev / artist went awol - throwing all my work to dust.
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2. Under the moonlight (First Attempt) - After around a month of pre-production, the artist ghosts me - leaving the project dead before it could even start.
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3. Under the moonlight (Second Attempt) - Over three months of production on a short game to "get our name out there".
Completed the game successfully, but it doesn't garner much of an audience. So, the artist and I had to go our separate ways to try our luck with other partners.
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4. Before You Go - Once again, over two months of production on a short game to "get our name out there". This time, it does fairly well - enough to kickstart a bigger project together.
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5. The Best Days of Our Lives - The biggest project I had ever undertaken, with over seven months of production and a detailed ground work (with a complete story layout) for the next 3 years of development.
The game slowly builds a good number of audience over time.
And then - after we're five full updates into the game - the artist suddenly says he is not "feeling" my writing style any more and wants to change everything - thus, leading to my departure from the project.
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6. Game of Life - Teaming up again with UTM's artist on a larger project. After one month of pre-production and long-term planning (along with a completed 0.1 script), the artist had to stop working due to serious illness. Project never took off.
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7. Accidental Assignment - Over three months of hard work and planning, leading to a poor financial opening. Thus making it extremely difficult for the artist (and me) to boldly invest further time into the project.
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So, while it may seem to you that we're quitting after just two months of effort, there was definitely a lot of (fruitless) patience and hard work that preceded it.
In a way, the poor opening of this game was just the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.
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And despite all that, and barely scraping by for my daily bread, I'm still patient enough to not quit the industry yet.
8. One Night Stand - For the third time, I'm currently working on a short project, just so the artist and I can "get our name out there".
9. Caught in the middle - A passion project I'm currently doing all by myself, because
I'm bloody tired of being let down every time - by random circumstances out of my control.
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And I'm pretty sure JPace's journey will sound just as exhausting as mine (if not, even worse.)
So, I can GUARANTEE our audience that - our decision to end the game early was not made out of mere impatience, but due to a loss of morale after a long struggle in the visual novel scene.
