This response gives a clear picture of DPC's mentality. As anyone could have hypothesised, he is developing this game for no one else's sake, other than his own. This is his life's work, and he wants it to be perfect, down to the tiniest of details. That is why he will happily increase the quality of renders, the length and quality of animations, as well as include more characters, free roam events and mini-games. In his mind, this makes the game more perfect, and he could not care less if it means the player will only get to play one episode per year.
He is refusing to make any sort of compromises that could benefit the development cycles. To avoid needing to compromise, he defends himself with arguments that don't make sense, and are contradictory to other statements he has made. For example, he says shorter update times would inevitably mean cutting content and deviating from what he has planned. This clearly is not true: he has repeatedly stated that he is increasing the quality of both the renders and the animations, as well as writing code that is increasingly complex. Could he not, then, settle for an appropriate level of quality in order to avoid longer rendering times? Could he not choose to make less elaborate minigames that are less taxing from a programming standpoint? Of course he could, but he does not want to, because he is developing the game for himself.
Additionally, he states that the episodes are planned long in advance, and that his hands are therefore tied. He simply cannot reduce the size, because it has already been determined. This is also a lie. DPC said he planned for Episode 9 to be smaller than Episode 8, yet that did not happen. This proves that his plans are not set in stone, and that he adds elements that weren't planned, or else he would never have been able to say that the episode was going the be smaller in the first place. Could he not choose to not include all of the extra, unplanned content he evidently decides to include? Of course he could, but again, he is developing the game for himself.
It is a fact at this point that DPC is adding content that doesn't matter to the overall impression of the game. Madame must be the most obvious example of this. She is there for one reason, and one reason only, which is to provide an opportunity for lewd scenes. More lewd scenes, in a game that already has 15 other more interesting characters to choose from, and which is already packed with lewd content. To say that this is unnecessary is an understatement - it is a complete waste of time. Yet still, plenty of rendering capacity has been dedicated to her. By no means is Madame the only example either, the game is riddled with a whole range of "nice-to-haves", that aren't crucial for your experience. D&G, the mansion mini-game, characters such as Becky, Nora and Sandy, and improvements to a render and animation quality that was already stellar, are factors I would easily place into the "nice-to-have" category. This could have been done differently, but once more, he is developing the game for himself.
Should DPC compromise on his vision? I think he should. It's a nice argument in theory that Patreon is just a platform for people to make goodwill donations to support the work of creators, but this just isn't true in practice. When you make the game a reward for pledging, you are essentially selling a product, and your patrons become your customers. At that point, I feel like you should factor in how long you are taking to produce the product in question. I expect nothing to change, though, because patrons are some of the most uncritical individuals I have ever come across. They will accept just about anything, regardless of whether the creator is trustworthy or not. This is also why DPC can make claims such as "my recommendation would be to stop supporting me", because he knows that he has a massive audience of people who will mindlessly praise anything he puts out. The statement makes him seem grounded, but I doubt he would be so dismissive of criticism if he didn't have such a huge backing of patrons who have no expectations whatsoever.
It truly is extremely unfortunate that the development is heading in this direction. Without a shadow of a doubt, Being a DIK is the best AVN out there, but we will soon reach a point where we only get to enjoy it once per year, and will need to remain committed for another ten years to see its completion. That just isn't reasonable. If DPC told you after Episode 1 that the game is likely going to take 14 years to finish, I don't think your reaction would have been "sounds good", so I don't see why that should be acceptable now.
I guess you can still hope that, even though DPC says he will not change, he still got himself some food-for-thought that could subconciously affect the time between updates. I still wouldn't expect it, though, because he is developing the game for himself, and has a tremendous number of supporters that have no problem with that.
She just needs to get rid of Quinn's influence.
