after the long wait, personally unrewarded, for the ninth chapter this in my opinion is almost a zero point. a lot has changed so everything is really possible.
DPC, on the subject of timing, always gives foggy and often political answers: on the one hand it says that it does not want to rush the timing so as not to damage the quality of the product (which is the phrase that any craftsman would tell you, even the painter who comes to paint your house, but that in practical terms means nothing), on the other hand it continues to proclaim himself enthusiastic about the speed of his new machines.
Craftsman/painter, if he really good and skilled will warn you and give you an estimate. Like, you may ask to speed up the process, but the cons could be a lower quality. Like, something won't dry out there and there will be stains, something will come off here, because we started painting until the glue caught, etc. Comparing it to the game it would be a bunch of bugs in their worst form, like when you can't progress, game crashes, whatever else. He will have to fix it and spend some time, and you - as player have to wait for each fix too.
The only alternative to quality degradation due to increased development speed and the complete opposite at the same time is to limit & reduce the size of each new episode. But is it worth it? Yes, we get a piece of new content faster, but given the current branching of the game, it will be a 2-hour run for each individual branch, although for the 9th episode it was 4-5h. Also a dubious way, you will have to increase the number of episodes and seasons. And despite the faster release of each episode, some time is spent on the release side tasks anyway, let it be 2 weeks on average (testing, compilation, uploading, etc.). Anyway it's a useless speculations, because DPC already rejected following such way as well.
Then if in mid-August DPC decides to spend 2-3 weeks making a fantastic animation of a leaky faucet, in those 2-3 weeks he would earn the same money he is earning now, so this too is possible, unfortunately.
I suppose he don't think about such tricks to get money exactly. He got very well income already and we are in several years from final episode. Also I don't expect that he want to literally "die" or "burn out" while he making the game. Because following this logic may take him to the point when he just don't want to do anything more. So, I would trust him in a way which he described it, that sometimes he become "too creative" and want to unexpectedly implement something at the last moment of time.
