As much as it sounds logical and smooth, I still think that:
1. Development time can't increase more and more with each new episode.
2. Episodes sizes can't increase infinite or so significant to cause or be the reason to increase development time each time.
3. Memes about 5-6+ years (or even more) to complete the game are became boring already. It took him 2 years to shoot the first 2 seasons. Then it took him the same time to shoot the 2 episodes and Interlude. 65% of Season 3 to be precise. Any dev cycles scaling at the same pace sounds ridiculous and unrealistic. The worst thing could happen - release times will stick to 11-12 months till the end. But there're a lot of reasons for this time to decrease as well. Even 9 months cycles will cut about 1-1.5 years from those calculations.
4. Until complicated phases of EP9&10 development the only reason to increase dev time was the episodes size itself. But nobody complained till the development time of Interlude and EP9. It all started at that time. And now a lot of people can't shake it off and expect it to be the same or even worse just because they expect it and suppose it would be this.
So far it feels like the episodes haven't reached their growth limit yet - we now have dedicated time for each MG from Ep.9 (which was not the case in the first two seasons), so the growth limit has been reached here, but:
1. We also have the Side Girls block, which is still in active development, their lines are gradually becoming more pronounced and will develop further. Riona, Quinn, Lily, Nicole, Zoey will most likely receive full-fledged routes with a set of content. So it's more content for episodes.
2. DPC likes to come up with new things, not always successful. Long animations are his innovation. Animations in DAZ simply rape the PC and take a very long time to complete. Moreover, it’s a strange decision to make animations at 60 FPS so that the hardware doesn’t sit idle.
3. He love new mini-games and big free roams, I love interactivity, but it also increases development time. These open world renders, especially the party ones, require a lot of preparation time.
4. Plus, potential content with girls that MC's magic stick has so far bypassed.
Sally, Elena, girls from the dorm.
If there is potential for growth, DPC will most likely take advantage of it. I certainly don’t think that time will increase exponentially, but by the end of the game’s development it could reach 1.5 years, maybe even a little more.
Season 2 received a full release at the end of 2021, now we are unknown at what stage of Ep.11 development and are in April 2024, 2 years and 4 months. Season 3 may well take a full 4 years of development, this is quite possible.
That's a little cold shower from me. But we'll see how it goes; indeed, not all episodes were longer in development than the previous ones.