For sure, the dorm stuff isn't a necessity, and it does add on an extra couple hours to each update's development time...but it's fun fluff
More seriously addressing the difference in potential workload though (since I have some context of actual numbers that you may not have), writing the ~30 dorm mini-events per semester is like adding on the equivalent of maybe ~10 extra full events' worth of work per chapter. Compare that to writing variations on most of the events depending on who you're dating and...well, per chapter, it quickly becomes hundreds and hundreds of variations because of the scaling of having so many characters and needing unique interactions during main events pursuant to who you're dating at the time. For example, the next update has 15 events, and writing even just two versions of each individual character event (one for a romance path, one for non) and writing variations for the main events according to all the potential people you could be seeing, it would be roughly doubling the amount of work in that update (more concentrated in main events since there would be more variations in those than individual character events). Writing additional variations of an event doesn't take as long as writing a normal event itself, but each variation would still be more work than a dorm mini, for example.
If I was making a game with like 3-5 characters, it would be more feasible to keep up with that, but as it stands, I'm just not interested in investing the time it would take for the return in actual gameplay for players. The dorm stuff adds a couple hours per update cycle, while having unique paths for dating each character/dating groups of characters would add tens of hours per update-cycle of work for a pretty slim return on investment, IMO. I have a huge amount of respect for devs who write games like that, because it's a shitton of work for most players to not even notice how much you're doing behind the scenes if it's done well (Being a DIK has a couple different paths you can play through with totally unique interactions and it's super well done - would recommend if you haven't tried it to get a feel for how it can be done well and also how much work goes into it).
The extra character models, unlike the dorm mini-events, do add a fair bit of extra work tbh. But that felt more important to invest the time into, since the number of games that allow you to play as an MC that isn't a dude is shockingly small. I would love to offer more MC character models to choose from, honestly, but I'm capping myself to having four (male, female, and NB with either genitals) moving forwards to keep development cycles reasonably short. I could just keep adding stuff on per update, but it'd mean this would become one of those games where you get an update like twice a year lol. And while I understand why that happens to a lot of devs, I'd prefer it doesn't happen to By Another Name.
