I think it's useful to keep the totality of the AVG marketplace in mind. JOHN's issues are bad enough when looked at in a vacuum, but we see the same issues with other devs. The illnesses, moving, hardware difficulties, vacations, etc; none of these are "bad" excuses, and all of them are defensible...but a pattern begins to emerge. It doesn't matter if it's Stoper or L&P or Icstor (or countless other devs), if you pay enough attention you begin to see the same red flags. For each individual case it's impossible to definitively prove that someone is lying or exaggerating, but taken collectively their reasons for delays all become cliches. Overly ambitious games, with slow-burn pacing, have a bad reputation for devs that come down with mysterious illnesses, or move constantly, or travel the world, or have hardware problems. So I kinda view the frustration in this thread as broadly aimed beyond just Stoper. Yes, this thread is for his game, so he catches the brunt of the frustration, but if people didn't feel like they were seeing this same song and dance in other games I don't think the frustration would be so visceral.
And
palmtrees89 makes an excellent point. Too many of the dev blogs tell us about how great the progress is, only for it to be undermined later when he delays the product. And then, when the update is released, it doesn't jive with the months of "good progress" that we've heard about. For a time I think we all assumed he just worked in fits and starts, so progress was made in bursts and then there was a prolonged downtime. But for the last 2 years development has been so slow, and enough inconsistencies have emerged, that many of us suspect that months go by without any work being done; only for a fit of work to be accomplished in the last 30 days before release. It's just the sort of inconsistency that really grinds people's gears.
I'm not angry about any of this. To me the game is simply dying and won't make it through 2024. That's ok, there's plenty of other things to do. But I do think the meta discussion surrounding the development
is interesting and enlightening. The game itself is good and interesting enough to grab your attention, but you really have to stick around for the meta conversation. I personally just find it really fascinating to watch the development progression of games like this because it all seems so mysterious.
