Two things
naughtyroad ..
1. If you aren't making a living out of this, then why not hire some help so the updates are not year long.. I mean, it's way too long of a time to wait for an update. (I know the reason you aren't to be honest, but I said "What the heck, let's post it anyway)
2. Maybe limit the content with the rest of the cast and focus more on the main characters ? Just a thought..
Otherwise this is by far one of the best games in this forum. Great work.
1. There's quite a few reasons why that's not only unfeasible, but makes no sense even.
For one, from a work perspective:
Hiring on another person won't double development speed, as I'd need to train and coach them in my work methods, plan, specify and communicate what they should work on, verify their work and issue rework, and process their output. And there's some jobs that just can't be offloaded (at least, not while keeping it the LomL it is today). Also, a lot of the extra work that comes in is taking me away from what I love doing, which is making LomL.
I've written more extensively about the above before if you're interested in more details, but you'll have to do some digging in the thread.
Nr two, from a business perspective:
It does not seem likely that hiring on another person will increase revenue to a point where it justifies the cost of hiring on another person. When I did the math end of last year, net income from support is a little shy of Western Europe minimum wage, on an hourly basis (given I spend about 50 hrs a week on Light of my Life, and after VAT and every platform, payment provider and the tax man takes their bite).
I don't see that income doubling from shaving a couple of months off of a 10/11 month development period. In fact, it seems support has reached a natural limit and after the boost following the last release, right now it's already back at almost exactly the same level it was this time last year.
On a little side tangent, that's one reason why short releases cycles with little or no new content is a much better business practice, as it allows a dev team to keep kicking that line up before the effects of the last release wear off. It's also exactly how I don't want to make Light of my Life.
But coming back to what I was saying: what you're suggesting is sinking that income into what'll end up (after taxes and VAT) to be a little shy of half of a Western European minimum wage for someone else. Mind you, that leaves 0 income for me, without any less work for me. And the only gain from that seems to be "it's still to long to develop, just a little less too long".
I mean, I don't do this to get rich (or I'd just moonlight my other job and make a killing), but that just doesn't make sense, whichever way you turn it.
Finally, I've heard people say "it's too long", but then again, for movies or series a year or two between drops is quite normal, and they have crews of hundreds. I appreciate people are eager, but I'm not about to throw quality out of the door to satisfy this demand for quantity, so any development time will be "just long enough to get it right", and y'all just need to redefine your expectations to match.
2. The side cast is very important for pacing (entire chapters would have been left without any lewd content to speak of), comedic relief (the coven) and as an antagonist to drive some dramatic developments (Brooke). Cutting that content out would make Light of my Life a less complete and balanced experience IMHO, so that's not going to happen.
