Right, some rambling responses to some of the above. Apologies in advance for the bits I go off the rails a bit.
That's honestly probably one of the bigger reasons. The last three releases have seen the development time for each grow significantly, to the point for chapter 7 it was exceptionally long (more than 18 months). I would imagine it's hard to maintain momentum and fan base enthusiasm under those conditions.
And there is a good reason for that too, and it is mainly because in the last three releases, measured in content, dwarf the preceding chapters.
Chapters 1-4 contained ~3,800 images.
Chapter 5 adds ~3,100, bringing it to ~6,900 (doubling everything that came before)
Chapter 6 adds ~5,700, bringing it to ~12,600 (almost doubling everything that came before again)
Chapter 7 adds ~10,100, bringing it to ~23,700 (almost doubling everything that came before again)
The main reason for this explosion is that people started to have actual sex. Whereas chapters 1-3 still teased how the MC was blue-balled, and from chapter 3 on some smaller sex scenes were added, once we got into some serious business with the main love interests, as well as having to up the stakes with the existing ones, the effort just exponentially increased.
And while seems reasonable that development time will have some impact in momentum and fan base enthusiasm, I propose that the alternative of not having sex with love interests, or have them reduced in scope to about half a dozen stills also doesn't help to create fans.
(...)
This is one of the best games on this platform and Updates have been very sizable and high quality, but I think not cutting it into smaller chunks has really been detrimantal for you. (...)
You make a few good points, but I want to zoom in on this one and the next one in particular.
One of the things that sets Light of my Life apart is that it releases large chunks of content at a time, that can be enjoyed as a whole, and have an arch that can be appreciated in a way that you can't if it's released piecemeal in little chunks and parts,. Many of which would hardly have any sexual content, mind.
That's a release model that works for a fun fuck-fest, and there's plenty of those that are an absolute blast. It's just not what Light of my Life is.
I'm the first one to admit that maybe I'm a bit of an stubborn idiot in this regard, and I have a poor business sense. Or rather, that I don't really put much value in the business side of the process.
But I'm also not a great believer in giving people what they want in general, because frankly l don't think people have the faintest idea what they want, and what they say they want will turn out to be something they don't much care for if they actually get it.
Instead, I try giving people what I feel is as good a thing as I can make it, and I hope that people will say "I really wanted that" once they get it.
So the short of it is that either Light of my Life is released in large chunks that deliver an experience that I think is good, or not at all. Because I'm convinced that if I just give them a month of work (or two, or three) at a time, it may be what they say they want, but it'll turn them off of the whole thing pretty fast.
(...) Why would anyone pay a monthly fee for Patreon, when they could just wait for the update to come out and then subscribe?
I hope the answer is "because they want to see this game being made", and for a small fraction of players (♥), it actually is. It's not really a transactional thing, but an abstract notion about supporting the development so one day, in a pretty intangible process, there'll be more game, for everyone, even those that didn't pay.
Sure enough, that is a hard concept to convey, and conversion rates from players to supporters are absolutely as atrocious as you'd expect at the best of times. But it's really the only way to have something like this be made, the alternative being the old-school model of small studios searching for investors who are in it for the ROI.
. Sad news but I can understand, with support declining. release schedule is way too long for a avn . Almost 5 years in development with no active promotion ,it's hard to keep the intrest up I guess.
