...
Personally I'm willing to wait. ICSTOR deserves a break. But he also needs to be more clear.
If he came out and said "The game will be updated by May 2020" then half the annoying complaints and probably all the repetitive posts in here will disappear. People just need some clarity.
Of course there are others who will still bitch and moan no matter what and there will always be others who will defend him even if he spits in their faces. But hey it seems that's how it usually goes around here.
As I have posted here before, without the coverage of a larger group, smaller teams and individual devs will have their pauses - for whatever reason - made fully public by the fact that they cannot show constructive status while they take a step back to recover, vacation or whatever.
I easily agree that Devs should endeavour to communicate as effectively as possible to their supporters, lest they flirt with losing business funding (for periods of time, at least).
Many adult VN Devs seem to work towards a milestone deliverable. How you get there is your project management style, essentially: you can deliver in smaller increments to the goal of a chapter/version (in usually less time per increment) on a regular schedule or not, and you can deliver the larger milestone on a regular schedule or not. Typically, you'll see:
smaller increments = more frequent deliverables, often on a semi-regular schedule
full milestones = less frequent deliverables, often on a when-it's-done schedule
Given the above, the example of Dr. Amana: Sexual Therapist is that they initially started with the smaller increments/more frequent deliverables approach, but have since decided to refactor the entire game and deliver a full milestone approach (it appears) after a much longer time than they used to pump out updates. But, their communication and community engagement has been very good the entire time and I feel that's helped continue lots of goodwill with the supporters while we're waiting on the next, major installment. Part of the code refactor investment was hoping that it would enable future updates to go back to being easier to pump out, with generally more flexible options and more features for the players. Nobody will know how real that will be until the big deliverable hits, but communications at this site, on Patreon and in Discord has been keeping us all expectant and positive, from what I've seen.
On the other end, you've got games such as The Red Room where the early, single deliverable hasn't been followed up in many months, with minimal communication from the Dev (who has admitted to being over their head) that has a history of abandoning at least one other game. They have offered potential dates for next updates at least a few times now - the latest being this month - and thus far all of them have passed by without much of a whimper. Recently they offered a real-life (i.e., school) explanation for not having much time to work on the game and have turned off Patreon monthly billing, but no communications that I'm aware of helped telegraph that coming blocker to their paying supporters since last October. Understandably, they are being thrashed not a little bit in the F95 topic dedicated to that game.
Yet another different example is MrDots: they tell you that a new installment is coming out for one of their two games at the end of each month and ALWAYS deliver. It appears that they have become very good at fitting in only what will make it through their pipeline for a monthly schedule, letting what doesn't fit fall into the next installment. Their communications is minimal, but it's usually crisp, timely and effective - plus, their reliable deliverables speak loudly for the team. EVEN SO, when they announced taking a single month holiday for last January, the sudden howls of laziness, bad expectations-setting, poor delivery schedule, etc. were let loose and anyone trying to explain how unreasonable those claims+demands sounded were labelled fanboys and worse, of course. Et tu, Brute?
Summary: independent, small team/individual adult game Devs can easily have an uphill road to climb for keeping people happy, even when they are established talents with impressive backlogs of work.
Looking at ICSTOR, his communications have usually been 1-3 times a month at most and he's taken the "deliver a full milestone in each release" approach from what I can discern. Along with that approach, he has not provided clear schedules for delivery, but instead given clues on progress for the next installment. To assert that he needs to put out an expected date flies in the face of his established workflow and seems more a reaction to his recent slowdown + need for recovery than anything else, honestly. I wouldn't want to demand he put himself in the position of being the Dev of "The Red Room" and constantly miss hinted dates, only to become even more sparse in communications from a likely combination of embarassment and proactive defensiveness.
It seems entirely valid for paying supporters to see if ICSTOR's return equates to seeing his status report moving forward in a reasonable amount of time after starting up again, then wondering if they still feel confident in the Dev's continuation of this particular game. Being someone with work-impacting health issues, I'm admittedly empathetic to ICSTOR's reason for their current break away from the game.
It doesn't seem entirely valid to ask them for changing their workflow, IMHO. Asking for more communications seems fair, though.
Disclaimer: I'm not a paying customer for this game and have no other personal interest at stake. If I'm labelled an apologist or fanboy, I really don't care - my opinions here and the context behind them are as open as I can make them.
