i wonder if its just 1 person getting the money or if its split between multiple devs plus artists, because if its 5 people than 10k a month isnt a lot
When I was last active here (which was a few years ago), LordArioch was the leader, I think a coder, and one of the writers; Winter and Rein were both writers, and maybe doing coding too?; there were two, mmmmaybe three artists whose names I forget; and there may have been another coder or writer or someone I'm forgetting. Not sure if they've gotten or lost any staff since then.
The problem, as they explained it back then, was that they were all largely new to making a project on this scale and they organized things badly, were overambitious with some of the planned systems, and a handful of other issues required that they go back to essentially redo a lot of what they'd already done, as well as navigate around some of the issues they'd made for themselves that weren't necessarily worth redoing. They also prioritized getting new content out and moving the story forward, which to be fair does mean that they likely had to procrastinate on a lot of the minutiae that they've presumably been working on for the last long, long while. For the most part I find this believable, as I have a little experience with pretty much all the roles involved in a project like this and trying to deal with so many different variables across such a large body of text would indeed be a nightmare if you weren't adequately prepared ahead of time. And it'd be difficult even if you were. I do think the project has dragged on a fair bit even considering that, but I hardly know everything that's been going on behind the scenes, especially since I haven't even been paying attention for like three years.
Theoretically, with the experience gained on this project, a more efficient workflow from a team that has been working together for the better part of a decade, and better preparation, the next two acts could go significantly more smoothly. Theoretically. Practice and theory, of course, often don't line up, but that's something we'll just have to see in the future.