He should've just decided the best development path was to only create VN mode and screw that other nonsense.
Hopes was actually very much surprised at many other people actually liked that "other nonsense" you were referring to and were complaining about his intention to scrap that.
So while initially he thought of scrapping the sandbox gameplay, he changed his mind and decided to stick with it.
This is capitalism... "someone somewhere out there" ( An American Tail, lol, that's for old timers like me) is able to provide and listen to exactly what Hopes wants. Provided that person is compensated to their likes.
lol but that's not how optimal development works.
All collaboration works between a writer and render artist because of following very likely conditions/scenarios;
- the writer just sticks to the writing and with the rendering it's left entirely to the artist's freedom.
- the writer and artist know each other's vision and worked together in other projects before (thus knowing each other what their style is).
- the writer and artist collab right from the start of the game.
Hopes just doing the writing while ordering the artist would basically be equivalent to well..... "back-seat driving" of development (aka "back-seat-deving" lol).
Noone likes a backseat driver, and I seen cases where devs tried to do that and it just didn't work because artists tend to want freedom of creating thing how they wish to, and not be ordered around.
Again, capitalism. The chances of a skilled "renderer" starting from fresh and taking the gamble of hitting it big is very slim. How many of these games are started from skilled people and end up with nada? I'm sure there are plenty of skilled graphical artist that would love to work on an already VERY popular game as long as they get paid the appropriate amount.
It's not always about hitting it big lol.
All the current artists who are active in several well known or popular AVNs started from small scale and eventually went up.
And they do so cause they have the passion, while having the freedom to create renders in how they wish to create them; not like hitting it big in short span like some "get rich quick" scheme.
Besides if you think this game being popular means Hopes would be willing to pay the money to an artist, a stranger at that, to do "back-seat-deving" (lol), then hate to break it to ya, but likelihood of that happening I'd say is slim to none.
Despite his game's decent Steam success, even if he combined his Steam sales and his Patreon income, I highly doubt it would be enough to hire an artist to do everything to his bidding and still come off as quite profitable for Hopes himself.
That would be possible to consider for top earning devs (for e.g. DPC. Even though my opinion for BADiK really isn't high, can't dispute he's one of the highest earning devs in the AVN-sphere), but not for Hopes.
