Their project is becoming more and more ambitious, their support is getting bigger and bigger, the game's community is growing and growing. I think Koda understands that it might be time to start acting professionally, maybe that's why he's been trying to give explanations for the delays, but you can't just stop explaining all of a sudden, that will make people think that you can't give an explanation because the explanation would be "I forgot about X / I didn't prepare Y / I procrastinated doing Z".
People go on and on about the increasing QUALITY of the game, you'd think that they'd also hold the devs to higher standards, but not that many seem to care.
True, but that would be a good thing. If Koda had to apologize for every delay then he would try harder to avoid them in the future, because he would realize how shallow those apologies would start sounding.
I really agree with most of these points. Koda and Bo keep talking about wanting to get better, but without some level of self discipline, goal definition, and time limits they're never going to put themselves in an environment to really learn more than the basics about design, product development, and programming.
This is in addition to the benefit regular updates, communication, and full releases could have on their business venture, which is what they are holding themselves out to be even if they don't necessarily consider it that themselves.
To give some background I have some level of experience with software development; although it was a business environment, and not a game, but a lot of the core needs are the same. I was a Product Owner for an Agile Team, and I held that role in addition to being a one man dev team attached to a core operational division.
For reference Agile is a system built around 2 week increments called sprints in which projects are broken up to smaller items that can be completed in that timeframe. This is instead of using the waterfall system that some may be familiar with where all the requirements for a project were set up before the creation of the code.
The major benefit of this system isn't even to the business. It's to the developers. Because they have such a small increment of time to take projects on they have accurately but quickly asses what is needed for a finished item, what is wanted, and what should not be in it. Then they can piecemeal out these projects, and work on them individually, moving from item to item however they need to.
Because they define in broad but simple terms what they need, what it is connected to, and the overall goal of their project their efficiency and takeaway knowledge increases.
Structured learning is almost always better than unstructured. And the only thing that can impose structure in this type of situation is a time limit. This is industry standard. It works. It isn't a matter of whether or not they should be considered pros, in my opinion, but of why they should aim to emulate successful practices that are easily found, implemented, and explained.
And I really wish Bo and Koda would hold themselves to a higher standard, not because I care about their game all that much (it's occasionally interesting, but not really my speed), but because they seem to be sincerely excited about their craft and have some level of talent for it. It's really a shame to see that enthusiasm be squandered by objectively poor practices.