(although I'd argue that it's way more complex than it may seem, and you only have to take a look under the hood to see the code needed to make everything work smoothly, from preventing potentially colliding events from doing so
It really isn't, coordinating simple requests like "did player do X/Y?" in order to unlock event Z is as basic as it gets, nothing beyond setting up variables, counters and if/else questions.
providing daily updates in a format that has been adopted by many other devs since then due to its transparency and accountability, and they've been in continuous contact with their patrons
Who wouldn't do that for 9k a month? It's really not that demanding to write a little blog post every morning, if it keeps the cashflow up.
your last point is false: paying people do want less frequent updates, given its quality).
This proves my point: They want quality updates, not less frequent updates. More money should usually lead to higher quality updates in a shorter time frame, which leads us to this point:
they work together, they had a baby and they still kept developing the game when an ordinary worker would have taken a leave from their job.
You can't compare them with an ordinary worker. They're business owners. A business owner who makes 9k a month with his business wouldn't take a leave from their job totally, they would hire someone else to do it meanwhile.
So if you get $90.000 from your fans over 10 months and you know that you can't really work because you've got to take care of your baby, you'd simply hire someone for from that 90k.
Also, what help do you think they need? For what? No matter how much you pay her, the only artist won't grow an extra pair of hands and another functional brain to speed up her work.
Hire a programmer who takes care of coding the upcoming events and quests, so the husband can take care of the baby and the mother who seems to be the artist can put more time into making the art.
And again, we're still talking about a text based visual novel with some low-framerate animations. Even if she would manage to make only one animation every two days, that would equal 150 new animations after 10 months.
If they hire an animator, that animator could do the animations once she's done with the basic skeleton pictures (so that the animator can easily use her style and keep it in check), while she can proceed drawing still images for story related content.
There are plenty of ways to juggle things. 9k a month does open up tons of opportunities. As ordinary worker you would also need to balance your work/life balance and find time with your child next to your work, but with a way lower wage and less freedom to organize yourself more efficient.
Generally, nobody is ever "forced" to pay, even if a game is behind a paywall on Patreon. People always pledge because they belive a project is worth it. But that doesn't grant immunity for criticism or suggestions on how to speed up or improve things.
Because in the end it's still that person who set up a Patreon and said "
Hey, please fund our project, so we can make it". Without the funds it would probably not exist anymore at all.
And if they'd invest the money in a clever way to speed up things as suggested above, that would lead to more frequent high quality updates. And
that then would lead to more people funding the project. So it's a win-win situation.
Not everyone is a good business person or knows how to invest their money optimally though. Not everyone is good at managing and planning things.
Maybe they just enjoy a lot of free time and the money and just take their freedom to work slowly without bothering at all about these things.
But our topic was if they could use some help, and the answer is clearly: yes, they could.
