This is a question I've thought about a fair bit myself and I don't think there is a clear answer because it depends on a variety of factors.
First, how much money are they pulling in? A dev making enough from their game to do it full time I expect larger and faster updates and honestly this is often not the case especially with some devs with a massive amount of support who genuinely seem to be milking their patrons. A smaller dev I expect them to be working on the game part time and I have more lax expectations from them.
Secondly, there are some games I'm invested in where I'm willing to wait longer for a great update but it kinda depends on how difficult I believe it is to add content to the game. A renpy VN is easier to make content for than UE4, I don't think most people would argue with that. VN's in general usually lack gameplay elements and would be even faster to make so it comes back to whether or not I think this dev is trying to milk their supporters, especially when I see 5+ months between updates for these games.
Third, is the art 3dcg or 2d drawn. Drawn art takes way longer to make and sadly I think 2d art games are slowly falling off in terms of popularity because they can't keep up with the demand in a lot of cases and thus have slower and smaller updates than 3dcg games which are considerably easier to produce art for.
One more thing I want to add when it comes to small teams (3-4 people roughly). Generally, these teams split responsibilities along the lines of their expertise, the programmers code, the writers write and the artists make art. I think in many cases for teams like this (not all) at least one person drags their feet, or simply isn't able to keep up. And whatever leadership these groups have are unable or unwilling to make difficult decisions for the team (like firing someone) because they aren't experienced in managing people or worse yet, everyone is an equal partner and there isn't a leadership structure. As an outside person I can only speculate, but I think this is what is happening in both Summertime Saga (Darkcookie) and Wildlife (Adeptussteve) developments. Both games have a huge following and at least Summertime Saga is actually pretty good, but dev times are insanely long with very little content in each update which can probably be chalked up to inexperienced leadership.
This gets worse if your 2d artist suddenly has real life obligations and can't devote much time to development when your game is a year or more into development and half way done. Do you slow down significantly to accommodate this person or do you replace them? Can you even replace them? Your game has had a specific art style for most of development, all of your followers like this style of art. Is this person even possible to replace in this case? It gets muddy, quickly.
If I had to put a direct number on it, 1-3 months is ideal, anything less and it probably doesn't have too much new content and anything more and I'm wondering what the dev is doing with their time.
First, how much money are they pulling in? A dev making enough from their game to do it full time I expect larger and faster updates and honestly this is often not the case especially with some devs with a massive amount of support who genuinely seem to be milking their patrons. A smaller dev I expect them to be working on the game part time and I have more lax expectations from them.
Secondly, there are some games I'm invested in where I'm willing to wait longer for a great update but it kinda depends on how difficult I believe it is to add content to the game. A renpy VN is easier to make content for than UE4, I don't think most people would argue with that. VN's in general usually lack gameplay elements and would be even faster to make so it comes back to whether or not I think this dev is trying to milk their supporters, especially when I see 5+ months between updates for these games.
Third, is the art 3dcg or 2d drawn. Drawn art takes way longer to make and sadly I think 2d art games are slowly falling off in terms of popularity because they can't keep up with the demand in a lot of cases and thus have slower and smaller updates than 3dcg games which are considerably easier to produce art for.
One more thing I want to add when it comes to small teams (3-4 people roughly). Generally, these teams split responsibilities along the lines of their expertise, the programmers code, the writers write and the artists make art. I think in many cases for teams like this (not all) at least one person drags their feet, or simply isn't able to keep up. And whatever leadership these groups have are unable or unwilling to make difficult decisions for the team (like firing someone) because they aren't experienced in managing people or worse yet, everyone is an equal partner and there isn't a leadership structure. As an outside person I can only speculate, but I think this is what is happening in both Summertime Saga (Darkcookie) and Wildlife (Adeptussteve) developments. Both games have a huge following and at least Summertime Saga is actually pretty good, but dev times are insanely long with very little content in each update which can probably be chalked up to inexperienced leadership.
This gets worse if your 2d artist suddenly has real life obligations and can't devote much time to development when your game is a year or more into development and half way done. Do you slow down significantly to accommodate this person or do you replace them? Can you even replace them? Your game has had a specific art style for most of development, all of your followers like this style of art. Is this person even possible to replace in this case? It gets muddy, quickly.
If I had to put a direct number on it, 1-3 months is ideal, anything less and it probably doesn't have too much new content and anything more and I'm wondering what the dev is doing with their time.
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