In general, on principle, most of the time, no.
Hey, this kind of follows from the earlier question about entering games in competitions! When I release a game outside of a competition, there’s no deadline telling me when the game has to be done. I decide when to release it, and that means I have to make a call as to whether it’s good enough to be released. On that day, by my standards at that time, the game is finished—and in every single case, I know that this “finished,” “good enough” game must contain some problems or omissions or bugs, because of course it does. There will always be more bugs. That’s reason number one.
Reason number two is: Those problems, omissions, bugs, etc. are part of the work. The omissions speak to my priorities during the writing process. The bugs represent my level of skill at the time. All the elements of the work contribute to its meaning, even if they detract from its quality, and by fixing those problems I would be chipping away at the original Thing I Made, in a way that feels disrespectful or distrustful of the guy who made that thing.
Reason number three has to do with how much value you and I and the world get out of the time and effort it takes to update games. It’s hard to say. But I’m pretty sure we all get a lot more value out of time and effort spent on making fun new games. Take Reference and Representation, and imagine the timeline where I never made that game because I was busy updating other games. How many fixed bugs would be worth it?
On this last episode of Type-Ins I found a couple of continuity errors between that game and the larger Little Match Girl universe. I am a huge nerd about this continuity, and those errors rankle me mightily, even at this very moment. It wouldn’t take long to go in and fix them—but that way lies madness. I have cooler stuff I should be doing.
I don’t feel beholden to these principles when I’m updating a game for larger reasons. When I make a Little Match Girl game for my Patreoneers, I’m able to pretend that I’m writing for an invested audience who knows the series; when I get the same game ready for public release, I have to consider a wider audience, plus I have a chance to pretty it up and fix the music and the continuity errors. Visit Skuga Lake - Masterpiece Edition has some amendments and additions, but I didn’t put it together because the original game needed to be fixed—I put it together because the original Visit Skuga Lake was already a masterpiece and I just wanted more people to play it
why are you reading this instead of playing Visit Skuga Lake
Thank you for your question.