Understandable, but I think you're looking at it the wrong way. While it was originally planned to be combined into one game, that plan was shelved a long time ago, and one of the reasons was that it became obvious each chapter was going to be larger than expected. It isn't five slices of one game, it's five GAMES in a series. According to at least one person working their way through the new material, total playtime for everything in GT was six and a half hours. That may be a little high, since he's methodical, but at least four is probably a safe bet. That said, if you want to wait 4+ years for the last chapter to come out and be bundled, you certainly can. But I'm definitely not delving into any pre-order territory: that stuff is a contract with satan.
there's no real perfect solution it seem, I'm not opposite to get each chapter for 10 dollars nor get every chapter bundled inside a 60 dollar pack
I just feel a lot less likely to get half a chapter for 10 and wait that to be updated
if my words even make any sense at this point, I just prefer a fully finished game / chapter before sinking the money
as it stands, I'd be ok to pre-order chapter 3 as soon as GT is concidered finished
had the other, like carpetwurm was doing, he sloppy up an ending in the first game before staring a second, and was barely halfway toward that game and already planning a 3rd game, (not to mention a number of unfinished comics on his FA)
so I would much prefer this aproach
Different people have different price points they're comfortable with, and if this isn't yours, that's certainly alright.
That said, I don't think it's entirely accurate to characterize GT on release as "half a game." A lot of early access games on release are VERY incomplete, with major mechanics, assets, story stuff and so on missing, severe bugs, and so on. GT on the other hand was a fully-functional game. You could play it all the way through, all the necessary mechanics were there, as well as most of the story, and bugs were minimal. Yes, there were extra scenes hinted at that weren't there yet, but the game was perfectly enjoyable in its original state. It's not a perfect divide either way, since with this first pack especially there were a few scenes and narrative bits that were needed overall, since the full corruption route is part of the story, but I see these packs as leaning more toward DLC or expansion packs than missing chunks of the original game. If I hadn't left those narrative hints in the initial release that there was going to be more stuff, most people wouldn't have even noticed.
In general, it's important to me to only charge for stuff as it exists, which is why I've settled on this structure. I definitely don't want to get in the habit of taking people's money before a game exists (outside of Substar, but that's a different situation). The "ideal" solution would be getting a massive loan from some absurdly wealthy friend, spending 2 years making each game to completion, and then releasing it. This is how medium-sized games were traditionally made (just replace "friend" with "investor" and replace loan with getting a cut of the action). But barring that, I have do things in chunks, as the funding works out. That said, it's been working fairly well so far, and hopefully will continue to.
that's in-fact, exactly what I was trying to say, I would prefer to buy all chapters all at once, but truth be told, I personally would be a lot more inclined to buy GT on a whim if chapter 3 already exist even as "half a game" as opposite to buying GT by itself, like you said, it may take 4 years to get to the next chapter or 10 years for the full series;
I would be slightly disappointed if I found a secret hinting towards a third game if I played right now, but would be rather giddy to see the same secret with the knowledge the chapter 3 can be bought
hell, if you look at my own comments you'll see I was pretty bored on my first playthrough and didn't even bothered to get to the second area, but between the second and third post I did down there I was alot more engaged with the story and gameplay, it just so happened I found about GT somewhere in that time frame,
don't get me wrong, I'm eager to play GT as soon as I just have some money for splurging, but I wasn't even compelled to finished CS before stumbling across GT
Oh having more games in the lineup absolutely helps get people excited, which is one of the reasons I'm doing a series rather than several unrelated games. But, I can only make these so fast :D.
Again though, I'm glad you're enjoying what you've played so far. Buy the rest at a pace, and price, that makes sense for you. But for now at least, I'm probably going to stick to roughly the same release structure.