a big part of the complexity in programming (especially game programming) comes from balancing flexibility with speed (both implementation and performance). At some point, decisions are made weighing out risks, priorities and plans that will solidify a part of the code base in favor of speed (or some other factor) at the cost of flexibility.

this happens all the time

A lot of the reasons a solo dev or modder seems like they can progress so fast changing things is they aren’t facing a lot of the same factors and they aren’t needing to go through any rigorous testing.

At some point in the process, there’s too much risk and and overhead involved to make any change. This is totally normal from triple A down to game jams.

And, you can’t ignore that some of these things come down to game design. A change like you’re suggesting, just adding a light, can negatively affect the balance of things even if it seems like it wouldn’t.

6 months doesn’t sound unrealistic for re-doing a menu system. Designing, reworking art, re-programming workflows and then testing everything can take several months. Even just the logistics of releasing it after it’s done, that alone can take a month.

Yes, it is possible to setup everything in a very generic way that is data-driven, but that also is a lot of work that has to be prioritized with the scope of the project and the team members available.

supposed to be basic launch features

isn’t this very subjective and dependent on the game and scale of success?