Blackout,
Thank you for the compliments and support.
Your statements are completely valid.
Regarding the estimated development time of 18 months, that's a best case scenario whereupon none to few major obstacles are encountered. It's also relative to the size of the development and efficiency of the development team and project leaders. For example, if we double the number of developers, it should (in theory), reduce the development time by half. In actuality though, as size increases, efficiency decreases. So the actual increase in productivity may be 180%, instead of 200%. Still, that just reduced the development time by roughly 80% (if my arithmetic is correct).
I would guess that the principal reason CoT, H&V, and VO have yet to complete their associated projects is simply lack of resources. Given enough time, and surely they'll complete their projects. The problem therein becomes a matter of time. I would say that ideally, you don't want to spend more than 3 years in the pre-release development phase. Because then the user base (and even development members) move on to something else.
Our plan is to obtain no less than a fraction of the capital required (approximately 1/8th, roughly $400K), so we can continue development for 9 months, resulting in a functional game prototype that we allow us to secure the remaining capital.
I hope I managed to address some of your concerns.
Regards.