Purpose.

Why am I spending thousands out of my own pocket to make a commercial downloadable PC game in a niche market?  Though I am doing my best, it isn't guaranteed that the final product will be flawless.
In fact, it might not even be 1/1,000 the grand idea that is residing in my head (or was, before cost-cutting came into play).  I can only hope that it won't suck, and am prepared to enlist dozens of beta-testers to ensure that.

I am not even sure if I can make a viable living out of this, and that was not the original purpose.  Truth be told, I dislike business stuff.  Managing cashflow, customer support -- those are stressful things which I've had the luck to perform in real-life work.  I am approaching making games from the "artistic" standpoint rather than the business standpoint.  Indeed, take one look at the news and any sane individual who wants quick cash will not want to hop into the games industry at all.

Despite being an "artistic" work, I would also want my game to be entertaining, so people who try it (and hopefully buy it) will appreciate the effort put into it. It should be a good game, as games go, without my needing to explain "Oh stupid player, you should have understood my brilliance in wanting to do it that [obnoxiously unintuitive] way!"  I'm already stating now that the demo will be a small separate campaign from the main game... that's how much I would want people to at least try what I will offer and enjoy what is offered for free without feeling pressured into a sales maneuver.

But I still haven't answered the original question.  Why don't I just release a freeware game?  I want to make a game with more polish than I am capable of providing by myself.  And if you use the professional services of people, they sort of expect you to make a professional product out of it.  And that is just healthy.  Attaching a price tag to this game will already send a signal of what kind of market this game will be competing in.  It will create a perception of value that most freeware games cannot create.  Some freeware games created in a span of years by geniuses exist of course, but I'm no genius, and I will certainly not want to take multiple years on any project (done that before).

I want to recreate the "high" or elation that one feels when you release a product that you know is good to the world.  It is great for your first freeware release, but after a while, you start to doubt yourself or even lose magic as more and more polished works get released and crowd the marketplace.  A first commercial work may be my last grab at a sense of validation and legitimacy before I am permanently buried in the sea of works of varying quality that people just don't appreciate.

Or it could be just that I'm just craving for that 'first sale' moment when I can finally tick the checkbox in my list of Life Achievements to Accomplish and legitimately label myself as a full-fledged game developer, regardless of whether I want to maintain that status for the rest of my life.

For that end, I am designing Elspeth's Garden to have a long tail.  If it will be pirated, it will be preserved.  If/when I disappear from the blogosphere, my statement will still live on.