Great responses on here, I always enjoy hearing the experiences of other authors as well as readers. While I agree that making a single game as your first attempt (in hindsight, since I’m one who chose a series off the bat) would probably have been easier as a first shot with CS and publication, I’ve also explained why we didn’t choose that and the good outcomes of breaking it up in the past.
As far as when I am enjoying other CoG and HG works, I don’t tend to have a preference as long as the story is enjoyable and wraps up satisfactorily (at least eventually).
There were some great insights from other authors on what they learned and why they chose sequels over a single game on this thread, as well. You might be interested in taking a peek.