Well said.
I like to think about the old RPGM games shared on places like HongFire a decade and a half ago, before patreon shifted the landscape. Just people doing what they can, with limited means, to scratch a creative itch. Hardly any of them are worth remembering for the quality alone, but there's a beauty to the grassroot nature of it. GIL and I still consider ourselves hobbyists; ones who have been
extremely fortunate to find traction with an audience. When we started, I said to myself that I'd be happy if 50 people liked our game.
Now, making an adult visual novel is a significant investment of both time and energy, so I don't think there's anything measuring your success financially. There is always an opportunity cost, but I do believe that if you want to last through the times when all the joy is sucked out of the process and it's just being a fucking mean bitch, you need need to derive personal satisfaction from what you're doing. And speaking for GIL and myself, we do the best that we can not because it'll get us more money, but because when we sit down every night to review the day's progress, we still get giddy seeing our efforts come to life on screen. There's no other feeling as consistently gratifying in my life than seeing the silly thoughts and words that I strung together
realized by my friend's midas touch.
I'll do it for you: if you haven't, everyone should check out
The Last Sovereign. That game is the epitome of a passion project, and I consider Sierra Lee a role model for game devs.
If it was some other game, oops. I'm just going by your avatar.