I won't bore you all with the full tale of my similar story arc, but, in short: physically moving away from the scene, eventually mustering the courage to kill the full-time indie gamedev dream for good (after a few increasingly desperate attempts and monetizing this thing I spent my whole life working toward), and then finally finding myself slowly progressing elsewhere in life as a result (meeting the woman who I would go on to marry and start a family with; starting a career working a mundane but decently-paying programming-ish job for my hometown school system) has been one hell of a ride, to say the least.
I eventually reached conclusions that are very, very similar to those that the author reached: game development was, as it turns out, almost entirely a coping mechanism for avoiding progressing forward in life, by maintaining an internal illusion that someone, somewhere would care about the cool stuff I was making, such that it would all be worth it in the end—all the while giving me the feeling of control over something, even if basically nobody else in the world cared about it but me.
I still make games, but I've fully come to terms with the fact that it's almost certainly never going to be more than an interesting and fun hobby. this might not end up being the same conclusion someone else treading more or less the same path comes to, but, it's where I ended up, and I'm much better for it.
I won't bore you all with the full tale of my similar story arc, but, in short: physically moving away from the scene, eventually mustering the courage to kill the full-time indie gamedev dream for good (after a few increasingly desperate attempts and monetizing this thing I spent my whole life working toward), and then finally finding myself slowly progressing elsewhere in life as a result (meeting the woman who I would go on to marry and start a family with; starting a career working a mundane but decently-paying programming-ish job for my hometown school system) has been one hell of a ride, to say the least.
I eventually reached conclusions that are very, very similar to those that the author reached: game development was, as it turns out, almost entirely a coping mechanism for avoiding progressing forward in life, by maintaining an internal illusion that someone, somewhere would care about the cool stuff I was making, such that it would all be worth it in the end—all the while giving me the feeling of control over something, even if basically nobody else in the world cared about it but me.
I still make games, but I've fully come to terms with the fact that it's almost certainly never going to be more than an interesting and fun hobby. this might not end up being the same conclusion someone else treading more or less the same path comes to, but, it's where I ended up, and I'm much better for it.