I'd beg to differ here on the typical developer. In nearly all of these accounts, it rarely (if ever?) seems that the developer actually makes a product that resonates with themselves. In this case, the developer ultimately never even made anything at all. The thing I most often see is people being expected to be rewarded for making simply "something" as in you create a product, and it's completely playable as a game - but it's nothing more than that.
And I think that era is completely dead, if it ever really existed at all. What I mean is somebody might see a game like the Binding of Isaac sell a zillion copies and think to themselves, 'Wow - I could make that game. I could even make it better!' And they're probably right, but with that game already released to massive popularity, creating a clone just isn't going to resonate with anybody unless it takes it to a whole new level, which clones essentially by definition don't do. You can see this exact attitude in this author with his 3d renderer. He expected people to appreciate it because he spent thousands of hours on it. But people don't care about stuff like that, they care about what's in front of their eyes - and what was probably a few poorly lit textured polygons moving around is not going to inspire fanfare.
Ironically low-effort clones also work as an example on this front. Vampire Survivor is another game, technically trivial, which has sold about a zillion copies. And it's little more than a reskin of 'Magic Survival' [1]. But the author clearly saw the potential in that game that nobody else did (including its own author), so he deserves all the credit and reward he's received. It just feels like if we viewed game development as a market, it's full of people buying high, selling low, and then becoming all philosophical when looking for why things didn't turn out as they planned, as if there was some deeper meaning or lesson to be learned.
And I think that era is completely dead, if it ever really existed at all. What I mean is somebody might see a game like the Binding of Isaac sell a zillion copies and think to themselves, 'Wow - I could make that game. I could even make it better!' And they're probably right, but with that game already released to massive popularity, creating a clone just isn't going to resonate with anybody unless it takes it to a whole new level, which clones essentially by definition don't do. You can see this exact attitude in this author with his 3d renderer. He expected people to appreciate it because he spent thousands of hours on it. But people don't care about stuff like that, they care about what's in front of their eyes - and what was probably a few poorly lit textured polygons moving around is not going to inspire fanfare.
Ironically low-effort clones also work as an example on this front. Vampire Survivor is another game, technically trivial, which has sold about a zillion copies. And it's little more than a reskin of 'Magic Survival' [1]. But the author clearly saw the potential in that game that nobody else did (including its own author), so he deserves all the credit and reward he's received. It just feels like if we viewed game development as a market, it's full of people buying high, selling low, and then becoming all philosophical when looking for why things didn't turn out as they planned, as if there was some deeper meaning or lesson to be learned.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnM9CIqv8Iw