[Adam13531]

I think the other comments were interpreting this as "where did you find the time?" rather than "where did you find the other resources to support that time?" (e.g. money and motivation). I've been maintaining a huge FAQ since I've gotten these questions a lot over the last four years, and this one in particular should answer the question: https://github.com/Adam13531/BotLand/wiki/FAQ#how-are-you-af...

I linked that rather than copy/pasting it because you may find other answers interesting on that page. :)

EDIT: I should clarify that 5000 hours is roughly the number of hours that I streamed, not the number of hours that I worked on Bot Land. There were way more hours spent in the background doing all sorts of things (including coding), but the majority of the actual development was on-stream.

[Madmallard]

I've been in the industry 8 years and worked on maybe a half dozen games but none of the projects was >400 hours.

I don't see how to make the commitment to spend multiple years without like an income coming from it and a team to work with. By myself it just becomes unbearable after a while.

I want to make a living off games. I'm almost 30 and things aren't getting easier.

[Adam13531]

Ahh, I see what you're saying. I think the answer to that is that I had set up my entire life around Bot Land. It was my full-time job, I had the stream for accountability, and I'd dumped my savings into the production of the game. I couldn't just walk away from that. Plus, it's been a lifetime goal of mine to make a successful game, and I'd always said that the one true way to definitively fail was to not finish Bot Land (I hadn't had such a definition of failure for other projects).

Without getting too rambly/preachy here, I'll say this: there are lots of things in my life where I think, "I'd like to do that, so I'll get to it eventually". After a long enough amount of time, you realize that "eventually" doesn't just hit you in the face—you have to carve out time for the things that you want to do. At the end of my last traditional job, I realized that my career goals weren't being met. Primarily, I wasn't learning. I talked to my wife about what I should do, and she suggested that I productize Bot Land. That's when I had to realize that the concept of "eventually" was peaking through the cracks probably trying to hit me in the face, and I had enough momentum to just go with it.

You mentioned that you're almost 30 and that things aren't getting easier. I can't say that they will get easier. What may help you take one of your many games to completion is simply scoping it down way further than you think you should. Cut out multiplayer, cut out innovative AI, cut out randomly generated dungeons, and just focus on a couple of solid aspects.

I don't know if any of that advice resonates with you, but if not, perhaps defining what barriers you feel like you've hit would help identify what patterns may be stopping you.