I was invited to give a keynote and workshop at the BIMM university in Berlin. I’m honored to have been given this opportunity to share. Following is the keynote transcript where I share the journey that led me to game design, the observations made over the 20+ years of discovering my voice in interactive media, the pitfalls and blessings of solo-development, and the 20+ year evolution of an early net-art project.

When I began my journey as a net-artist, and eventual game designer, email spam was yet to become a problem, and it was the internet era where people were not afraid of downloading random things from the internet because they might get a computer virus.
The “information superhighway” was still a popular term being used to describe existing on this new exciting wild west era of digital life.
This is before business moved into the internet to mold it with its vision of e-commerce, b2b, and somehow stayed despite the dotcom bubble bursting... Ok I'm all keyworded out now.

All that said, that's some good context for the era that my work grew out of, and which I'll be showing you. I'll talk about all this from the perspective of a solo-developer because that's the area in games that I'm coming from.

Solo-development is, in my opinion, a beautiful and liberating way to make games because you are entirely responsible for the project on your own. You get to dictate exactly how it will be, and it's about the closest thing I can think of to being as sustainable as possible.

You don't need anyone. Just your own determination.

As a solo-developer you have to wear many hats (this is also the case in indie studios, where you typically end up doing more than what you signed up for).
You need to be responsible for art, sound, programming, animation, marketing, and distribution. It's a great crash course into how the game industry works.
This is also not a stab at people that want to work with teams or companies. There's NO one right way to make a game. Everyone is different. This is just coming from what has worked for me. Please take all this with a grain of salt.

What I love about indie developers is that each game is influenced so strongly by the developer's own background.
Musicians that come into making games will design these absolutely unique experiences around sound or music. Animators will design around animation or movement... Each person's skillset, and personal experience is different, and that is what makes this work so artistically impactful.
I should also add that each person's shortcomings, disadvantages, or lack of resources is a strength too.
Game development is all about the art of resourcefulness.
Learning to pivot, and just kind of roll with what disadvantages you have, makes for very unique work. Sometimes it can even be better.
I say this because there's often a misconception that you need a lot of resources, connections, a large team, money, and knowledge to make a good game... When you really just need the determination to finish something well enough to publish it.
All that said, sometimes the best game designers are the ones that come from outside of games.
Design around what you are good at. Design around your own personal philosophies. Idealism is good.

My first project, BlueSuburbia, was this large interactive literature experience where you explored these surrealist animated worlds to read poetry.

To give you an idea, the video of the first Flash version is embeded above as a YouTube link. This is work that grew from 1999 all the way into 2005.

The digital spaces in BlueSuburbia were intricately animated, and the entire thing was something of an animated music video.
Movement and visuals were incorporated with the words. Words were brought alive, and you could experience the poetry in a different way than if you just read it.
BlueSuburbia was my idea of illustrating poetry in a way that was different from the norm.
It had strong political and social messages that discussed things like war, poverty, refugees, and consumerism. This made it popular with younger people who found a type of escape in a website like this, not so much with the established commercial crowd.
The anti-consumerist "question America" messaging made it controversial among the internet space that was eager to grow into commercialism.
I find it an interesting point to make, when you are creating something this experimental that many say they've "never seen before", your work will naturally be viewed as controversial.
It finds a place, or doesn't... but as it ages it's easier for people to look back at it and understand it for what it was.

In BlueSuburbia all these elements of poetry, animation, music, art were built to work together.
For example, your mouse might hover over a glowing word in the darkness. As you got closer music started to fade in based on the distance of your cursor. Hovering over the word would trigger a set of animation... Interactions like this would illustrate the poetry.
Based on your mouse position, an animation would play and you would set the animation's state by your movement. In participating you became a conductor of sorts, influencing the art. The art would move, respond, change... based on what you did while in the world.

At the time, web artists were talking about the power of the web to transform art. You could bypass the entire art world. You did not need museums, curation, or critics to notice you. You just needed to share it on your website. Anyone, the world over, could see it.
Artists were building a new type of independence.
However that might sound in context of the internet of today... at that time it was liberating to be able to set up your own platform, without being subjected to anyone else controling who would see or wouldn't see you.
Building your own platform was also as simple as basic HTML knowledge and just registering your domain name. It still is. Either way...

You created your own inclusion.

It's hard to describe how much BlueSuburbia thrived in this context.
Because it was so new and different, it was easy for people to "not get it".
At the same time, the people that did get it appreciated it on a deeper level than my work would have experienced if it were more mainstream or commercial. I was often told by people from the business sector that my style was not "commercial enough", and that's why I would struggle as an artist. It is ironic to me that the people that told me this are no longer relevant, but my work made it past that.
You have to tune out the noise.

BlueSuburbia got so much traffic, sometimes from the strangest places.
The structure of the web may have changed - we rely now more on social media and these centralized platforms to deliver our art, as a result we are at the mercy of their control - but if you understand these early philosophies, you can still bypass that and share your work on your own terms.
Maintaining knowledge of that history, how accessible the internet, tech, programming, sharing your software... has always been, is vital to maintaining that freedom. Without understanding that, it's easy to think that you are at the mercy of monopolies, social media, or tech giants.

At the time, net-art was this new exciting thing. The entire concept of a website meant something different then. Websites were a creative outlet. Some even talked about websites as the new emergent artform. I cannot express how pervasive that was. The internet existed outside of a handful of social media sites that we were all funneled into, and that is when this type of weird new art was thriving.

I started working on BlueSuburbia in around 1998, and published it in 1999.
I was in high school then, and it was my way of coping with the culture shock of having moved to the US during the Yugoslav Wars.
I wrote goth poetry at that time. The anonymity of the internet gave me a way of sharing my art without the judgement of "who made this", or any social and cultural boxes people might put you in.
The anonymity made me safe. My work was seen for what it was. I could be this mysterious artist to people. None of my friends or teachers knew I was doing this.
BlueSuburbia took off, and had a small cult following. There would be bouts where I would get hundreds of emails a day about it. People would send me their resume wanting to work with whatever "studio" made the project.
It genuinely mattered to people.
I enjoyed the assumption that a team worked on it, when it was just some kid making and sharing goth art.
Making this type of art is something I fell in love with. I knew I wanted to pursue this.

BlueSuburbia, and even my later work, all rely on exploration, rabbit holes, and long convoluted tangents because that's inspired by the early website movement. Browsing the internet is (still) largely about one thing connecting to the other, then the other, and some more... It still carries with it that fascination of exploring and getting distracted by new tangents.
I think that's a beautiful thing to carry into games, because games also lend themselves so well to that type of exploration.
Tangents give interactive art depth. That's worth taking into consideration when you make it. It's something that digital art does uniquely well.

The Flash website movement was hugely influential to laying the groundwork for what we have today in terms of modern interfaces. Back then it promised to be so much more. The concept that 2-dimensional spaces are deeply immersive environments too, that hold space for a story. That UI, software, and art all intersect... These intersections are also what makes computer art special. The possibilities of what you can come up with are endless.

The early internet was a huge possibility space where you, as an artist, could do anything. I think it's important to believe that about what it, and computers, still are now. As artists we can maintain these philosophies and interrogate these structures. We can inspire people to want more than just settling for consumerism, erosion of privacy, capitalism...
In terms of the early websites-as-art movement, there were ideals and philosophies behind UI, interactive art, the value of experimentation, social responsibility, that stayed with me.
These ideals still exist because that's where our modern era of computers grew out of. It's empowering to keep that alive in your work.

I share all this because there's power to drawing on your own personal influences. It's what ultimately sets your work apart, and makes you a genuine valuable creative voice.

I think a lot of advice that you find for "how to break into the game industry" or things like "what companies are looking for" is kind of about stripping the art out of the artist.
Finding work in games does not have to involve losing your creative voice, to fit into a rigid development structure.
Ultimately your creative voice is what people are going to appreciate about you.
Existing in the game industry is very much an exercise in protecting your passion. Your passion is not an indefinitely renewable resource. You can burn out. It's my personal belief that, as artists, we have to protect our ability to stay passionate about our art. Don't be loyal to a company that can't respect that.

I say all this because... There was also friction to BlueSuburbia. It was my first introduction to the video game friction against art-games, alt-games, or anything that's different in this space. This friction still happens today.
It's an interesting discussion because it seems to stay relevant no mater how much the "game" label changes.

BlueSuburbia was always classified as interactive literature by me. It was net art.  Poetic hypermedia, literary hypermedia, new media... So many fun words.
Only something you could experience online.
It was never meant to be a game.
I was adamant that it would not be called a game. At one point I even put in a prompt that said "This is not a game" and you had to click it to open the work. This didn't help deter the use of the label tho.
BlueSuburbia didn't have boss battles, or any of the proper hooks and design loops that you get in a game. It didn't live up to the expectation of a game. It was hard for me to understand why people saw it through that lens.

People outside of games loved BlueSuburbia. Anyone could "get it".
It was different enough that the visitor didn't need pre-existing game literacy or understanding of interaction models to get into it.
It was obvious to people that you explore, so there was no expectation on themselves or the work to be immediately understood.
A few fans even started calling it "meander-ware", or other cute names. This was before the term "walking simulator". I liked the endearing names more.

People with expectations of it being a certain media didn't like or get BlueSuburbia. This is important to note. I think this is a good example of how pre-existing game literacy can get in the way of enjoying new things... Misunderstandings happened especially when BlueSuburbia fell under the label "game". That transformation in perception that only a label can have is really interesting, especially if you are talking about art that's experimental.

I can't stress enough that things like game-literacy, or understanding of interaction models... You know, that thing that happens when you look at a UI and immediately know how to use it because you've used these a million times, or look at a game and immediately know what type of game it is and therefore know how to play it because you play games... All that can get in the way of appreciating unique or new things.
It can also hold you back from creating new, unique, groundbreaking, or otherwise meaningful art. You have to question your inclination to look at a thing a certain way.
Especially question your design decisions.
Game development, computers, programming... can often become an echo-chamber of assumed knowledge. This is why it's important to step outside of that. Draw from other influences. Care about other things. Always question where or what your design decisions are being informed by.

Eventually BlueSuburbia started getting traffic from Flash Game portals. Some where honest and just linked to it. Others outright ripped it and cross posted it. I had to fight really hard to take it back so they didn't steal it.
Coming from those places, gamers found it and this solidified people calling it a "game".

Discussions about BlueSuburbia changed from people being genuinely blown away by it, to people complaining: "what the hell is this, what am I supposed to do in this, what's the point of this, this is just pretentious art..."
Much of it was fairly aggressive too. I was young, and it was a lot to handle.

It's so interesting to me how the cultural baggage associated with just a word can carry so much weight if it's put on your work.
It's just a minor perception change that came with using another label, and suddenly it was "pretentious art". It goes without saying that words mater. Definitions give power to your art, or they can take away.

I would reply to angry emails from gamers that were asking me questions along the lines of "what are you even supposed to do in this thing?", explaining to them that it's about poetry and you read.
That didn't help either because reading is stupid.
It was a flood I could not control, and I just wanted to get away from the "game" label as far as I could.
My thing was basically screaming "This is not a game", and I put in a lot of work to make it impossible to rip so it doesn't get posted on another site that essentially stole it to call it a game.

There's a lot to unpack here. Especially in how consumerist culture reduces art to entertainment, there to please, and it better please, without discomfort or confusion... rather than an exchange between the art, artist, and viewer that's often not to be understood, consumed, or meant to be entertaining.
This type of friction has stayed with my work to present day, but it's become much less obnoxious.
It's an interesting set of arguments that I come back to often... Essentially most of the consumer anger that I have described can be boiled down to:
"This art failed to please me, and as the consumer I am entitled to being pleased."
As artists we live in a capitalist consumer culture. Art goes against that grain in how it's often not meant to please, or entertain, or even be understood.

BlueSuburbia stayed with me all the way into 2005 when I decided to abandon it. There were large portions of it unfinished.
This always bothered me, but I had other art I wanted to make. I promised myself I would someday return to it.
Fans of it often emailed me about it, all the way until the death of the Flash Player.
When the site became unvisitable, as a result, I would still get inquiries about if I would do something to make it playable again because someone missed it.
I lost count of the amount of messages I got that said that BlueSuburbia encouraged a person to get into art, or that it helped them growing up.

After all the noise settled, what was left was genuine love for what I created.

I moved on to other projects. One was called Tetrageddon Games. I made this to be a big "fuck you" to "games" while still embracing games. I think it fell in line beautifully with the alt-game arthouse game genre.
Tetrageddon is chaotic, weird, silly, and has as many rabbit holes and easter eggs as I could possible pack into a work.
It started as a net-art online arcade of games.
With the end of the Flash Player, I ported Tetrageddon to the desktop, where it lives as an even more chaotic project. I eventually revived the website as an HTML5 and JavaScript arcade.

Working on this also took many years. I finished Tetrageddon, then Flash died, and to keep the project from also dying I rebuilt it so that it can keep living.
I'll probably have to keep doing that as technology changes, and the project will keep being reborn as a result.

I think that's an interesting dynamic that you will come across too as a digital artist. Digital art is ephemeral. It is incredibly short lived.
You will spend years of your life working on something, and then the technology dies to take your work with it, computers change and your work becomes unplayable... Digital art is in a constant state of erosion.

Even with the HTML5 site of Tetrageddon, things in a browser will change and break some aspect of the site. I will have to go fix it, if I care enough about it.
The deterioration is constant. It's sad, beautiful, and poetic.
If you care about your body of work, you will eventually spend a lot of time figuring out a way to ensure that it lives.

All that said, it's also an interesting observation because I want my work to be preserved. I'm not fighting archivist efforts. Even so, it is very hard to archive, preserve, or "save" digital art because even archivists are up against the constant deterioration.
You can argue that all art decays, but I often think about how metal sculptures my grandfather made in the 80's still exist... When a website I walked away from in 2005 is now virtually unplayable.

I don't think it's worth fighting this ephemeral noncorporeal fundamental nature of the digital realm. I think it's worth embracing and working with.
My work is constantly shifting, evolving, changing, digesting itself, to stay present.
It's difficult and beautiful.

Tetrageddon went on to win the Nuovo Award at IGF. It made it into many game festivals. I moved on to making other work that won awards.
One of mine called "Everything is going to be OK", a desktop labyrinth of dark humor vignettes and commentary on struggle, made it into the permanent collection at MoMA in New York.
I explored making desktop pets, and art software like the Electric Zine Maker... I'm proud of all the websites I made building a fictional world that encompasses all this work... at the same time BlueSuburbia was always on the back of my mind.

BlueSuburbia represented so much to me. It was always with me. It bothered me that it basically died because the technology that carried it faded away. It meant a lot to people and it seemed disrespectful just to let it disappear into the electronic ether.

Becoming good at making games, digital art, or all these things is a lifelong process of discovery and exploration. You are bigger than the tools you use, or the technology you think you need. The necessities are really simple.
It's a journey where you are always discovering how to improve your ability to communicate using the language of interactivity. In the end that's all any of this is... games, software, digital toys. It's interactivity. The interplay between you and the computer is a language, and game designers are good at building things with that language.

I had to revisit BlueSuburbia but bring it back to life in a very modern sense. This time I wasn't going to fight the "game" label because "game" grew into an umbrella term that encompasses most interactive digital art anyway.

I'll show you the trailer for the new one, to give you an idea of how this 20+ year project is evolving...

Before I continue, I would like to say that tools don't make great games. Your understanding of the craft, and of the tool, is what does. Each tool has its own advantages and disadvantages. Not everyone will vibe with Unity. Some will love Godot, or absolutely hate it. You need to find the tool that works with you, and build from there. There is no "one size fits all". I've heard from students that hated Unity, and were ready to quit games because they thought it's just not for them, then they found a toolset they absolutely love.
There's really no one right way to do this.

That said...

I picked the most commercial mainstream high-fidelity game engine I could think of: Unreal. It could deliver on that AAA vibe.
I decided to shoot for something like Death Stranding. I knew it's possible. I had to prove to myself that I can. It was exciting and terrifying, especially because I had no prior knowledge of Unreal or 3D.
Most of my Unity friends said that Unreal is too hard.

My ambition for this rebuild was to bring this original world to life in a high-fidelity 3D context. So people could walk around the worlds of BlueSuburbia. I could explore how poetry fits into this type of space even more.
I figured that I could treat the old version as concept art. That's already a big help, especially because I had little to no experience with the toolset for 3D development.

This transition from 2D to 3D is a really interesting one.
2D is a fixed space. It is easy to guide a player through it. What you see is what you get, and that is the sandbox for any interaction, movement, or art. It is strictly defined.
3D on the other hand is a lot more abstract to work with. A player can run in any direction, and you have to be much more literal in what you want to do with a space. The bigger the space, the more room for error, the more work it will involve on your part to carve it out... so that all players get the intended experience you want them to have in a space.

Both 2D and 3D have their own strengths and weaknesses. Existing in a 3-dimensional virtual space is fairly awkward. Camera, movement, what type of body a player inhabits (if at all) are very awkward concepts to design around.
I don't think we, as designers and artists, have perfected that realm yet. 3D is still fairly new, in an odd weird infancy state of figuring out how to make it communicate artfully. It grew out of a need to be real, and then influenced by the quest to be more like movies. You have an environment that grew out of a lot more commercial philosophy.

Inhabiting a 3D world is like awkwardly stepping into another body. It takes work to communicate that well.
In BlueSuburbia you always played as a tiny light flame. The original would hide your cursor, and give you a particle cursor that glowed. It was fun to move it around and watch parts of it fade. I wanted the same metaphor in the new one, where you don't play as a physical body but a source of light. The symbolism being that you are the light in the darkness.
Camera movement in BlueSuburbia is intentionally a little disjointed because you should feel like there's a mild lack of control. It also makes navigating through the spaces more interesting because of how all this encourages you to perceive the environment. It's less about being in a video game character's body and more about inhabiting the world.

3D games always fascinated me for how well they communicate surrealism. There's this mystery about the in-between spaces that you move through when playing a video game.
They feel haunted, impermanent, dreamlike for how easily you forget them. Even so, they become a type of lived experience to us because it is time we spent in an actual space, even if it was not a real one.
Being in video games is a separate type of memory. It is a surreal one that can come back to us in odd times of the day when we miss being in that space, or existing as that particular character.
Video games are the closest we can get to living inside of someone else's dreams, fantasies, and actually experiencing them for ourselves.
Existing in the digital world is a type of reality in its own right.Existing in a video game is no different. It is why crafting these worlds is so rewarding.
You get to share that explicit surreal fantasy with others.

Every corner, rock, texture, imperfection, stain... in a game world is an intentional decision on part of the artist.
When we live in the real world we have an abundance of stories that exist in the spaces we are living in. The stain on a floor came from somewhere, you might never even notice. There's a story behind the placement of the chairs you sit in, and are maybe oblivious to.
Everything about the real world exists in a complex context of cause and effect. It has history. It is easy to be oblivious to that.
In video games, however, all that context, story, imperfection, layering... needs to be created.
The history needs to be invented, sometimes on the fly.
You will never emulate all the detail of reality because you will never have that complexity of story driving it.
As an artist in the game space, it's on you to be specific about how your environment tells a story. When it's a surreal space, you have to think of all the surrealist imperfections and layers.
So this is very interesting when I was making these early spaces in the 3D version. It had to have the same depth that dreams do.

Whether it be 2D or 3D, video games are intentionally crafted spaces.

In this new version of BlueSuburbia I didn't want to lose the net-art context that it was coming out of.
It was always so important to me that this be a browser based work, because web art "was the future"... The transition from browsers being a place that originally supported this type of work, with all the visual fidelity, sound, animation, and the way music could be in synch, AND that it would just work seamlessly on everyone's device... was hard to part with.
It was hard to let that go and decide that desktop was just safer.
The compromise here was that I used a browser that displays in Unreal to show pieces of web content.
For example, it opens with a Bitsy game that you play to get the introduction.
As you move through the opening space, Bitsy's are triggered and open in stylized browsers as part of the scene. This is how you read the opening poem that describes the story of the world.
You can also interact with the old version of BlueSuburbia if you click on one of the monitors in the main menu. You can play the old one, online, inside of the 3D context... So essentially, as I worked around what seemed to be disadvantages, I ended up with something that was much better in expanding the work.

Early criticism of BlueSuburbia was that there is no story, and therefore people felt at a loss of what to do. In this new one, I'm trying to round off the original world by adding more context and story for what you are doing.
This version opens with an introductory sequence where you are slipping deeply into a dream, on a quest to be free of the pain that you carry with you.
This context will make sense when you read the poetry, or optionally progress through the story.
This is not a story in a traditional game sense. It's surrealist, and very much about reading. The writing reinforces the spaces that you are in.

I built a very large open world, which was released in the last update. It's a massive space that you explore, where you can already meet some characters that give you items for the quest.
This is also extremely metaphoric. You disturb graves to steal items for a sacrifice to a Witch that helps you on your quest.
This open world will be a space where I add more doorways to poetry realms, all of them will have their own worlds where you experience the writing.

This is obviously a big initiative. Presently it seems bare in comparison to what I want it to be.

When I started building and incrementally releasing "Everything is going to be OK" the early versions were also very "empty".
It was not obvious to people what it would be, and it just seemed like a silly interesting little thing.
As it grew, and as I kept releasing updates to it, it became much more interesting.
I bring this up because this model of sharing as you build, where you let people play what you have, helps a lot if you are a solo-developer.

"Everything is going to be OK" took about four or five years to make. "Electric Zine Maker" was being worked on for three.
It's years of effort, where you will kind of disappear into a development void, and it's hard to get interest generated if you are silent for too long.
Because I don't have a large marketing budget, or help with getting the word out there about my work, the fact that I have something early to show for it helps.
It keeps you relevant as you share progress or talk about your work.

I realize that another indie might say that this is a terrible idea, and that you should gear up launch to be perfect, and have a plan for a big splash... BUT from my experience, that tiny launch window where you have a tiny shot at relevance, is too much of a risk.
If you mess up that launch, you ruin your chance at getting the attention you need to get the ball rolling again. It's hard to recover from that.
If you release often, you slowly, over the long time that you work on your thing, build interest for it. It's much easier in terms of resources, if you are just an individual artist doing this.

All that said, this is what works for me.
It will not work for everyone.
There's no one-size-fits-all in games.

With any of my projects I've always had the mindset that I will get as far as I can get with them. If something happens in my life where I can't work on it anymore, then this is how far I've come. That's why I like sharing my work as much as possible while building. It is hard to have unfinished work and effort that just wastes away.

When you are alone, building games, it's important to create a space for yourself that protects you from burnout, losing interest in making your thing, and also encourages you to stay accountable to yourself when you set your own deadlines.
It's very easy to slip into a loop where the next idea is better, or to hate what you are working on because you're tired of looking at it.
You need to find ways to encourage yourself.
Having a steady feedback loop from others, where you can show what you make, is the difference between night and day.
Since I don't have access to play-testers, this is how I get that feedback too.
Obviously working with a team is easier, because you can encourage each other, or hold each other accountable.

The original BlueSuburbia is an accumulation of years of art and animation. There's so much animation work, all surrealist, and of beautiful quality, that it's hard to think it would be lost.
What I'm doing with the new one is taking that 2-dimensional art and animation, then incorporating it into the 3D world. The two will live side by side. Art styles don't have to clash if you do it right. 3D lends itself very well to supporting that type of juxtaposition. It stands out, and you enjoy the space from different perspectives.
For example, playing through a Bitsy that describes the 3D space, and then being in the actual described space in the 3D context, is a very interesting transition.
You let the player imagine the space with your writing, it can become real to them on their own terms, and then you let them see the actual thing.
It makes for very interesting interactive fiction.

Like all my work, this is a big undertaking.
I have about 38 games on itch, that's not counting all the net-art and experimental website work I've done over the years.
You would probably assume that I feel like I know what I'm doing, but every project I undertake is terrifying to me. I have no idea if it will work out or not.
I struggle with if it is good or not. The pressures of balancing perfectionism, and impostor syndrome...
That said, all these insecurities are necessary. Your art is good because you care about it.
I need to question my decisions, look at it critically, to make sure it is something I can be proud of.
The challenge here, especially when you are working in something as complex as making a game, is knowing when to let go.
Call it good enough, and just release it.

With every one of my projects there was always long pages of to-do's and features that I wanted, that never made it in.
Maybe these things would have made it better, maybe they were unnecessary. I know that they would have held the thing back, to a point where it might never have seen the light of day.
Whenever I published something, even with work that went on to win awards, or was good enough to make it into MoMA, I felt like it was terrible. Post-project burnout is a real thing.
Years later I would revisit it with fresh eyes, and feel proud of it.

When you are in it so deep, it is hard to view your work the way everyone else sees it. You might think it is terrible for all the things you see lacking in it. Everyone else will see something beautiful.

Games can be incredibly hard for how complex they are to make.
It's a lot to balance good sound incorporation, with good game design, and all the visual bells and whistles.
You're creating complex systems inside of a complex system (the game engine).
I think it's fair to say that the biggest hurdle will always be yourself.
Balancing ambition, expectations for your art, and knowing when it's done, is an acquired skill.

I shared the history of friction that BlueSuburbia received with gamers, to make the point that ALL that is noise. Online culture, and subsequently the game industry has a lot of noise.
Indie developers, and solo-developers, rely on social media to market our things.
We have to over-expose ourselves to the public, to generate interest in our games.
It is easy to get sucked into the noise, numbers, engagement, hot takes, opinion machine, and let that crush your ability to love games.
Similarly, going to game conventions, it is easy to get caught in an unhealthy cycle of comparing your success to others, or outright being told that you are not good enough, successful enough, anything enough... It can be hard to parse all that.
Sometimes it can be difficult to demo your work at conventions, and not feel overwhelmed by both the negative and positive responses.
In the end, it's noise. It will pass as a memory, but your work, the way that mattered to people, is what stays.

Existing in that space is a constant exercise to tuning out noise. Even this talk is noise. If you don't vibe with it, by all means please move on.
It's also an acquired skill to discover what works for you. There are many ways to successfully make games.

In the end, building beautiful experiences that make people laugh, cry, feel hope, catharsis, be crushed, feel joy, be amused, feel awe, happiness... is all that matters.
It's why we care about art.

Find your own path. Create your own space.