> Learning to execute on a game design vision is fun. But it is irrelevant if the vision is not viable. I've learned a lot through what I've done and it's vastly more fun to work on something you're interested in. If you chase the business side of actually releasing a game you're going to spend a lot of time doing things you're not interested in doing and it's potentially going to cost a lot of money. You have to figure out what you want to do.
I don't think we're saying completely different things. I am not advocating for making many commercial games where you release them and sink money into them. I am saying to finish games (that you like working on) instead of abandoning them. If you can't finish them, reduce scope until you can finish Pong even though that's not a viable game idea. Only then can you work your way up to your co-op multiplayer $$$ game. Even then, the games you mention have studios behind them with many people working on them.
Well I'm saying work on what you want to work on and it's absolutely fine to abandon games when you think you've detected the direction is not good. Finishing a game is very, very hard. You will almost inevitably encounter problems that require skillsets you don't have and aren't interested in learning. If you could to a place where a game could be finished, then hire a team to help you finish it. Otherwise you'll spend too much time learning skills you don't like or need (personally) to execute on a vision. For most indie devs, in my estimation, that's mostly a question of hiring artists to make it look nice and designers to grind out content for the game (e.g. levels). I think you can presume that most people that want to be "indie game devs" want to be creative directors with just enough skills of their own to prototype something successfully. And I encourage that.
The co-op thing is just a perceived niche of under-served market demand : effort required imo.
I don't think we're saying completely different things. I am not advocating for making many commercial games where you release them and sink money into them. I am saying to finish games (that you like working on) instead of abandoning them. If you can't finish them, reduce scope until you can finish Pong even though that's not a viable game idea. Only then can you work your way up to your co-op multiplayer $$$ game. Even then, the games you mention have studios behind them with many people working on them.