Anecdotes to support this: My first finished game was bizarro-arkanoid (few hundred LOC). Then I made a text-based adventure game (<1,000 LOC, and LOTS of data)

Anecdotes to support this: My first finished game was bizarro-arkanoid (few hundred LOC). Then I made a text-based adventure game (<1,000 LOC, and LOTS of data), then I made a jRPG-ish game (5,000-15,000 LOC, IIRC). ETC, ETC, ETC. I don't have those games anymore because they were crap, but they taught me what I needed to know to make what I'm making today. Which is still kinda crap, but less so. Between and around those games I "made" dozens of other games, not a single one got finished, mostly because I shot for projects beyond my ability to complete.