I have a much more cynical and pessimistic view that's pretty much not on brand for HN. I spent 3 years working on a videogame as a personal side project. Alth

I have a much more cynical and pessimistic view that's pretty much not on brand for HN. I spent 3 years working on a videogame as a personal side project. Although I was passionate about it, thing is it was a very niche idea. Sure, maybe I got literally 2 or 3 people that were super into it, but it never got any traction. So yes, doing something that you enjoy is it's own reward... to a point. I poured hundreds of hours in that videogame and led to me burnout once, jut to have a few hundreds visits. I don't exactly regret the experience, but I could have spent much less time and effort on it. Now I'm less "follow your passion" and more tactical about my efforts. I spent a weekend prototyping a game where you guess an emoji using a "hot/cold" system by comparing emojis based on their semantic similarity. When I asked for feedback it was universally panned, so I decided to drop it. Sure, maybe there is one person who'd love the game, but we only have so much time on this earth, so I have to consider the opportunity cost of building something that one person could love vs building something more people might enjoy.