How repeated failure taught me to design games in proportion to my capabilities

Gamedev is full of beautiful success stories that can often overshadow the grim reality. But sometimes it is good to take a few steps back and see how easy it is to fail. I've been a hobby developer for 22 years, working on all kinds of projects. Not only have I never released a single game commercially, I've actually canceled more than 14 projects in those years. But in every failure there is an important lesson.