I stopped developing games after i saw how google play works.
In a way, its awesome.
In another, it sucks.
Unless you have a team that are willing to code/team and draw for you, you cant compete with those guys paying tons of $$$$$ for ad’s and recognition.
Of course, you could be lucky and get a good game going.
Anyway, i migrated to deep learning.
But one day i might start making my games again
Definitely in the same boat as you, OP. My career interest is Web Development and my hobby is Game Development. Weekends and other days with free time are spent on that hobby. The motivation for my craft is being creative. I can’t draw, play an instrument or write a poem…but I can make a game. It’s my selfish “art.”
I am young, though. Maybe I will grow up. Maybe I will gain an urge to make a game for a wider audience than people who share the same fascinations as me. Until then, I will be grinding away at whatever I am working on.
Op’s looking at this forum all wrong. It’s like going to an airplane hobbiest forum and asking why they build model airplanes if nobody including them can fly it? (Not that I’m bashing OP, there’s been questions just like this on every game dev site)
You’re asking the why, and in game dev & engineering the only thing that should motivate you is solving problems (or a paycheck, either is goddamn awesome). The only purpose of game dev for me is that computer science is fun as hell, and whether I make a rogue clone or Call of Duty # 10100 the only thing that matters is that I did it in the absolutely nerdiest way possible. I’ve even stopped posting my games to forums! Once you have 10 or so years under your belt, you’ll be a hardened professional and then maybe you’ll make a game people would reach into the depths of their pocket for.
I hate using Notch as an example, but honestly everyone knows about him by now, he never began Minecraft on 2 years of game dev experience… Now he’s a multi-gajjillion-billion-trillionaire!
I get a great deal of satisfaction writing my own games (as a hobby), I even enjoy playing them but it does pee me off that I can’t seem to make any money from them. I looked on Google play to see what they had and was surprised to see that most of the games were free (oddly I even found a game that had the same name as one of my games! I’m obviously going to have to try and come up with something more original). Part of me says I should hand them out free so more people can play the games but the other part of me reminds me how much time goes into writing these things.
These days people get more and more conditioned that they can get everything on the computer for free. Pictures, music, books … programs and particularly games. Legal? Most don’t care.
I think these days it is really difficult to make money with a game. Not only that making a game is hard already, making money with a game is substantially harder. Except for a few who are very lucky …
And you know what? The bad news is, that people who had one successful project have it easier to establish another successful project.
I just enjoy creating games and the worlds they are played in. The creativity behind the whole process of seeing everything come alive and work is still awesome from start to finish.
Being able to earn money and a living from it is just awesome, but I would probably still do it if I wouldn’t be able to earn a living, just in a lesser way using just the spare time 
Games? No time to make games. 
Gah, don’t I know it.
Cas 
I can only imagine having time to actually play them… now that would be awesome
Haven’t played a game for months and months now. Except Space Grunts
Cas
Fallout 4?)
Magicka wizard wars
Factorio
new free MTG in Steam
etc…
maybe someone recommend good roguelike game - without crazy random and useless grind ^^
up: Forgot: Reassembly - so crazy and simple conceptIon Idea
Strange how my time to play games is now measured in minutes. Then again I spend every other bit of spare time wasted on these forums, or coding Battledroid
Cas