You don't need minecraft level success to retire. Minecraft level success is enough to retire hundreds of people.

The gamedev community here is a passionate bunch; most people here are focused on games that they are extremely interested in, which is a good thing. But it leads to elaborate timesink games which take years to materialize. It is a huge risk if you don't have cash flow.

You see the indie simple games that you see in Android top list? The free ones that have been downloaded at least 500k times within months? Some have downloads more than a million, and others rake in 10mil+ downloads within a year.

You look at the game and it is an addictive 2D twitch reflex game that can be created in a week. However the author's of those games are set for life. They can do ANYTHING they want from then on. The games with lower end figures I gave above push anything between $500-$1000 a day in ad revenue. There are many that you've never heard about and would dismiss as a stupid mobile game that makes multiples of that. They are not original, but they solve the problem of retirement.

There are elaborate games that I'd like to make, but I'm a married man and have responsibilities. So that's the path I've been walking on for the last few years. I made some progress. Been living off of low effort / good idea games that take a couple of months to develop for the last 4 years, and they'll sustain me for another 4 years if I do nothing. But I haven't retired myself and the wife yet. That's my first and foremost focus. Once that happens (and I'm confident that it will during the next few years), I'll take a break then do whatever I want to do for the rest of my life.