It's humorous and distressing because every dev seems to have that me-too attitude: "I'll publish an app and retire from my dayjob". This is a great plan and sure to succeed.

It's a lot less common to see one ask "Will anyone want to play my game?" "Why am I creating this and for whom?"

There was one guy here promoting his app--did everything really well in terms of stating how he resents IAP and doesn't want to exploit people. I bought his app to support him for that alone, but objectively the game was awful. It was boring, remedial, worse than the stock games in a 90s Linux distro.

In fact I buy a lot of games to support Reddit devs, and most end up being played once or twice to get some impressions then they're off my phone forever. (I will plug Feeding Time as one of the exceptions where it turned out to be legitimately brilliant)

And I would see him on Reddit months later lamenting the fact that more people don't buy his game. But for some reason, they can't ever wrap their heads around the prospect that just maybe it isn't worth buying. If you have no style or theme that appeals to people, if you can't generate some anticipation where people are eager to get ahold of it--why are you expending your time making it in the first place?

Polymer is a great success story because he did everything right. I think he said that was his first game. But he had a great original idea, well executed, very polished, and people wanted to play it. I recall him promoting his game around Reddit, and it was well received for that reason.