In the vein of trying to move the conversation away from the video game example,
The theory behind the video game example is that there is nothing inherent to the video game production idea that means you can't succeed with just a few employees and limited start up cash. There are plenty of examples of this being true. So it's a great example, and that's proven in two ways.
The lightning in a bottle type ideas that did generate substantial revenues. And also the, lets say millions, of people who did try it and failed. The failures aren't a reason not to do it, they might be why you were afraid to, but they don't actually indicate that it can't be done.
A truly bad example might be something like, why didn't you start a car company? That's a company with massive capital investment and product liability considerations that is almost impossible for someone with no background or resources to get into. In fact, it's damn near impossible for someone who is fabulously wealthy already to get into. Of course, any mustachian would instantly think to themselves...well yea, but you could build like a single car and sell it and then move on from there, if it was a neat car with stuff people wanted that didn't suck shit like every Ford ever made. But I digress...
The issues people are citing with the idea are very much coming across as complainypants. In point of fact, Cathy knows why you didn't do it, you were afraid of failure. No amount of your protestations that you had good reason to be afraid of failure changes that thesis. Equating that fear and the actions you took based on it with cowardice is a little strong, but only if you're putting too much connotation into the word coward. As a way of describing those of us who did avoid certain paths because of fear, coward works as well as any other. You might prefer responsible wage slave in the same way hipsters are fine wearing that name as a badge of honor. It's sort of irrelevant to the underlying thesis.
But lets move away from that as an example, and see if we can come up with some other examples that might make the idea more accessible to you. The one that jumps out at me is writing.
I think it is a great example because you really don't need many resources to actually produce a product. It is also a good example because there's actually quite a few bad writers out there who manage to at least make a living, even if they don't become rich within a year. There are also plenty of bad writers that somehow manage to make crazy money.
And there are those who do become rich quite quickly.
So I tried to come up with similar ideas for things to have done, where there are stellar success stories out there, and the corresponding failures. Because the failures don't disqualify the idea. Our fear of those failures is what kept us from even trying.
1. Writer
2. Athlete
3. Politician
4. Brewmaster
5. Actor/Actress
6. Stuntman
7. Music Producer
8. Filmmaker
As I'm thinking about it, it really starts to become a list of jobs where success isn't guaranteed. Or rather, where the odds of failure are just much higher. And if you look deep inside yourself and the reason you didn't go down this path is not that you knew you didn't have what it took, but that you were afraid of failure then the OP thesis holds true for you. It doesn't matter what the odds were. What matters is why you didn't do it.
And if you talked yourself out of trying because it would be hard, there's no shame in that.
There's probably some value in the self-awareness you'll get from mulling it over.
I'll give a couple of my own:
I didn't become a teacher because I wanted to make more money. The fact that I could have aggressively pursued the highest paid teaching opportunities never occurred to me, I let myself be talked out of it because of my fear of not making as much as I could.
I didn't go into business for myself after engineering school, or after engineering licensure, because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to find enough clients. I let myself be talked out it because of my fear of of not making as much as I already was.
I didn't drop out of college and start covering the video game industry because I figured you needed to be a journalist to do it. These guys over at penny arcade are baller-rich and its because they did do it.
And now an example of a path I didn't go down for non-cowardly (if not necessarily good reasons):
I didn't become a doctor because I didn't understand that they don't all have to do surgery and my hands shake all the time (didn't feel like I had what it took on a biomechanical level).
I didn't become a priest because I like to put my wee-wee in them what'll let me. Also the irreverence.
I didn't become a computer programmer because whenever I did programming I found it very unsatisfying and boring. I liked to create the finished products, but as the amount of effort exceeded that initial "hello world" I lost interest.
So there's a difference between the paths you didn't go down because you couldn't and paths you didn't go down because you were afraid you couldn't.
If you're focusing on specific claims of the OP like the timeline or the exact example mentioned, you likely also talked yourself out of some perfectly viable path, where you probably had greater opportunity for self-actualization, in a similar complainypants cowardly way.
And no fancy arguments on the internet can make that not true.
