Posted on the twitter but I'm screenshotting it here because this is something I think about a lot. My last project was like 7 years in the making, in my spare time, in fits and starts with some progress here and there. Looking back it's sort of a miracle it did get released, and that I went back for more bugfixes, which sort of helped but it's still not great.
I think the real problem is that "hobby" games aren't taken as seriously. It seems like you have to quit your job and do the game dev thing full time if you want to be taken seriously. In reality, the games I made for Glorious Trainwrecks or random low stakes gamejams were a lot more expressive and had less stuff going on, and therefore less stuff to break.
Stardew Valley didn't help. It's held up as a "One Man 5 year passion project" when the reality is the guy had his rent covered by his girlfriend and he crunched for basically 5 years straight. It's an unrealistic and impossible standard, but it's what everyone expects you to do. People expect a Stardew Valley quality game out of 5 years of development. I feel like this is mainly driven by consumer expectations, the era of the steam curator, etc.
As I think about my next project I am like "How can I make this in maybe 3 years instead of 5" because anything longer is really painful to work on. I did do multiple tiny projects in between starting and finishing it, but, ughhh, you know.
Even after cutting scope, and even after resolving to make it freeware to lower the stakes, it still was a pretty heavy lift. I think if I were starting over I would have resolved to make it freeware from the get go.