Making games is a lot more than programming. It requires A LOT of sub-skills, many of which you probably haven’t even considered yet. I know I didn’t. And creating successful games, as a solo or small indie studio, without each and every one of these sub-skills is virtually impossible. The only way around it is really to outsource it to someone who already has the skills you lack, and that gets expensive very quickly. It also puts you in a permanent position of reliance on outsourcing that work, as it will only become more critical and more challenging the further you go without doing it yourself. It also becomes increasingly difficult to judge how well you’re getting value for the money you’re paying, as you don’t really understand what’s going on beneath the surface to create the results you’re seeing. This is exceptionally true for marketing, unfortunately. To consistently build good, successful games, you’ll need to learn art, audio, programming, storywriting, level design/world building, and marketing (usually social media these days). Now that list might seem really long and intimidating, especially if you’re brand new to all of them, but the truth is that most people can get good enough at all of them to be successful with enough practice and patience. And if you have friends or connections with those skills who want to build games with you, that’s even better! But you can absolutely learn to do this on your own, and I would strongly encourage you to do it even if you’re going into this alone.