Why most beginners struggle with game development (and what actually helps)

I’ve been digging into why so many people (myself included at times) struggle to make real progress with game development.

It doesn’t seem to be about intelligence or even effort. The pattern I keep seeing is that most beginners treat it like a series of tutorials instead of a skill to build.

You can spend weeks following along with videos and feel productive, but nothing really sticks because you're not making decisions yourself.

What seems to help more is:

• building very small projects instead of big ideas
• repeating simple mechanics until they click
• accepting that progress feels slow at first

Once I shifted toward that, things started to make more sense.

Curious if others experienced the same or struggled with different things?