At its best, entertainment is going to be a subjective thing that can't win for everyone, while at worst, a particular game just becomes a random symbol for petty tribal behavior.
Because of the nature of Moore's law, anything that an extremely clever graphics programmer can do at one point can be replicated by a merely competent programmer some number of years later.
Everybody's saturated with the marketing hype of next-generation consoles. They are wonderful, but the truth is that they are as powerful as a high end PC is right now.
The cost of adding a feature isn't just the time it takes to code it. The cost also includes the addition of an obstacle to future expansion. The trick is to pick the features that don't fight each other.
Programming is not a zero-sum game. Teaching something to a fellow programmer doesn't take it away from you. I'm happy to share what I can, because I'm in it for the love of programming.
Focused, hard work is the real key to success. Keep your eyes on the goal, and just keep taking the next step towards completing it. If you aren't sure which way to do something, do it both ways and see which works better.
