I’ve spent the past 10 years making games and getting better at it. And just recently I’ve realized how really really good I actually am at it.
Good enough to make billions and/or impact/recruit many (future) academics? Then do it! Use your superpowers to do it better than before.
And if you are not good enough, then what else will you do? Will you be good enough in that other thing? You should not replace one thing for another just for the sake of replacing, but because it increases your utility function. You should be able to do more in the new area, or the new area should be so significant that even if you do less, the overall result is better.
I have an idea, though I am not sure if it is good and if you will like it. From the reviews it seems to me that you are a great storyteller (except the part of writing dialogs), but your weak point is game mechanics. And if you made a game, you are obviously good at programming. So I would suggest to focus on the mechanical part and, for a moment, to forget about stories. People as SIAI are preparing a rationality curicullum; they try to make exercises that will help people improve some of their skills. I don’t know how far they are, but if they already have something… is there a chance you could make a program (not a game, yet) that students could use? Focus on the function, not form; do useful software, not a game. So, step 1, you do something immediately useful for increasing sanity baseline. Step 2, after the rationality curicullum is ready and you have made dozen programs, then think about the game where you could reuse these exercises as parts of the game mechanic. And invite other people to help you (you already know you need someone to help with dialogs; and you probably also need game testers). My point is, first do something useful for teaching rationality, and only then make it a game. Thus the game will not only be about rationality, but it will actually teach some parts of rationality—and that will be also a great recruiting tool, because if someone liked doing it in the game, then LW will be like an improved version of the game, except that it is also real.
Good enough to make billions and/or impact/recruit many (future) academics? Then do it! Use your superpowers to do it better than before.
And if you are not good enough, then what else will you do? Will you be good enough in that other thing? You should not replace one thing for another just for the sake of replacing, but because it increases your utility function. You should be able to do more in the new area, or the new area should be so significant that even if you do less, the overall result is better.
I have an idea, though I am not sure if it is good and if you will like it. From the reviews it seems to me that you are a great storyteller (except the part of writing dialogs), but your weak point is game mechanics. And if you made a game, you are obviously good at programming. So I would suggest to focus on the mechanical part and, for a moment, to forget about stories. People as SIAI are preparing a rationality curicullum; they try to make exercises that will help people improve some of their skills. I don’t know how far they are, but if they already have something… is there a chance you could make a program (not a game, yet) that students could use? Focus on the function, not form; do useful software, not a game. So, step 1, you do something immediately useful for increasing sanity baseline. Step 2, after the rationality curicullum is ready and you have made dozen programs, then think about the game where you could reuse these exercises as parts of the game mechanic. And invite other people to help you (you already know you need someone to help with dialogs; and you probably also need game testers). My point is, first do something useful for teaching rationality, and only then make it a game. Thus the game will not only be about rationality, but it will actually teach some parts of rationality—and that will be also a great recruiting tool, because if someone liked doing it in the game, then LW will be like an improved version of the game, except that it is also real.