Good luck, man. I already did that, and it really paid off. I did it mostly alone, with my brother as musician, with no investment. But it isn’t easy. I gone for ensuring success, which meant making a complicated piece of software that is unique and for which i can be certain there is some market without having to second-guess the audience or compete with anyone.
Going the path well walked, gets you competing with all the 99.9% remakes that are entirely invisible. The most profitable game may be cow clicker, but there’s thousands upon thousands of other cow clickers that are not profitable, and which you don’t see. When you say you look at ‘success rate’ of X, don’t be looking at the % of the successes which are X, that’s your basic application of rationality to this decision right here. The simple toy games are not even exercises in game programming. They are exercises in marketing (and blind luck). If you had 10 000 hours of marketing experience, then you totally should go for them.
The big problem for me is the children down the line. You save some children, boys and girls, they grow up and have more children, who die after terrible suffering (in 10 years time so no singularity yet, but the oil is seriously running short with all the consequences).
I actually have suffered malnourishment as a child for several years (fall of soviet union related). Today i’m making good income by western standards—i have been very lucky. So I kind of see this issue from both sides.
As terrible as it sounds, I’d rather donate for a scheme where the child that is saved is sterilized. Otherwise the donations may indeed be measured in dead children at a discount rates—the children who die after severe suffering thanks to your donation making them exist in the first place. You can’t just throw nutrients into ecosystem and expect a morally good outcome.