Lol, currently off dota, I actually have 2 projects in mind,
1. is just for fun, "Tower of violence", basically a tower of stacking cats, represeting how many violent/aggresive tweet a persona has ever tweeted. scaling to real world objects. maybe adding a "chill scale or certificate" for people with 0 violent tweets.
2. I call it SensAi, I want to build an open source sensei,
equipped with a persona(of a fictional character for example),
persistent memory and research capabilities,
let's say you wanna learn to produce house music,
It would evaluate your current level, your goal, research and build a roadmap, with quality reading/listening/watch materials,
will give you assignment, evaluate your progress, and give feedback until you reach your goal.
For a long time I was thinking about building side projects to make extra cash, but it always made the building process a chore and daunting, so now, I'm building free stuff that I enjoy and hoping other would too.
Fair points honestly, and ones thats been going through my mind constantly,
and like Alan Watts says, we are human-beings not human-doings, and I dig that.
I think that for me, creating this site was about making myself uncomfortable to the point of, if I game, it's about relaxation and lesiure, and not something I do because I have no way other way to spend the weekend, going out and making friends gives me anxiety so I'll just spend the entire weekend at home gaming all day for 2 days.
I still game with my kids, but we play coach none addictive games on nintendo, over the course of years I realised I can't really balance stuff like dota.
as for your last point, that's actually a really really cool idea! might add it =]
Your middle point is great and very relatable; I've had the same frustration/argument with myself before: Am I playing this game because I actually want to, or because it's "easier" than anything else I could be doing?
Props to you for pushing yourself to confront the uncomfortable!
I mentioned my profession, didn't claim to have written the code.
Also, I did spend a week time on building this and trying to make a nice experience to inspire at least one other person, if you like it I'm glad, and if not, then what about it?
It's not like I'm charing money, placing ads, or collecting your data.