I remember reading this article a while back. It may be partially responsible for me starting my own game project in a custom engine. Also the last 10 years of my professional life have been spent wrangling Unity and Unreal, and, well, I just didn't want to do it anymore.

So I narrowed my game concept to be more stylized, no photorealism, no human characters, etc, in order to make something both unique, and deliverable.

Its inspiring to see others doing the same thing for similar reasons. Maybe I'm not completely crazy after all :)