Is it just me or is game development generally dismissed as child’s play? There is hardly anyone around me who sees my work as a profession, and currently I don’t even work on games but visualization projects in VR.
I get almost no support, neither from my friends nor from my family. I guess they just don’t understand what I’m doing and how complex the whole thing actually is
I have a similar experience.
But I think it depends on where you live. Where I’m from, the games industry is almost non existent and as you said, most people see video games as a child’s play, timepass rather than a genuine entertainment medium/art form.
On the other hand, I believe game dev is more ‘recognized’ in the West due to the well established and mainstream game industry there. We have celebrities making appearances in video games, so that does give games some credibility in the average persons eyes.
And yes, people do not understand just how complex video games are. The problem with support from friends and family is that most of the time, they have no idea about Game Development so they don’t know how to support you. For them, its like an unknown concept that they don’t know how to react to.
In the end, you’ll just have to deal with what you’ve got. I’d say join online communities where you can.
Depends on how you frame it. I don’t work and develop “games”. I work and develop “interactive software”.
My Fam automatically thinks anything involving computers is super complex and non relatable.
But at the end of the day, my name is the first mentioned, when their internet goes down or any I can not log into my email problem they have.
I’m not a Game Developer. I’m the family IT guy.
I’m the opposite.
my friends think I’m doing complicated stuff.
but me myself think that I’m playing.
every time I spent too much time on unreal I feel guilty for no reason…
I am an self-deployed Indie developer and don’t make much money from my VR development work, that’s probably the main reason. And if you’re not employed somewhere, working 7x8 and not have to drive at least about 50km to your workplace - then you don’t have a real job!
That I am actually working more than 60 hours, nobody wants to see. For some of them I am playing games all day 
Sometimes I wish I could go forward or even backward in time for instance my parents or even my dad’s female that possibly allegedly still working has job as female astrologist at Kopernik Observatory & Science Center in USA maybe I could meet myself from the past as future myself. Each in separate ways. For instance at least I would meet Kieran Culkin,Maculay Culkin,Michael Jackson. Christine Cavanaugh,Kath Soucie,Tress MacNeille,Sherri Stoner,Gail Matthius,Kathleen Turner,Julie Brown be female nannies for younger myself. Careless days. I could see as younger myself from the past and me in future we could both see Epic Mega Games and Sega Technical Institute Headquarters. Many years decades before Yuji Naka got arrested and putted in prison jail it’s still kind of bothering me to this day forward. For instance companies like Sega could be still first party company.
With my family, it’s kind of hard to say, tbh. I have an sibling who absolutely wouldn’t go for it. With my parents, it kind of depends; since one thought that an greyboxed level of UE5 was actually an game when it’s just an webseries that I was catching up on. The other one kind of hates most of the other stuff that I watch on YT after I had to explain exactly what it was.
I haven’t really floated the idea about being an game dev, around them. And I prefer not to, because I’m not the type to be constantly explaining stuff like that