I think you are 100% correct that the art/games that resonate with us as artist the most are the ones we make for people we care about (including ourselves). I have almost quit making art (games, music, everything) on multiple occasions because I feel like I “have basic ass tastes”, but it was actually just that I was not making art with any purpose beyond that of having made the art. I would say that even getting to 50% of scraping my soul is still a lofty goal for me, but you have inspired my to try.
Thank you for writing this, onion.