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For me, it's been learning that software isn't king or the be-all-end-all of gamedev. I work as a programmer in my day-job and make games on my own for fun in my free time. This is the first time I've actually been actively in the community during a game jam, and it was eye-opening seeing all the artists, animators and musicians in the discord, as well as programmers like myself. This is also the first jam where I really put a lot of effort into the art and music and general presentation, and having to juggle that alongside designing, programming, playtesting, etc, was exhausting and left me with a big appreciation for the craft that goes into game development besides just the code.

I've also been getting more into board games lately, so that planted the seed of great game designs and systems existing outside the medium of software, and this just hammered it home.

This is a great thing to learn! Game designers are artists after all. 

I think it's important to recognize that programming a great game is an incredibly difficult thing to accomplish compared to programming traditional apps. Getting a feel for the game isn't a binary operation. You have to playtest and observe all scenarios that your game is capable of and use art/music to sell the experience beyond the game logic. Whether you succeed or fail is entirely subjective from the perspective of the player. 

Cool that you mention board games too! Programming a game allows you to account for variables that would be hard to keep track of in a board game, so there's a lot more freedom to customize the experience without being overwhelming.