There are some remarkable (but doable!) stories of indie devs whose passion projects accrued great acclaim, and hobbyists who made fan games, mods, or ROM hacks and were noticed and hired by game studios because of the outstanding quality of their work, their dedication, and having showcased their ability to collaborate with others on group projects within fan communities. Here are some of examples:
Of course, I'm biased; most of these games, I love to death and I will incessantly shower them in praise. But don't take my word for it: examine these games critically and figure out for yourself what makes them special, unique, and successful.
Mapcore is a great website and forum to check out and join!! See their Door Challenge, too~
Now, game development, whether indie or AAA, is not all success and roses. There are soooo many horror stories right now from people in the industry speaking out about being over-worked and abused, poor job security, workplace harassment, you name it. The industry is in a dire strait right now and in need of some serious overhauls in the name of work-life balance and workers' rights. I may link some articles or videos about this later, and a lot of people are trying to work towards change by speaking out and trying to unionize, but I still want to encourage others to make games (within healthy boundaries of not over-expending themselves!). I love it when people make games for fun and self-expression, you can work on a paid production team if you want (and you shouldn't work for anyone for free!), but I think making your own personal projects can be powerful, too. Go out there and try making a game! Make it bad, make it fun, make it your own. It's like taking up writing, or learning a new instrument, or making your own comics. It can be challenging, it can be deeply rewarding, it can be hard and it can be fun.
(Okay, like, as far as working for free goes, things like volunteering at an animal shelter or your local homeless shelter is totally a good thing! But just be very, very cautious about volunteering to work for free on a videogame or other entertainment-industry project. In most cases, if someone is expecting you to work on a game or animation, etc., for free, they're exploiting you and undervaluing your work. And, it can hurt other artists and developers who work in these industries as a career and DO depend on an actual income as hired artists and developers to survive. Like, if it's not hard to find someone who willingly gives high-quality, reliable work for free, then why would a game or animation studio bother actually hiring and paying someone else? If you're just making a game with your buddies for fun and not, like, working with a business whose priority is making money, that's different. But yeah, please think carefully about for who and why you lend your time, efforts, skills and talents. Plenty of horror stories out there about this, too, unfortunately. I think you should be cautious of revenue-share projects as well, but that's just my own doubts and less about actual examples of explotation I've heard and read about.)
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Oh, yeah, this is unrelated but 1bit heart doesn't have a wikipedia page and Iconoclasts is pretty lacking in its wikis/gamepedia, I should help with that!