A tangential thing that I've found: I also started programming by doing games. Also did a "pong" clone in Basic, a "reverse" UFO game in BASIC as well (you controlled the ship and had to avoid getting shot, get to the bottom of the screen and "rescue" persons [white dots]). I also did some more sophisticated games in C using Allegro. And a bit later I experimented with Direct3D and OpenGL under Windows. I loved making games.

Fast forward 25 years later, I have installed Unity, Unreal and some other OpenSource game development environments, and I just cannot find heads or tails. I've followed some Udemy courses, but for me, the current "game development" process feels more of a "graphic designer" process than a programming process. I would love to make games, but it seems that the current "tools" are more tailored to artists type rather than programmer types.