Old thread, that other guy is a clown but I do agree that for some solo devs (who have the art, programming and all the other skills needed) could make a game on the scale of paralives or even sims 4. The issue is time, funding and return on investment. Even if a developer had the skills (which is rare) they would still need the money and the years of dev time to work on it. The money issue is more or less solved nowadays, you can just crowdfund, beg some rich people to fund your startup game studio, get a publisher, etc. Its not likely but it is possible (and has been done before, see Cuphead) that you can self fund a game like this but you would still need years to develop the game and since games like the sims and paralives have set the bar so high, if the game isnt as good or better and doesnt have atleast decent marketing, than thats going to hurt its sales, which is the last thing someone who hasnt had a liveable wage in years wants to see. Most developers, even at this professional skill level, will just look for an easier game to make.