No, they are exactly the same.

It's hard to find a GDC talk on Youtube where the creator of a game doesn't get teared up talking about the despair and elation they felt slaving over their game for four years. Try this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOlcB-JxkFw

I also firmly believe there are games that won't be forgotten in a few decades.

Having watched a great number of these talks, I can say this isn't true. The devs are invested, sure. Chances are good they wouldn't be talking about it at GDC if they weren't. They definitely talk a lot about the ups and downs. But tearing up I've only seen once in a while; I remember that talk specifically because it was unusual.

It's not even remotely the same. The people getting distraught over video game projects have entered a delusional alternate reality and lost sight of what matters in the real world.

How does the Sistine Chapel matter any more than a work that will be experienced simultaneously by thousands, if not millions of people across the world, and will be immeasurably more immersive and entertaining?

I'm as defensive about games-as-art as anybody...but the Sistine Chapel ceiling is, and will remain, more important to humanity than 99.999% of games created.

Do tell us what really matters in the real world

Perform an experiment:

1. Watch someone work hard on a project they care about for months or years. It could be software, a quilt or a carpentry project.

2. Find a legal way to destroy it in front of them.

3. Say "Come on its just X not the Sistine Chapel."

4. Record their reaction and report back.

Your characterization is fundamentally unfair.

It's not as if they found a legal way to destroy it after the work had started. That legal way has always existed. How one can enter a profession where you're paid to make art and not know the rules is mind boggling. I know lots of famous music artists who've felt exploited, but those contracts are likely a lot more complicated than what these developers deal with.

If you're a carpenter, and I hire you to build something, and you don't know that I can stop the project at any point and destroy it, you've got serious issues. Ask any carpenter.

If Michelangelo was paid to produce a masterpiece, I'm sure he knew he didn't own the work. I should probably look up famous artists like him and read up to see if this was even unusual: Getting paid to make something that would be destroyed by the owner.

True. But I am pretty sure that the effort, passion, frustration, long nights, etc. that developers and designers put into those games are the same today as what Michelangelo went through while painting the ceiling. An impatient Pope constantly coming by wanting to see the progress, going from being a sculptor to a painter because of public pressure, hours upon hours of tedious and daunting tasks, so on. All while never knowing how it will turn out.

Its obviously not a 1:1 comparison, but the emotions and feelings are the same is what im getting at ;-)

Video games matter to many people, maybe not on the scale of a Sistine Chapel, sure, but there are legitimate efforts being made to preserve them like other works of art: https://gamehistory.org/who-we-are/

And 95% of the people here spend their days writing yet-another-CRUD-app. That doesn't mean you don't get invested.