I'm in high school(I'm 15) and I live in Brasil, where join a game dev company would be very difficult(in BR there are few of them),while I don't join an undergraduate course I try to make games , my idea is make a game like Nelson Sexton, a self-taught 16 years old programmer, which made Unturned.I have two ways of development:

A)Make a game with almost no art or things that cost money, a game that I would like to play(going step by step).e.g.: start with the core of the game and gradually complex the game.

B)Search more about solo professional development and try to make a game profitable.

Which of the options above do you think is more appropriate.A profitable game would be better to me, but I guess it is very difficult to make it solo and I would like to understand the phrase:"make a game that people will play and not a game that you would like to play"

Can help you with you actual question as I'm trying to find something similar that works for me. A guy that I really like is ThinMatrix https://www.youtube.com/user/ThinMatrix
He doesn't seem like an experienced gamedev/programmer but It's really interesting to watch his devlog and his tutorials (even If you know the things that he explains).
So he does this while having youtube channel(probably some income coming for there) and a patreon page there people can support him.
And his way of doing indie gamedev looks aweosome.

Additionally
"in BR there are few of them" - are you sure? I live in a poor country(for the EU standards) coutry that is <7.000.000 people while the whole gamedev thing is happaning almost in only one town that is 1.500.000 people, and we still have ~5 studios of 200 people and a bunch if small once. So chances are in Brazil there are 28.5 times more gamedev studios.

Well, even if there are studios in Brazil, if there are few of them, that still might not help eric much... the amount of open positions might just not make pursuing game development as a profession a valid goal unless he is ready to start looking abroad for jobs.

Eric, let me start by saying that while lone wolf game development certainly has happened before and some were able to find quite some success with it, its an incredibly hard and risky business. Even a simple game can take months to develop, with no guarantee that your game will break even, or make any money at all. Additionally, when you are on your own, you need to cover so many bases that it is difficult to do a good job at any of it. Without marketing, for example, even the best game will most likely sell zero copies. For most games at least half of the money goes to marketing. That also holds true to small garage games, where money not available for professional ads is substituted by time invested by the dev to reach out to the press or the fans directly.

You can always hire freelancers, but now you need to pay money upfront for something that you are still not sure will ever make any money at all.

The harsh truth is, most games fail in the market, and most people moving into Indie game development do so too. Many have no idea about the business side even if they are good game devs, some just are not good at planning, and so on.

The good thing is, game development has a lot in common with jobs in other, more stable industries. Why not aiming to become a programmer, find a job that pays your bills, and do game development on the side? Maybe you WILL one day create that one game that sets the world alight, and can quit your day job to become a famous Indie game dev. You will certainly have to work harder (after all, you are working 2 jobs now), and yes, your day job might not be what you wanted to do with your life (though you might find it enjoyable and maybe quit game development on the side, who knows)...

But that is the life of most people trying to break into high risk, low wage jobs where too many people are fighting for to little open positions or the attention of an oversaturated market. Talk to some actors and see how many can live of their movie gigs alone... and how many have another job on the side. Same with musicians, or artists.

Don't feel bad for having a plan B, and actually having to pursue it for most of your life... contrary to our sick societys image, you can still make it even if you are over 30. And you are not a failure if you are not a rich prodigy playboy entrepreneur when you turn 21.

Above all else, start to make games. Get some expierience. Find your passion in game development. And see where it leads you. If you really love making games, you will most probably not mind investing some of your free time into it.

To get back to the original question:

Nobody will be able to tell what YOU need to do to be profitable with Indie garage games. Its different for everyone. You will learn a lot from analysing failures (much more than from success stories, survivor bias and all)... but by the time somebody can tell you about his huge success, that road has most probably closed.

By the time it became clear that mobile game dev was a goldmine, the motherload was almost depleted (speak, too many devs where moving into the market, and the price race to the bottom began).

You need to be ahead of the curve, find a niche nobody else has though about, and take risks (that niche might not be served yet because there is no market at all). That way, you at least have a shot to be the first one to find a new way of being profitable in Indie game dev.

There are some general ways to stay afloat that might still be valid, like producing tons of shovelware and hoping for a drip feed of income from each of our low quality games, adding up to a sum that might keep you afloat. But these are hardly ways to make it big in the game dev world.

Oh, and this book should be mandatory reading for everyone thinking about moving into Indie development:

http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1458725848&sr=8-1&keywords=lean+startup

It might not tell you how to develop a game, or how to find a profitable idea... but it tells you a lot about the mindset needed to manage risks and learn about market needs in an unpredictable business like game development.

One aspect that makes game development such an economically wonderful startup is that it can be done with very limited capital input. It does require a large degree of skill, talent, and experience to get rolling with, but it can be done with very little formal training or previous experience. The more training and experience you have, then the better off you'll be and the easier time you'll have with the first few titles, but there is little actively standing in your way from starting as a small struggling company and building from there.

Having fancy and expensive hardware is nice, but a 5 year old consumer computer and small monitor can get you started. (I know one developer who doesn't even have a proper desk yet. It is a door sitting on old wooden crates in the attic space over his garage.) Unlike many industries, such as anything relating to fabrication, 'good enough' is very much perfectly viable to start off with, and can be shockingly little really.

You can also build up an initial product as a part time thing, working some other day job to pay the bills. The product is easy to store, doesn't really spoil, and costs next to nothing in initial materials.

Game development as a career is not easy, and is not an instant road to being a millionaire, but it is very much doable if you're willing and able to put in the effort and have the creative drive to produce something interesting. Plan carefully, spend wisely, and work hard. Be honest with yourself and to your community, and find a product that you can build and build well. The bane of indy startups is trying to bite off far more than they can chew and doing it poorly. (aka, don't become Digital Homicide and make yourself a laughing stock.)