How do I know if I'm still making the games I dreamed of or just chasing metrics?

You can design systems players love, but years of shipping to numbers have blurred whether you are still making what you once dreamed of. That blur is real. When metrics decide everything, the quiet reasons you started, wonder, play, the game you wanted to make, get drowned out. They are not gone, only unheard. Metrics are not the enemy. They tell you something true about what players do. But they cannot tell you what is worth making, and mistaking one for the other is how a maker loses themselves. The question is not whether the numbers are good. It is whether you would still want to build this if no one measured it. Make something small for yourself, outside the machine. A tiny game, a mechanic, a prototype no one grades. Build it only to remember what you love when metrics are not watching. That small honest thing will remind you which part of you is the designer and which part is the dashboard, and you can start bringing more of the first part back to your work.