I agree more or less with everything that has been said so far. For me, the kicker is time and money. I'd love to be at home developing all sorts of cool stuff all day, but having a full-time job already kind of puts a bit of a kink in that plan. That, and having money to throw at good tools. I'd love to get a copy of Maya, having worked with it before, but there's no way I'm going to throw $3.5k at it to buy it as a hobby developer.
Have you given Blender a shot lately?