I'm fairly new to the community here: Discovered AGS during summer 2013 when I finally gave up on online browser-based games, realizing they were all con jobs in the end.
I've always loved games and creating them especially...Still have several of my creations on audio cassette tape for the TRS-80 and the Commodore 64 back at my mum's house, including a 2 player war-game version of Lord Of The Rings (man...I gotta check that one out, see if it still runs, and try to port it...It was sweet!)
Anyways...after online gaming finally died for me, I started thinking about what the most fun I'd ever had with games was and I realized that it was the old LucasArts adventure games, especially DOTT and Sam&Max. This got me to wondering if maybe the source code for those games had been made public by now and if I could maybe mess around with it to create my own games.
Some Google sessions later:
I found ScummVM and downloaded it, thinking it was an engine which gave access to programming in SCUMM. I was disappointed to find out that it was not, but found similar questions asked in the ScummVM site's forums: If you could create games via ScummVM.
In one post someone said something like: "No...you are probably looking for something more like AGS" with a link to this site. (For all I know it was one of you guys reading this right now

)
I came here, and have not looked back since!
So...this thread is about how AGS has helped you so here goes:
I realized I had kind of abandoned the fun of creating artistic projects after having a children's picture book called "Cow Story" published together with a great mate of mine, and it didn't exactly take the world by storm.
(Available
HERE and
HERE and many other places if you Google "Cow Story Ross Moffat" for example)
Anyways...shameless plug aside...I guess, long story short, I thought it was time to put the child in me away and start being an adult...
How wrong I was! All I was doing was wasting time playing pointless online games, dreaming of maybe one day creating my own (yeah yeah...I didn't do too well on the "putting the child away" thingy)...
Time to make a point I guess: AGS blew me away because I saw it didn't take a masters degree in computer science anymore to create something that I just wanted to.
I still have very little idea what I'm doing and THAT'S THE FUN OF IT!!!
Case in point: I just caught the 80's movie "The Philadelphia Experiment" on cable and, while watching the often inconsistent SFX scenes had an epiphany: Those guys doing the effects were just making it up as they went along...There was no precedent for most of what they were trying to get on film. They just messed around, brainstormed, and tweaked shit until it looked kinda like what the script said it should. (Same for any 80's movie really. Just using this one as an example)
And I thought: MAN! They must have had the most awesome fun time doing that!!!
These days anyone can make a seamless SFX movie given enough money. There are recognized procedures for pretty much whatever you want to get on the screen...You just check all the boxes, plug in the money, and it's done: HOW BORING for those guys these days! How they must envy the old-school SFX dudes who had to just make it all up as they went along...
That's what AGS is for me right now: I'm just making it up as I go along, like I had to do back in the '90's when I made the 3D graphics for Cow Story (there was no way to put HAIR on a 3D wolf back then...but I figured it out), and having a hell of a good time!
Anyways, to sum up: AGS has given me back the feeling of just wanting to make my own personal world/story, something I can look at with pride, and to the devil with anyone who doesn't feel the same.
P.S: It's also made me hyper-aware of anything slightly connected to adventure games: If you watch the old '80's Philadelphia Experiment: There is a scene just after the two sailors arrive in the "modern" world of 1984 where they are walking in silhouette across a desert in a long panoramic shot. I thought at that point: "WOW! What a great walk-cycle!"
The scene starts at 16:50 in
THIS YouTube video.
Okay...done. Thanks if you read all this!