So your teenager tells you they want to 'make video games' for a living

I own a game company (www.kidoteca.com) and I still own legally a sorta bankrupt game company (www.agfgames.com don't expect much on that site, it is sorta bankrupt for a good reason).

Also I worked with mobile games, and mobile apps that are not games at all.

And I went to a game school (I have a bachelor degree in Game Design and Planning).

First, the game industry as a whole, suck, the pay is HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE.

One year when I was particularly cash strapped, I dumped the game industry and went to a normal mobile dev job. My wage jumped BLOODY FIVE FOLD (I am not kidding).

Now that I am back working with games, I am earning half the money I was (some people might ask: why you are doing it? it is because I love doing what I do... and I won't switch unless someone offer me like 6 figures USD).

Beside the huge pay gap, the game industry is also very toxic, full of crunch, and full of jerks. Some people say it has rampant sexism. It is not sexism, actually most guys are not sexist at all (actually it is easier to find white knights than misoginists), but it is filled with jerks of all kind, noone is safe, NO ONE. You will get bullied for being female, male, black, white, asian, red hair, black hair, bad teeth, too good teeth, rich, poor, too good Team Fortress 2 skills, too bad skills, not liking Minecraft, liking Minecraft... People will just hate you, period. It would be like living and working with 4chan 24/7 (or just look at the most popular game forum: NeoGAF)

And finally, making games is HARD, DON'T do it because you think you like games you will like it, you will not, there are lots of boring tasks and crazy tasks. Do it only if you like what you have to do (or if you are good and can tolerate it).

Also, as consequence of making games being HARD, expect failed projects, companies, jobs, even marriages, game industry has lots of those.

And remember, although making games pushes you hard and forces you to learn a lot, you will find that your skills are quite unique and not much good for the rest of the market (With few exceptions of some specialities, like backend engineers or tool programmers), there are not much companies there wanting someone that can script levels in awesome ways, or that want a module file musician. And for coders, commonly in the game industry you might end learning Lua... Then good luck finding a non-game job that use that.

All that said, I can say...

Hell, I still love my job!

Can't say I agree with this entirely. I absolutely agree that going to college for four years will not make you into a good artist. But "being born with it" will not make you a good artist either.

Hammering away at it two hours a day from age 12 to 22 will make you a good artist. You may never be a great one (that is where being born with it comes in). But you will be a good one. And the same is true for most pursuits.

There was a great forum post a while ago where some guy could barely put together a stick figure and three years later (after an hour a day, every day) he was making oil paintings that people would actually pay for. I can't remember where though. Anyway, that sort of thing has nothing to do with talent. It's hard work and sticking to it.

Hobby game dev is a Real Thing now and can be picked up by people without coding skills(via tools like Twine or Game Maker). Those tools are only going to get better, and the market for readymade assets is only going to grow. The cost of video game creation is likely to go down so sharply in years to come that we won't have anything resembling the industry status quo, which is tainted all over by cost and financing issues that drive all of the things we currently rail against(crunch, risk-aversion, socially detrimental profit-seeking, monocultural demographics).

As well, if we treat "gamification" as a core organizational goal, instead of a consultant's buzzword, then one can imagine a future in which new, forward-thinking organizations will find reasons to keep game designers on staff.

The transition towards low-budget indie efforts is a great immediate improvement. Although most who try won't be able to afford to do it full-time for very long, in that case crunch is self-enforced. We'll have a lot of passionate moonlighters instead of angry worker drones.

I definitely think "I show an aptitude for art and graphic design, and enjoy doing it, so I will attend college to learn and grow" trumps "I have some magical amount of god-given talent."

But maybe that's because I never touched a compiler before college, and it hasn't affected my career.