This. Also, even after all the press about crunch time (https://kotaku.com/crunch-time-why-game-developers-work-such-insane-hours-1704744577 https://kotaku.com/

This. Also, even after all the press about crunch time (https://kotaku.com/crunch-time-why-game-developers-work-such-insane-hours-1704744577 https://kotaku.com/crunch-time-why-game-developers-work-such...), the hours are still bad. A lot of the skills are so specialized that they don’t transfer directly to more common types of software. Most backend developers don’t need to know about graphics pipelines, physics, or any knowledge of game engines or animation engines. Finally, other than distribution and marketing, the thing that makes or breaks a game is design - whether it’s fun (https://www.quora.com/Is-it-easy-for-a-software-engineer-to-learn-game-development https://www.quora.com/Is-it-easy-for-a-software-engineer-to-...). It’s hard to design a fun game if you haven’t played many. You don’t need this skill to work on other parts of a game, but if you’re not there for the money, work environment, or personal passion/impact, not much is left. If you want to tinker and learn something new, spend a few weeks writing a basic platformer with a HTML5 library like Phaser or melon (many tutorials online). You’ll have to consider some of the same problems as more complicated games, but it’s much less work.