When I was coming out of high school, I was trying to decide whether or not I should go to Digipen or a "real" university. Being a video game designer had been

When I was coming out of high school, I was trying to decide whether or not I should go to Digipen or a "real" university. Being a video game designer had been the only career dream I'd ever known, so Digipen had a lot working in its favor. Fortunately, my dad made sure that I contacted a local game designer before I committed to Digipen. He told me the most important thing I could do if I wanted to succeed was not become a programmer, but to study English instead. He said programmers were considered a dime-a-dozen by most studios, were often treated terribly, and truthfully, weren't exactly the most pleasant of people to begin with. By developing a background in English and creative writing, I would immediately give myself a leg up over most of my competition and my career prospects as a game developer would be significantly better off for it. This left me with a conundrum: what did I want to do more? Write stories and be treated well or write code and be treated like dirt? Neither. I wanted to write code and be treated well (crazy, I know). I still write stories on my own, and I'm in the process of developing my own game, but every time I read one of these stories, I feel much better about my choice to skip professional game development as a career path.