I think you're right that we treat it that way, and I think that it's a problem. If you missed out on learning something about game art design, the worst that c

I think you're right that we treat it that way, and I think that it's a problem. If you missed out on learning something about game art design, the worst that can happen is the game art isn't quite as good as it could have been. If you missed out on learning something about software development, you can cause significant economic damage. You can check portfolio for basic programming ability, but it's non-trivial to check for all of the other supplemental knowledge.