I usually tell "kids" (I'm 53 and this describes a lot of you, okay? No offense :-) ) not to get started in the games industry. I lucked out by starting out wri

I usually tell "kids" (I'm 53 and this describes a lot of you, okay? No offense :-) ) not to get started in the games industry. I lucked out by starting out writing game cartridges, then doing systems programming for the next 25 years. Now I'm back to games (or rather, gaming platforms). Remember who got rich in the California Gold Rush? Not the folks digging the gold, but instead it was the shop-keepers, bankers, real-estate men and similar infrastructure-like people. Be one of them. I don't mean go into things expecting to be rich, but don't be a starry-eyed fool and start at (say) EA just out of college, get burned-out and then expect to have anything out of it. Make sure you can use other things than a shovel. Get a grounding in systems. Do graphics, do networking, do LAMP, basically do as much as you can "wide" and focus on some areas that interest you ("deep"). Then you can work on games (great!) or servers or UX or whatever you chose. You can work at a games company (great!) or you can work some place else (also highly recommended). Don't focus on games because they're cool, do the tech behind them, with games as an incidental. Don't get into games and expect that rewriting the same piece of code in the same soccer game year after year is going to be fulfilling. You'll wish you had the ability to go somewhere else, so ensure that you do. And for God's sake, never think that you're going to get a foot in the door by starting out in Q/A. Just don't do that.