[cloakandswagger]

Agreed. Implementing even a trivial game like chess or Pac-man requires either a huge amount of knowledge re: programming concepts or an equally huge amount of hand-holding from the game engine and tutorials.

In fact, I would rate game programming as one of the most difficult software domains of all. I can't think of any other domain where you're immediately hit with the same level of algorithms, performance concerns, design questions, etc.