[ido]

I never studied anything game-industry specific (I was a math major) & I'm working as a game developer now (albeit in a small company that does casual games, not EA and their ilk) and only worked in 'normal' programming jobs before that (doing mostly semantic-web and "enterprise" stuff).

Of the ~20 people working here only one (the youngest and most junior, probably also earns a lot less than most of us) studied in a games-specific program.

I think many people here don't have a degree or have one in an unrelated field (I have yet to find a CS-program graduate, the ones I know of mostly studied stuff like physics and math).

What you refer to might be AAA specific, or just untrue.

[NickPollard]

One thing to bear in mind is that the games programming domain is quite different from the typical web/application programming domain that many here on Hacker News are used to.

In much of Games Development there is a greater focus on optimization and efficiency, the programming is a lot lower level and you need to be able to squeeze as much as you can out of the hardware. All the Games Developers I have worked for and interviewed for always look for certain skills, like pointer arithmetic and bit manipulation, that might not be an issue if you're building a social network or e-commerce site.

[ido]

Maybe.

But in my experience my work here is remarkably similar to previous jobs I've had that weren't in games.

[sprout]

Casual games are more web programming. He's talking about the multi-million dollar productions that tax the top consoles to their limits.

[pcwalton]

From what I've seen, casual (iPhone, Facebook) game companies are far more open to hiring general programming talent than the mainstream. (Which, IMO, can only be a good thing for the industry.)

[ido]

Online/flash games here.

And yes, they do seem a bit more open and also a bit more laid-back.

The latter is probably at least in part because it's easier to make money in the casual space.