[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.