[pcwalton]

There absolutely is far more labor than positions available for game designers. Same for game programmers, many of whom have education and background so specific to games that they are effectively unemployable outside that industry. There are a bunch of schools that train hundreds of students on nothing but how to build high-level game logic in Unity.

Almost everyone directly involved in production of game titles (i.e. not middleware) would be financially much better off taking the skills they already have and working in another industry—e.g. management for game designers, tech for programmers—with the possible exceptions of artists and musicians.

[bb88]

To some extent, you're right. Point taken, there is a glut of game engineers. However, your comment about people being virtually unemployable outside the game industry rings hollow.

In the course of my career, there have been many people from a variety of backgrounds that became full fledged software engineers. One was a truck driver who became a top Java coder at the company I used to work for.

And the game engineer has a step up on that guy, since he actually understands how to code. He just needs to understand the way the web works.