I worked on the software dev side in the games industry for years. I have never seen a worse time to be attempting to make a living doing that, it's pure madness. The endgame being pushed, and looking increasingly technically viable over a decade or so, is the user, holodeck style, describes what they want and it is assembled in front of them. There is a lot of cope in the games industry about this ever happening because of how disruptive it would be.

In the mean time as others have mentioned I know people, industry pros, that make money on Roblox and UEFN. The valuable part is a talent for creating gameplay systems, which is not in any way related to low level programming or rendering algorithms, then you stand at least a small chance, but due to how crowded the market is the returns on this get smaller every day.

To anyone wanting to make a living from the games industry I would advise simply going outside and doing something else.

Edit to add: I have noticed than when I started in games over twenty years ago people knew hard work was involved. These days if you tell people you work in games you are met with a response that you basically play all the time and are not serious, and to some extent this reflects the changing nature of most of the work being done in that period.

> if you tell people you work in games you are met with a response that you basically play all the time and are not serious,

That was how people responded when I told them I worked I was a game dev ~20 years ago too.

For Roblox I haven't seen the returns getting smaller. I've had a bunch of smallish games there for a few years, and it has been stable.

While there is a ridiculous amount of competition, so far it has been offset by platform expansion. When I started in 2020 the whole platform had about 30M daily active users. Now over 110M. Maybe my share of plays has shrunk, but it's now from a much bigger pie.

(I don't know if this holds true generally or if my games have somehow persisted better than the average game)

> the user, holodeck style, describes what they want and it is assembled in front of them.

I really don't think this is what most gamers want - and I think they'd like it even less if they tried it, for the reason you highlight 2 sentences later...

> The valuable part is a talent for creating gameplay systems

Beyond that, gamers like a sense of "community" - being able to talk to people who play the same game, have a shared framework for achievements and the like, etc.

I do believe generative gameplay will be the next big thing, but not to spit out an entire game by any means.

> There is a lot of cope in the games industry about this ever happening because of how disruptive it would be.

I don't think it would be that disruptive, we already have a sea of sloppy half-baked games to swim in and it hasn't destroyed the industry.

I think what people will quickly find in their holodeck reality is that the average gamer can't think up good games, that the shared playerbase is half the fun, and that there would be a serious shallowness to the experience.

I think what will really happen is that game studios will start pumping out even more shitty mobile games with AI, and the type of people who binge 20 advertainment games per week will be sufficiently numbed.

Meanwhile everyone else will continue to desire the same more genuine and substantive games from studios, that is my prediction.

> The endgame being pushed, and looking increasingly technically viable over a decade or so, is the user, holodeck style, describes what they want and it is assembled in front of them.

Maybe this is just more cope but I think its important to remember that anyone who can write will still read books written by others. AI will be disruptive but art is ultimately about sharing and receiving what someone else is trying to share.

> the user, holodeck style, describes what they want and it is assembled in front of them.

I think people have their head in the sand about how disruptive generative AI will have, not just to the game industry, but all entertainment industries.

It has started with music, 2D and 3D art, text to voice (voice actors no longer needed). Entire 3d environments, and then worlds, characters, story lines will be generated on the fly. The people holding IP will be the big winners (Disney, etc). If you don't hold any IP then you'll be shit out of luck.

I too started in the games industry 20+ years ago, and would not have recommended it even then. Crunch was brutal, the pay was low, and I left feeling like I hadn't learnt software best practices or really progressed in my skill set compared to people working in "boring" enterprise shops.