Christ, I'd even argue that you can be too old to start learning vidya.
"Everyone has 10,000 hours of being bad at something."
Assuming you worked 9-5 every weekday, that 1250 days. That's nearly 5 years (1250 / 252 working days a year = 4.960).
Then consider how long it takes to make vidya. 5 years per project roughly- if it's anything decent. And the first time it won't be decent. Your "magnum opus" (assuming you get it funded) could be the third or fourth game you work on. Hell, you might always be working for a studio on someone else's project- while you're underpaid and overwork in conditions rivaled only in Asia.
So if you started learning at 18, you'd be ready to make vidya at 23 and your first real finished game would be done when you were 28. If you started at 25, you'd be 35 when you were done.
A 35 year old person who walks into a dev studio hoping for a job. Notice how all the new developers are young? Notice how all the old developers already have experience? How are they gonna react to someone who is an adult, with no prior experience? Someone who's too old to get along with the rest of the younger team? Someone who's too inexperienced to be with management? The only time you see someone over 30 shilling vidya at E3 is usually someone who isn't a developer.
And that calculation is not including the few years you spend making shorter & simpler games to test out shit. That's not including the connections you need to make to get people to do the shit you can't (music, graphics, etc), assuming you don't spend another 5 years learning how to do each of those bits. Each. That's not including time you take off from learning for funerals, birthdays, parties, commitments, or days you get stuck on the same problem. And that's a assuming you don't work. And for a lot of you, you need to work as you have 0 income or family to live off. So, lets make it 9-5 a weekend, and those 1250 days over 5 years becomes 12 years (1250 / 105 = 11.90).
If you are over 20- I'd argue you will be too old to be employed when you have learned to make a game, and even if you can work in isolation and do it all, you'd be past your physical prime; so all that money & "fame" you have won't get you a young girlfriend. She'll be the same age as you. Past her prime.
And even if you are smart & learn it quicker- you'll be stuck in a shitty company that treats you like shit. You know better, but nope, you need to make iPhone trash, or a game with so much executive meddling it's AAA slop. And even if you're an indie, you're being judged by the most corrupt & clique-y reviewers yet. Sure they're respected less & less, but good luck spending 5 years making a game, only to get less money from sales than your 5 years working as a programmer in other industries would have gotten you (or maybe that's the clique talking, trying to drive out people so they have the industry for their friends. Good luck kissing up to HR- that happens in Vidya to!)
But, I'd argue we need more good publishers (let devs do their own thing, advertise to the right audience, etc) but I've got no fucking clue how you pursue a career in that and make your own company that turns a profit (since no fucking AAA publisher will change unless you become the boss- and that'll require soul-selling brown-nosing).
I was in a no-win scenario ("Get a job or go to uni."- good luck explaining what I just did to your family). But not all of you will be.
And these courses only survive because people apply. Plebs will always apply, but so do people who are smart- just naive. People who'd find work in other industries if they didn't waste time. They day Universities shut "Game design" courses because no one can graduate or they can prove no one can be employed will come sooner when people who can design games just make games in their own home. And that's not even including the SJW brainwashing in the states.
You wouldn't buy from a bad dev.
Don't support bad education.
