> Could you elaborate on why you didn't like the gaming industry?
Whoa, Pandora's box! :) I'll try not to break any NDAs and still be informative. Apologies if this degenerates into a rant. A lot of this stuff depends on the developer/publisher pairing you happen to work for, although I talked to quite a few people at Rockstar and it seemed even worse there.
* The publisher is always right. Even if they request illogical, stupid things, which clearly won't work, you have to implement them, only for them to withdraw them later. I spent weeks on stuff like that.
* Even 'obviously' good development practices seem to be considered purely theoretical, at least at the studio I worked at. The code was terrible, the bug count was astronomical throughout the project, because there was never time to fix them, everyone always had to add new stuff. The whole thing didn't even get any serious QA until AFTER the original intended release date. (which eventually slipped by almost a year; I blame all of the above for that)
* Uncompensated overtime is bad enough, but the attitude with which it was handled was the worst part. "No, I'm busy this Sunday" was treated as a serious problem and you had to have a 1-on-2 "chat" with senior management where you'd effectively be bullied into agreeing to working yet more overtime. They even tried to talk one guy out of being best man at his friend's wedding.
* There was always promise of that vaporous concept of bonuses, but to me it was pretty clear that the publisher had no interest in promoting the game, or even in it being a good game. I think everyone else was either lying or wearing their industry-standard rose-tinted-glasses. I left shortly before it was released in the US but as far as I can tell, it never made it into any top-10 sales list. It's not even out in the ROTW. (yet?) I suspect that nobody is getting any bonuses. (if the studio is even still alive by then)
* At least in the UK, game industry jobs are terribly paid compared to other programming jobs; specifically, about 30-50% less. And that's baseline salary, many "real" jobs pay overtime or give TOIL. Non-programming game jobs pay even less; my salary wasn't even enough to cover cost of living, even after being promoted pretty rapidly.
Sure, some of it is pretty cool.
* I personally really enjoy engine programming, which is what I was hired to do, even though I only did that until the engine/tools work was done.
* You tend to work with some pretty smart, if highly cynical people.
* I got to play with a Wii devkit a couple months before the Wii was out.
* You're making games!
I think I'd only work in games again if it was either for a very small company, or it was a company that has made >50% really awesome games that I personally enjoyed in the past. I'd definitely "test drive" the company before I stayed there, i.e. quit within the probation period if it felt iffy. EDIT: Yes, it's possible to be that choosy if you're any good. The industry greatly overhypes how hard it is to get in. Having been involved in the key parts of the hiring process (CV screening, interviews) at the company, I know how difficult it is to hire programmers.
Published game I worked on: Battalion Wars 2.
YMMV.