What about the good amount of kids that take part in the modding community? A lot of them aren't super geniuses, but they are passionate and competent and work on scripting existing engines, map-editors, and so forth. Is that not a viable route for aspiring game developers? It feels a little unfortunate if that's the case.

This will sound astoundingly naive, I'm sure, but I really feel like our society is pretty cruel to young people between 18-25. If you fail in someway during these years, whether that be not getting into the right college, picking the right major, or picking the right career path, you do fall behind. It's one of the reasons articles like this even have to be written, to make sure young people don't waste time failing.