A professor suggested I go into the video game industry. I responded with a 25-page-long narrative on why that was a stupid idea. I was going to copypaste it here and then was like, "eh..."
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...So what's the connection? Like I said, video gaming is a deeply dysfunctional industry. At the bottom, there are vast numbers of fans just looking to get in the door, and at the top, there are clueless managers that are utterly out of touch with the field. The result is stasis. Real problems get ignored, good ideas die fast, and instead there's just more of the same. The ones who rise to the top are the ones most willing to keep passing the garbage down. You probably see enough (and more every day) in education. I have come to realize that both are microcosms of bigger problems in society.
Rather than fix the dire problems with the game by hiring competent writers, programmers, and project managers, the producers of the game try to push the tripe to new audiences, by unimaginatively courting specific groups. Recently, they've made a very obvious push to women by way of hiring on feminist community figures, making lame pitches and instigating false controversies. This does nothing to fix the underlying problems with the product, nor is it even a viable strategy: my experience leads me to believe that women are no more positively indicated for the style of gaming World of Warcraft represents than they are for any other pursuit that is defined by typically male behavior. They'll buy it for the hype, play a few months, and leave.
Meanwhile the industry as a whole sinks further into the swamp as its core constituency goes back to playing games from 10-20 years ago. This leads to bizarre economic situations such as used copies of older games with a seven-digit production budget selling for five times the price of brand new games with nine-digit production budgets, even though the marginal cost of production (burning more CD/DVDs) is exactly the same (about a dime). It's a study in dysfunction....
...So, that's an experience I recently had, and I think you should bear it in mind when recommending the field in the future.
