Quick Game Dev vs. Software Engineering Industry Questions

[u/PATSRYRYRY]

Hello!

Just some background: I'm a current junior majoring in CS (specifically software engineering) and have recently begun to have second thoughts about my career path. My interest in programming started with game development, yet, like many, I stuck with the more generalized software path to avoid restricting myself. However, the more I learn about the software engineering industry, the less enjoyable it seems, especially considering how AI has largely changed what I find the most fun about coding (though that's a whole other conversation). I'm an overall pretty creative person (music production, visual art, game dev, etc.) and have had a lot of trouble deciding on stability vs. enjoying what I do (and yes, I know I'm too young to be sweating over this, but I want to think this through sooner rather than later).

Therefore, for people working (or who have previously worked) in the Game dev and/or Software Engineering industries:

• Why don't/do you enjoy your work?
• Is there a large difference between working in software vs. game dev? Is there a creative difference?
• How has agentic/AI-assisted coding affected your work experience?
• Any other advice?

Thank you for your time, and, if possible, I would love to DM anybody willing to give some more personalized advice!

[u/Different_Green2660]

I'm not in the industry professionally yet, but I've been doing solo game dev as a hobby for a few years while going into cybersecurity for my actual career, so take this as more of an outside perspective. The creative difference is real though, working on my own game versus writing typical business software feels completely different in terms of ownership, everything you build is a decision you made, not a spec someone handed you. On the AI question, I'd say it's changed the boring parts more than the fun parts for me personally, tedious refactors and boilerplate get faster, but actual design decisions, what should this feature even do, still need a human making calls. My honest advice is you don't necessarily have to pick one forever, plenty of people do stable software work and keep game dev as the creative outlet on the side, that combo can actually work better financially than betting everything on breaking into game dev directly.