Do you like programming? How about technology in general? Can you feign interest during interviews -- and smile while on camera? How are you with online forums? Handshaking? Palm-greasing? How do you feel about staring at endless tracks of code over and over again? Excessive traveling?

Do you like being vilified on television and the Internet? What about in print?  Your family and loved ones -- do they enjoy prolonged periods of time without your presence? Take-out -- can you stomach copious quantities of it in a stuffy office environment?

Smells like success.

Finally, do you like all those things enough to put up with them every day for the remainder of your professional life? If you answered "yes" to every one of those questions, congratulations! You're ready to enter the world of video game development.

And not a moment too soon. As the industry has grown in size and stature, the scope of video games has kept pace. The development cycle itself remains largely unchanged, but everything else around it has expanded...sometimes grotesquely!

With the exception of booth babes, who are definitely not grotesque.

The most significant change to video games over the years has been cost. And while you are considering a career of developing video games you no doubt have an impressive inkling of the immensity involved in budgeting and financing the development studios and the employees within, of which your new job is attached to.

Fortunately, video game development doesn't necessarily paint a dichotomy between the talented few and the ones who struggle. For an apt example, look no further than Valve Software -- the brainchild of former Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington.

Today, Valve comprises a close-knit team of programmers and developers that have been mostly plucked from the modding and competitive gaming community. To those who clutch their interactive entertainment college degrees closer to their chests in fear, worry not: your chances of entering into the industry is inversely proportional to professional gamers and mod-makers giving a damn.

Pictured: Fatal1ty not giving a damn.

Of course, developers don't go it alone. Like the little paperclip helper in MS Word, publishers are there to remind developers of useless shit. (Yes, there are developers who self-publish, but face it: Hippie Software ain't gonna surface anytime soon.) Mostly content when dispensing decrees such as "no more money for you" and "we own you now", publishers maintain a vise-grip on your professional future. Also, they are shape-shifters.

Perhaps no other time in our history has the media played a more vital role than in the dissemination of critique and reviews related to video gaming. And that's exactly what they'll be doing to the result of your sweat and tears that you've been toiling over for the past year -- after tearing your game to pieces, do you think the media will sit idly by and let you continue your work unabated and unfettered? The media doesn't think so. The media never forgives. The media never forgets.

Demian Linn will make you his bitch.

Thus, developing video games presents an indelible commitment to overcoming personal and professional hurdles in order to achieve greatness. Whether by plunking away on the keyboard by the light of your monitor's glow in the garage or warding off the invasive vacuity of an office cubicle, a career in video game development involves a measure of enigmatic optimism that will ensure prosperous longevity for years to come. Or something like that.