When I was younger I wanted to work in the games industry and spent most of my teenage years programming games engine,, I got pretty good replicates of quake 3 etc. however I heard too many horror stories and it is also hard to make a career out of it (e.g. Much less opportunities for progression, you start off Asa. Programmer and go to senior programmer and then what - not many leads and managers around compared to other fields). Plus you tend to get underpaid, especially if they rely on profit sharing. A friend of the family is quite famous in the games industry and he basically quit.
Saying that recently started making my own little game engine, Just toying around really. I had completely lost interest in programming but remembered my love for developing graphics, physics, lighting models etc.. I find it is a nice mix of maths, physics, interesting data structure and algorithms, requires efficient coding and pulling out performance. In any industry you spend most of your time doing repetitive boring glue code, tests, UI and general fluff rather than writing algorithms - and I say that as someone who regularly has to write fairly advanced algorithms but anytime you are in industry you always end up with the glue code. The thing is if you work on a commercials game you will suffer much of the same problems, just being part of a big team.
