That comic was published in 1990 and would have been 100% accurate at the time. If all you knew how to do was play Mario really well, there was no money to be made doing that.

The money came from someone realizing "hey Timmy seems to have a real knack for that computer thing; maybe there's some way he can do that for a living". That was the route I eventually went.

The other dream was getting a job writing reviews for a gaming mag and parlaying that into a job testing for one of the developers, but that was so rare you probably had better odds winning the lottery.

I suppose there was also the perennial demand for programming Texas Instruments graphing calculators which I may have done some for trade.

Later on (probably starting in earnest around the Quake and Half Life era) mods started to become a thing, but you had to have some decent programming chops to do that.

In the WoW era everyone wanted to work for Blizzard (a college friend who was one of the most talented people I know got an on-site interview), but few were chosen.

But if all you knew how to do was play games without any of that other computer stuff (and I had some friends for whom that applied) there was no money to be made doing that. I think a couple of them co-own a tabletop games store, but the rest all do something else

That comic was published in 1990 and would have been 100% accurate at the time. If all you knew how to do was play Mario really well, there was no money to be made doing that.

The money came from someone realizing "hey Timmy seems to have a real knack for that computer thing; maybe there's some way he can do that for a living". That was the route I eventually went.

The other dream was getting a job writing reviews for a gaming mag and parlaying that into a job testing for one of the developers, but that was so rare you probably had better odds winning the lottery.

I suppose there was also the perennial demand for programming Texas Instruments graphing calculators which I may have done some for trade.

Later on (probably starting in earnest around the Quake and Half Life era) mods started to become a thing, but you had to have some decent programming chops to do that.

In the WoW era everyone wanted to work for Blizzard (a college friend who was one of the most talented people I know got an on-site interview), but few were chosen.

That comic was published in 1990 and would have been 100% accurate at the time. If all you knew how to do was play Mario really well, there was no money to be made doing that.

The money came from someone realizing "hey Timmy seems to have a real knack for that computer thing; maybe there's some way he can do that for a living". That was the route I eventually went.

The other dream was getting a job writing reviews for a gaming mag and parlaying that into a job testing for one of the developers, but that was so rare you probably had better odds winning the lottery.

Later on (probably starting in earnest around the Quake and Half Life era) mods started to become a thing, but you had to have some decent programming chops to do that.

In the WoW era everyone wanted to work for Blizzard (a college friend who was one of the most talented people I know got an on-site interview), but few were chosen.