I studied games programming for 4 years, worked in an AAA studio for 1 year as an engine programmer, and decided not to work on games as a career, partly because it ruined gaming for me. I couldnt look at games as art or entertainment anymore, I was focusing on how their lighting was rendered, noticing the blur of temporal anti-aliasing, critiquing everything at a technical level, etc.

If you want to make the game you want to play, be prepared to not want to play it. I know plenty of QA testers in particular who thought they landed their dream job playing games all day only to dread waking up and needing to play games all day. You really need a passion for building something other people want