My whole design career started when I was first getting into video games (as per the screen name).
Doom came out in 1993 (I was 9) and not only was it revolutionary from a game perspective, but it was one of the first games that was easily modified which sparked my interest in computer graphics and coding. That led to several years of amateur mod making, which lead to me learning 3D modeling and is actually what made me discover “Industrial” design when I found out one of our teams lead artists was an ex-Big 3 car designer who decided it was more fun to model cars in games than it was in real life.
I realize that’s a far cry from the value kids get out of playing Super Bubble Pop on an iPad, but I think even Minecraft shows there is still some potential “hope” - minecraft is very much just a virtual Lego set that you can play with friends, and don’t have to worry about stepping on while walking around the house in the dark.
An engineer friends daughter is 6 or 7 and already picked up on how to write iOS apps…which gives me some appreciation for the future.
An article that was just sent out by Michael Abrash who is the Chief Scientist at Oculus (Formerly id Software and Microsoft) which give you a sense of the opportunity.