Many people would consider Desert Bus to be the most boring game ever published — though, technically, it wasn’t released. In the game, players drive a bus in real time from Tucson, Ariz., to Las Vegas at no more than 45 miles per hour. At the end of the eight-hour drive, you score one point. The bus pulls to the right, so you need to steer left to keep it from driving off the road.

Why would you play that game?

In real life, we do not have the expectation that every event is going to be exciting. In fact, most of us, it is safe to say, would prefer not to have an exciting commute to work, because that would mean something possibly very bad happened.

Unlike when you fire up a video game. There, if it’s not exciting, you don’t play it — unless of course it’s for charity (like on www.desertbus-game.org).

That is perhaps why we have games like Call of Duty and not Guard the Depot for 8 Hours.

Similarly, it’s much like the videogame industry. Many folks want to get into it, thinking that it’s all fun and games, only to find it’s a ton of work.

I’ve been lucky enough to work a few shows recently showing our Dismounted Soldier Training System (DSTS), which utilizes a head-mounted display, RFID tagging and CryEngine 3.0 to provide a simulation environment for soldiers to train their tactics. It’s easy to see it as “just a game,” but it’s not — it’s a serious training device, a fully interactive and customizable simulator, and getting everything working takes a lot of very smart people working very long hours.

I’m often posed the question of how to get a job working on something like DSTS.

My suggestions? If you’re technical, study programming. Work on game engines, get involved in communities of like-minded folks, but make sure you understand the underpinnings of modern game engines.

If you’re more artistic, study art. Games always need art!

If you’re interested in making your own games, make sure you can do one of those two things. Then pay someone else to do the other. Don’t ask people to work on your game for free — you get what you pay for in all honesty.

Be willing to live in an area that has companies doing this kind of work. If you wanted to work in the training and simulation field for the military, doing stuff like our DSTS project, you’ll want to live in Orlando.

But most of all, you have to love what you do, and remember that it’s not all games! But in the end, you’re making something great.