Several video games come with Ubuntu, and some of these appear similar to popular non-free commercial games. If the owner of copyright in one of those games complains, then everyone who downloaded Ubuntu might be getting a nastygram.

So let me rephrase it positively: What steps should someone take to find a junior-level position in a given company? What should one do first to earn enough money to pay the cost of living during an internship? How should someone spin, say, part-time web application development experience when switching careers to full-time video game development?

Provided one opens up, and provided the junior level positions don't themselves require a degree.

How does one pay for the cost of living while on an internship?

How about "I have a degree, but my six years of experience are part-time and in another industry." Is that a disqualifier?

Because a mouse and keyboard are considered too bulky to use with multiple players sharing a PC, even if your operating system does provide a raw input API for multiple mice and multiple keyboards. And because a lot of households have only one PC that the family shares. And because platformers have tended to be less satisfying to me when played with a keyboard than when played with a gamepad.

True, something like Lemmings or World of Goo would work great on a PC or tablet because it uses a pointing device in the same way an RTS uses a pointing device. But not all genres are made for pointing devices. How would you play Mario or Mega Man, for example, with a pointing device?

What kind of chair do you and others living in your household use to watch a two-hour movie at your PC desk? Perhaps a PC is a better entertainment choice for people who live alone, but what do you recommend for mom, dad, and ~2.3 children?

I'm not sure what you're getting at with your "win" thesis, but I'll try to answer each point:

And these "dozens of other people" all too often end up blasting sexual and racial harassment and griefing right back at him.

This happens often in households with children or at family reunions. Unless a game is rated M, children are an expected part of the audience, and parents not willing to buy each child his own gaming PC to create a home LAN are an expected part of the market.

As somebody who wants to get into professional video game development but who is not currently in a position to move to Austin, Boston, or Seattle to do an internship in order to gain the experience that the console makers expect, I do care. If set-top PCs somehow become attractive to typical users, or if Ouya takes off, then there will be a market for indie games that use gamepads. Otherwise, there will be no such market. I'm trying to find a plan B in case Ouya fails to gain traction the same way the various GP2X products have failed.

Likewise, working Wii consoles for dumping one's own copy of a game will be hard to find.

So do I, but I'm a geek. Most users are not geeks. How exactly does a PC's versatility benefit the average user in the living room? The average user expects a device connected to a TV to play video games, movies, and TV series, and that's pretty much it. The user doesn't expect to use a set-top device to surf, e-mail, tweet, or edit documents because a mouse and keyboard won't fit easily into the user's lap while in a recliner, nor can a user at a typical TV seating distance read the small text on web sites that target desktop PCs. Or if I have something all wrong, what am I missing?

Don't get me wrong; I want set-top PCs to become popular. But first I have to understand how to make them practical to a crowd accustomed to the limitations of consoles.

Likewise, a console owner can toss a new console at an existing setup to keep up with new games.

Even if I, a geek, am willing to learn to solder, the sort of end users that enable economies of scale aren't geeks and aren't going to want to solder. They want to buy something that somebody else has already made, so that they can plug in the adapter, plug in the cartridge, push a button, and get a ROM file to play in an emulator.

Which means you have to own the Wii in the first place, so why buy a gaming PC in the first place instead of just playing games on the Wii that you already own and doing everything else on a homework-and-Facebook PC or a tablet?

I'm surprised the application form allowed that to be submitted. Quite often, such forms have told me "Please enter only digits."

How do you get the 3+ years at a position when all financially stable employers that pay a wage above the poverty line (that is, not food service or big box retail) are requiring a college education? Or when a business folds? Or when a business moves to a different city?

Which leaves you with 10X candidates who were good enough but not chosen. What reason are you going to give when each of them makes a follow-up call to the HR department?

Until you discover that in a particular field, all three suppliers of a particular essential good or service deal only with companies that have already demonstrated "financial stability" and verifiable "industry experience", and the only providers of such experience require a college degree followed by an apprenticeship hundreds of miles away.

Cut those in half because a lot of people work part time while attending college full time.

You'd need to pay the cost of living whether or not you go to college.

So where should one obtain related work experience without already having related work experience?