Then again, I guess I'm not a typical twitch fps gamer. Story is probably the most important element of a game for me, and I found the story rather appealing.

This is why I liked it.
* Story is the most important to me (which is why I liked Mass Effect *, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Halflife *, NOLF, Dreamfall)
* I'm a PC gamer. Maybe the console controls were problematic, but I didn't find the PC controls that hard.
* It wasn't about killing endless hordes of baddies
* The characters were appealing
* Parkour is cool
* The soundtrack was great
* It wasn't 'the same'. It had a slick European feel to it.
* The main character wasn't the typical large breasted (with advanced breast physics) 'wearing-next-to-nothing' character.

Things I didn't like:
* It was too short. Triple the size and it woulda been great.
* Load times
* There were a few moves that weren't obvious, and a few scenarios that weren't obvious (running to grab onto the chopper to escape the police)

Things EA coulda done to make it more of a success, IMHO:
* They never sufficiently market test/market analyze the over-22 year old female gamer community
* They didn't sufficiently market to that community
* Overpriced for it's size, hence their expectations were too high.
* Release a decent DLC
* Better beta testing to catch the potential issues early

I'm 40 and have predominantly been doing tech since I was in my teens. And, you know, I'm finding experience actually helps in tech. Possibly more than youthful energy.

And management. There are many types of management that often get grouped under that one word; Project Management, program management, product management, technical lead, and people management.

Question is, what do you want to do?
Most 'tech' folks seem to want to go into management to take on a 'technical lead' role, where getting labeled a manager gives one more ability to provide technical leadership.

And hey, they get saddled with things like project management or even people management. And as their focus is on technical leadership, they don't necessarily spend much time on people management skills. That's why there's a general wisdom among some that tech people make awful managers...

People management is hard. Probably harder than tech. 'Cause, you know, a person is a bazillion times more complex that some silly computer program. Don't believe me? Design a person and build it.

As far as what to do? Follow your bliss.

I discovered something over the last few years related to this. I've been wanting to go into game programming for the last 10 years or so. Problem is, I've 20 odd years of gettin' paid to program. 10+ years of that in networking and security.

Seems I've too much experience. For that type of work, game companies expect someone to have lots of experience actually shipping games, and they sure won't hire me as an entry-level programmer. Even in this age of MMORPGs and multiplayer games like L4D.

When I was first lookin', seems they were either hiring veterans, or kids just out of college (or with no college at all) who would work cheap and long hours. Is this still the case?

Fortunately, I was able to find something in a related area, so I'm good now :)