This is true. I find the puzzles I solve making android apps to be themselves more engaging than a video game; I'm uncertain where the draw to game programming is, unless you are rolling your own...

Huge win for gov-funded researchers in general

This is the old Luddite-Techie dialectic; will the people be enlightened enough to either a. destroy the things that will unemploy them b. design a system of "employment" that has minimal work and maximal rewards, and let the robots do the hard stuff For a lot of techies, they spend their entire life automating, never being rewarded for they've made so much as what they will make and how little work it will take to maintain. Extrapolate those values and you'll be pretty close to the psychology =]

Wow, the government really needs to get it's priorities in order; their fear of government debt in a depression will deprive them of brainpower, which will lead to widespread fear of government debt....

C++? What do I look like, a garbage collector? =]