This statement can cause more confusion and disbelief than you'd expect. While it hasn't been true for me every since I
sold out and became
middle management, for a while I really did play video games for a living. I joined
Activision as part of their online services division, and quickly transfered to
QA where I spent the next 2 years testing game software.
Working in the video game industry has been covered pretty well in the node of the same title. For anyone interested in getting involved in the software industry, especially the software entertainment industry, I recommend getting a job as a QA tester. You can learn a lot. Ironically enough, most of the best testers I've worked with have been people who weren't into computer games, and often didn't have strong computer skills. Because they didn't play the games, but instead focused on really testing them they did better than the hard core gamers.