I switched from software development consulting to being a game designer at a large studio. I still use my programming skills part of the time to prototype and build content but there’s a lot more variety day-to-day especially as I’ve gotten to be more senior: writing design documents, working with producers on the game’s business strategy, working with artists and ux designers, managing and mentoring, etc. The biggest difference is that I care about what we’re making in itself. Trying to make a game fun for people is a much more rewarding creative challenge than “get people to click on ads” or “make the website scale”. When I was a software consultant I thought I could find motivation in the pure craft of code. But as soon as I got into games I realized that can’t hold a candle to making a product where you feel creatively invested in the end result.
Game companies that do “boxed product” releases (eg. giant games that come out on a date announced up to years in advanced that make their money from up front purchases) certainly can be. My company makes Games as a Service games which makes things much less stressful. We ship the game every two weeks so if a feature isn’t ready it just ships two weeks later. The result can be (with the right team culture a much healthier working environment. I’ve had better work-life balance and more time to allocate to skills growth (both my own and to support that of my reports) here than I ever did in traditional tech.
