If you don't have a passion for playing games and burning need to create them, your chances of getting hired to make them are quite low. It is the first thing producers and executive producers look for during an interview. While I have never sucked on a lit road flare, I do know the kind of passion it takes to put up with the sweatshop-like atmosphere that passes for working conditions at most game developers and publishers. Of course, once the reality of the situation hits them, that attitude disappears faster than a sailor's promise when the anchor rises. The other side of that coin is that most wannabes won't do what it takes to be part of the game development community.
All most people see is the final product.
What they don't see is what it took to acquire the tools necessary to be there in the first place. Such as the four long years of college, taking every math course available and learning every programming language in the book. Or learning to draw 3D models with a mouse. Or learning how to use Microsoft Project and spending three months listing every one of the tens of thousands of individual tasks it will take to develop a new game from beginning to end. There seems to be this impression out there that a designer doesn't need to know programming, 3D modeling, the DirectX package, mathematics or any of that icky stuff.