I'm not sure that I'm convinced by this model. Truly great work is often a result of consistent professionalism combined with ridiculous productivity.
Consider jashkenas, for example: Over the last few years, he's written an impressive number of solid, professional libraries and released them as open source. So he was working from a high baseline, and he gave himself lots of chances at success. Sooner or later, he was bound to write something 1 or 2 standard deviations better than his personal average.
I'd say that CoffeeScript is at least a 9, but it's an outlier from a pretty large group of 7s.
It is true that most game-industry positions aren't really for designers, but these days a large number do involve some amount of design, especially if you want the game to be unique in some way. For example, AI programmers are in an odd position of doing "just implementation", but implementing a system that deeply impacts what kind of gameplay and design is possible (in some cases they quite literally write the tools that the designers will use to do things like write NPC behavior).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warcraft_Adventures:_Lord_of_th...
I totally agree. In my experience, the HV people the grandparent post refers to are capable of lots of "professionalism" but only when they care about their projects. The difference is how productive they are when they have to work on something they aren't passionate about.
Like I said, I'm "middle-variance". I swing between 4 (minimal acceptable) and 8 (max. sustainable). I can keep a 6+ going when I'm not passionate about a project but don't mind doing it, especially if I can see it leading to something better in the future.
I was high-variance when younger but I learned to become middle-variance over time. It's a necessary aspect of career maturity. So I probably swing between 4 and 8. I can hit 9 but it's not sustainable (although today's 7 was the 9 of two years ago for me) and before I find myself anywhere near 3, I do everything I can to fix the situation (possibly getting another job).
Also, I'm not at all convinced that passion is the key component in how great games are made. From what I can see the best games seem to come out of a sense of professional dedication to the ultimate product and the customer. Someone who is passionate tends to pick something up and work really hard on it for a while, but release it half-baked and ultimately unfinished. Id software's recent work is an example.
Contrast this with highly professional game organizations like Valve or Blizzard where, yes, there is passion for games, but there's something else too: a highly professional dedication to polish, completion, continuous refinement of game mechanics, etc. The latter simply produces better games.
And, uh, duh that a high level of talent is not enough to launch you into a position of major influence. That should be obvious. Everyone thinks they have talent, and it's expensive to even evaluate those claims. The only practical way to discover the truth of a claim of talent is to gradually expand a person's responsibility as they prove they can handle tasks. That's the way it's always been, and that's the way it's gonna be. The good news is that software unlike most industries affords you the chance to do this on your own, like, for example, that guy who did Minecraft, or any number of other successful indie game developers. They could basically write themselves a check into any game design position at a major company if they wanted to.
The problem I think is most are based on top-down command and control and managing by fear, not passion.
There are high-variance (passionate) and low-variance (professional) people, and various gradations in between. HV tend to swing (in work performance) between 2 and 10, while LV tend to swing between 5 and 7. If you're HV, it means you learn quickly and can do great things but it's also a statistical near-guarantee that you'll be fired at least once in your career (don't worry; in the long term, it's not as big a deal as you think it is).
Game development on AAA titles is no different. Don't go into it thinking a high level of creative talent will launch you into a position of major influence. You may or may not have creative talent, but not only do you have to prove it first, but you have to get into a position where you can prove it-- and the latter is much harder, because the only people who can get on projects where creativity is visible are those who've already put a lot into the political bank.
Passionate people look at the garbage games typical of the industry and think, "I could do so much better!" And they're 100% correct. That also doesn't matter.
My advice (which is so cliche): forget about games, except as a hobby and possibly something to study. Play them and build independent games if you wish, but consider "game design" a non-option without one hell of a lift. Learn how to program. Programming opens up a lot of problems that are fun in their own right even if you're not working on games. A lot of programming problems are far more interesting than running 8-figure video games; trust me on this. Become a really great programmer. That will pay off regardless of whether one ever goes into the video game industry. And becoming a top-1% programmer (takes 10+ years, start now) will make entry into the game industry at a decent level (for a passionate person unwilling to pay dues for decades) possible.