Like most people, my dreams were shattered by the cold hammer of reality. Unlike most, I knew I had the ability to do it. When I set out to learn programing for my games I was told that it was "Impossable to learn programing from a book". I said that was bollocks, that the only thing you cant learn from a book is how to read. Over time I came to realise what he meant.
He didn't mean programing was impossable to learn from a book, but rather that it was impossable to learn programming from the books available.
From the best of the best, to the popular crap, from videos, to text, all of it has the exact same problem. Rather then giving you tools and showing you how they work, they give you a prefab Ikea CD rack, have you set it up, and that's it. Nothing is gained aside from a slightly better knowlage of how to assemble an Ikea CD rack.
In the rare cases that they do teach you the tools, they miss out a pretty vital detail. Usually it works like this.
"Ok, pull this level on the flux capasitor. Don't worry how it works yet, we'll get to that later." soon followed by "Now you have a detailed knowlage on the inner workings of a flux capasitor, you can now do X Y and Z" In some cases this is so bad I swore I skipped a page somewhere, but no, this is what they are like.
With the exception of a UDK Kismet video, all the paid video tutorials are just a guy mumbling into a microphone for a few hours, and do the exact same CD rack thing as the books. Trust me when I say not to waste your time on free 'comunity' videos. Some kid rambles into a microphone with licon park and a TV in the background until he says "That's not what I was going for, but whatever bye!" and not even the level of CD rack is gained. There is a 6 hour or so series on programming for UDK, and it is all just copy and paste from various other files and forums. That's like if the instructed for the CD rack just said "Get someone else to do it and take all the credit". It's crazy.
I know I have a programers mindset. I am very logical, and using inputs/outputs I can turn Half Life 2 into Dota, and Unreal Tourniment into resident evil. I know the programers job is to solve problems when they come up, but when it is a none sencical one, such as not being able to pick up items from one camera view but not the other I become powerless to fix it because my knowlage is limited and attempts to gain more are stopped by elitism and incompetence.
Over the years I have had many ideas for a business or orinization. A niche to be exploited or worthy endeavor. From a games archive libery and wiki that doesn't brand everything as theirs, to a shop for gamers and imported media. But one that I would undertake if I could would be a learning company. Not some exclusive but ineffectual school or a half arsed book series, but a real, serious company that cuts all of the crap and gives people the tools to craft their own creations. While it wouldn't have the repeat custom of the books and DVDs or the draw of snob value of a school, it would get by on it's reputation for delivering results. Even if it sank as a business it would at least force those to get their act together.