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I worked in games for around 11 years, before giving it up for job security and decent pay and conditions. I started by volunteering to do testing for a local games company for free, that experience got me a full time QA job with a hardware manufacturer and I went from there. I mostly did QA but spent a few years as a designer and a couple of years as a producer. I know a good few people who took the same approach. But I started 20 years ago, and things have changed a lot in that time. With the rise of the Indie Developer, I reckon your best bet would be to pick up one of the "game maker" type packages that are available and make your own game in your own time. If you want to know about the theory of games design, there are plenty of sites out there to explore. I think GameDev is still going... I will say, though, as with the music industry where not everyone can be Madonna, Katie Perry or the Rolling Stones, in the games industry, the chances of you working on a AAA million seller are slim. 90% of the time I spent in the industry involved working on games that were mediocre, at best.