Game developers: very sexy, easy to show off, has a (very) large supply of talent. Pay not bad, not good, work schedule very demanding.
COBOL developer: extremely unsexy, almost don't want to admit it publicly. Tiny supply, relatively much larger demand. Pay very good. Work schedule very predictable, not demanding. Almost a vacation.
I don’t think it’s really about the availability of talent but rather about the business end.
Video games are projects and comparable to movies. You need different talent to perform different tasks at different times. Once that talent delivers, you probably won’t need them again.
Unless you’re an established studio, that’s capable of rotating staff from project to project, then there is really no feasible way of keeping staff around that is no longer necessary.
COBOL programmers on the other hand aren’t workin projects where they become unnecessary, because the systems they work on are forever.
Basically you can say, that nobody is working on Rail Toad Tycoon today, but there are COBOL programmers who are still maintaining main frame software that was build before Rail Road Tycoon even released.
I’m not sure how you’d run video gaming differently though.
It's easy to slide into a maintenance role. I wouldn't say the pay is especially better. There aren't "maintenance engineers" making substantially more than "development engineers".
Game developers: very sexy, easy to show off, has a (very) large supply of talent. Pay not bad, not good, work schedule very demanding.
COBOL developer: extremely unsexy, almost don't want to admit it publicly. Tiny supply, relatively much larger demand. Pay very good. Work schedule very predictable, not demanding. Almost a vacation.
Supply and demand. Ignore at your own peril.