mm04

What advice would you give to people who wish to become strategy/4X-game designers? What to study in college, how to get into the industry, that kind of thing.

Follow up: Do you believe that it is realistic for a hobbyist game programmer working in his free time to come up with a 4X game that anyone would really want to play? I know it can be done for mods, but I've been following Jon Shafer's latest effort At the Gates closely and it seems that a three-person team working full time will need a couple of years to come up with a polished game (although I think it's going pretty well for them myself).