I think most people don't enter the games industry because they see it as a subset of programming. They learned to program or create art to make games, not vice versa. Many programmers began coding because they wanted to make games, including myself. But I think most people don't find game code interesting after they make some initial demos, outside of a few areas like computer graphics, which is pretty centralized nowadays in engine vendors like Unity and Unreal.

But there are those who believe in games, who live them day and night, who idolize famous developers like rock stars. They would like nothing more than to work at $GAMEDEV.

As a result, they might not be comparison shopping with other company types like other programmers between financial, startup, BigCo, and others.

I myself considered entering games for a long time, but growing fear of entering such a predatory industry, as well as a growing interest in PLT and other CS topics, led me away from that path. I still would consider joining or starting a small indie team, and participating in game jams or game hackathons. But I personally don't see the appeal of AAA jobs - the artistry isn't there the way it is with indie games, and the pay isn't either.

One note - the movement to F2P games like Dota2 and LoL seems to be improving this trend. These games ship features when they're done, like a SaaS product, and can avoid the crazy crunches and turnover that a release cycle perpetuates. Riot and Valve also have some of the highest industry scores on Glassdoor.