There was a brief, glorious time when self-taught technologists could compete in the job market. Yes, there is (or was—the job market changes so fast now) a push by some companies to hire developers without degrees, but the intent seems more about paying less for the same (or better) results rather than valuing capability over pedigree.

To learn on your own works best with intrinsic motivations, which can be quite diverse. Some were looking for a brass ring or golden ticket (both Boomer terms kept alive by boomers running Hollywood) to trade their way out of a dead end job or financial poverty. Some were just curious, while others just had a knack for tech and enjoyed the challenge. Or, in my case, all of the above, though it started with playing PC games. I had a low-end, second-hand Packard Bell and a BBS account (look it up ??). Access to shareware games (look that up, too ??) was only half the battle for someone on a $0 budget.

Many game developers target their code at the latest and greatest hardware and not a three-year-old department store discount model with ten more payments to go. I learned to tweak system files to boost performance enough to play the games. I became hooked enough on the games to write game reviews for a couple of now-defunct ezines in exchange for a byline and free games. It also revealed that a PC was more than a platform for gaming and desktop publishing and could be used in god mode!

One of the last games I reviewed before becoming a paying consumer was Far Cry 2. It is an open-world game, meaning you can basically do anything you want and go wherever you want, so long as you can survive or access it. It has an interactive plot, where choices made at certain points will affect later options and opportunities. This wasn’t a new approach; Wing Commander had been doing it for years, even featuring plotlines as cut scenes with well-known actors. But it was the first time I had seen it in a first-person shooter, my personal favorite genre because of the immersive experience (and the popularity of Doom shows I’m not alone in this). Acknowledging both Far Cry 2 and the Wing Commander franchise as a whole, the metaphor continues with the next chapter in the Far Cry series: Far Cry 3.

Far Cry 3 introduced acquiring skills, knowledge, and ingredients. You learned not only how to aim a gun but how to steady it for accuracy. Ingredients, in the form of animal pelts and plants, could be accumulated, and then you learned how to make things with them by combining them in specific quantities (called crafting). The first time I played through, I would just try to accumulate and improve weapons or craft upgrades while running through the map to conquer everything and finish a plotline along the way. It wasn’t until very near the end that the power of skills—and the value of applying the right skills to the right situation—became clear.

In every game since, I start by avoiding the plot and pursuing skills. I’ll step into the plot at points when it’s necessary to acquire a skill or sometimes an ingredient, and then go back to building my capabilities. Once I’ve taken that as far as possible, I enter the plot. This strategy leads to some games where I make it from start to finish without a single death (admittedly, that happens only about 2% of the time).

I’ve lately begun to tell people my superpower is digression. I think I’ve just demonstrated that once again.

What does this have to do with how I’m learning AI? While all the prognosticators are talking about how AI will do all our jobs soon, I’ve been too busy doing my own job to spend as much hands-on time with AI as I’d like. But I do have pockets of time to read articles, listen to podcasts, and watch YouTube until I can get hands-on (which should be very soon). It dawned on me the other day that the concepts from articles and podcasts are like collecting recipes and ingredients for later crafting—stuffing them into larger rucksacks and adding tools as I go. Meanwhile, my expanding YouTube subscriptions and playlists are like gathering more accurate and powerful weapons for taking on the more challenging enemy forts, such as building local LLMs, coordinating MCP implementations for private GPTs, and managing secure agentic operations.

I make most of my playlists public on my YouTube channel. There’s a collection of AI Learning playlists there (it’s the second collection down) that will continue to grow. I’ll also be sharing my discoveries on my blog, Medium, and Substack. New posts will be announced on my social accounts, all @scottsnelson1. You won’t find me posting on Instagram yet, because my daughter-the-influencer still hasn’t had time to teach me how to create posts with links (queue Harry Chapin), nor on Pinterest because it’s more work than I have time for right now. And, of course, one of my first MCP solutions should be to manage these posts for me. I’ll let you know when I defeat that fort on the third map.

(Alternate close written by Perplexity.ai)

If you’re an IT stakeholder or technologist, you know that learning new tools and frameworks is a lot like leveling up in a game. You collect knowledge (ingredients), build skills (crafting), and tackle bigger challenges (forts) as you go. I’d love to hear how you approach your own learning journey—drop a comment or connect with me on my channels. Let’s build our skills together and take on the next big challenge in AI and IT!