Two excellent simultaneous trends: the incredible evolution of 3D authoring tools, and the growth of eminent practitioners streaming their work. (of Uru, Myst V, Obduction, The Witness) has been doing an astonishing series on worldbuilding
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Thinking back to the old days of Myst, this type of material would usually be its own special production: a “behind the scenes” extra in a deluxe box set. But you wouldn’t get to see much! It certainly wouldn’t go into the technical detail of this series. The casual depth!
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Another thing that strikes me about this video series is that Eric’s the art director, painting a world from nothing. But he’s also building his own—highly technical!—tools as he goes. These tools involve more math than most software devs use in a year! Such a different industry.
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I wonder how much of the barrier is simply cultural. In mainstream software development designers/artists are debating whether or not they should know how to code at all. “Should designers be comfortable casually tossing around 3D matrix math?” is nowhere near the Overton window.
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Why is that a more important or useful question than "should back-end coders know how to properly mix tones on a paint palette?"
The answer is "mu" because the question is nonsensical.