[Olreich]

I do think that game companies have a higher percentage of top-tier programmers. This is both due to pedigree and size of the field.

There are some incredible programmers in both big tech and game dev, but big tech has vastly more developers with less pressure to have top-tier talent.

Median developer at both probably represents the same skill because of normal distributions.

[rbanffy]

Game companies need developers that extract as much performance of the machine as possible.

Other companies need developers that make applications not anyone can push updates to. Those are also good developers.

There is no single metric for "good" in a field as vast as programming.

[hn_acc1]

I doubt it. Game companies need guys willing to sign their life away, months at a time. I worked in EDA, now storage. TONS of very talented people.

[bakuninsbart]

I agree, but the core reason for this has nothing to do with either of the points you mention. There are few other sub-cultures that come anywhere close to the (avg.) level of passion and narrow focus than game dev. And you absolutely need it, because it is very complex and usually badly paid.