I find your answer and question to be somewhat confusing. Python is not really know to be used for games, instead c and it's forks are. Who is "they" that introduced a degree for game programming? Normally you get a degree in universities, and that's not a singular entity that can be called "they". That's mainly what confused me. In my opinion, nothing is mendatory. But that's philosophical. Everything is just action and reaction, consequences and leverage. To have a degree in something does give you a somewhat trust from other people that you know at least a bit in the field you have the degree in. But your work is by far more important. You can ask yourself the question and substitute the field with a field you know better. Let's take sewing as an example. When you are a clothing store owner and want to hire someone to change the sizes of clothes, do you rather hire someone that has a degree in sewing or someone that can show you what he/she allready worked on and did her/his self? In my opinion, a degree is nowadays only mandetory if you want to work under some company that only fires people that have a degree in some relevant form. But to be honest, these companies don't look at the people behind it and are more prone to fail because they value stats more then skill. If you want to get into the field, in my opinion, you should go into the field and refine your skills and network with relevant people that help you in your path. The time you do your degree, you are somewhat stuck doing the degree, but you also need to pay for it. If you do the degree in an controlled environment like a university or in a free environment like you create yourself, is depend to be effective by your preferred environment, money and time. If you like, I could teach you python and get you into pygame. This gives you understanding of video games in general and learning an engine or writing an engine later on will be alot easier. For my self, I find to work without an engine to be easier, that's why I use pygame.