new programmer

i want to be a computer game programmer, but i don't want to go to university because it's too expensive and won't teach me anything anyway.

what's the best way to become a professional game programmer without actually getting a university education?  is it even possible?

Hint: Self taught is easy, actually having the necessary depth and understanding the hard topics is not. IMHO in industry some of y worst experiences are with dealing with self-taughts. Many are arrogant prickes who act like MENSA cases (FYI mensa is for people who didn't go to university yet have to prove they are smart @_@), yet I can't communicate to them the reason why their code runs slow even though they did all the optimizations on game faqs (complexity).