No four-year college degree?

No four-year college degree. No portfolio. No demo disc. No accomplishments to point to. Whatever this wannabe hasn't done, he has an excuse.
"There was no game school near me." "My parents couldn't afford a game school."
"I read where all the colleges were starting to teach about games, so I wanted to jump into the industry before all the grads started sending in their applications."
If you want to work in games, you have to prepare. You need a solid educational underpinning - if you want to program games, get a programming degree. If you want to make game graphics, get a graphic degree. If you want to design games, study writing, psychology, history, and earth sciences so you know how worlds work, and prepare yourself by other means as well. See Lesson 3 and Lesson 4. If you want to be a game designer, you have to have some skills and talents that are valuable to a game company so they'll want to hire you - either as a programmer, artist, project coordinator, marketer, whatever. First you have to get hired at a game company - nobody just hires neophytes and gives them the title "game designer" right off the bat.
Once you've gotten your degree, you still haven't prepared enough. A lot of people are climbing all over each other to get those game biz jobs.
If you want to get into a game company's graphics department, you need a great portfolio and/or demo reel. And I mean GREAT. When somebody opens your portfolio or watches your demo reel, their jaw should drop and/or their socks should pop off. It's stupid to walk into an art job interview without a portfolio or demo reel, or with a bad portfolio or demo reel. It's not easy to make a great portfolio or demo reel, but what have I said elsewhere in this lesson about "easy"? Anyway?
If you want to get into a game company's programming department, you probably ought to have a demo disc and you definitely need to have some sample code. They need to see that you can create solid code - they need to see what your code looks like because on a game project, the team members have to be able to read each others' code. It would be stupid to show up for a programming interview without good clean readable sample code.

We're stuck with the names we're born with, but we choose our screen names and email addresses. It's a chance to show that we're cool, creative, individual. Many wannabes choose unwisely, without realizing it. It seems cool to go with a screen name that indicates a "gangsta" attitude, for instance, but if a potential game biz employer gets an email from "jailburd@hotmail.org" he's not going to feel particularly inclined to reply. Someone who is so passionate about games that his friends call him crazy might try to showcase this special characteristic by choosing the moniker "insanedude" - that's very cute, but when he goes jobhunting in earnest, this screen name will not be helping him. Remember -- when you contact someone in the game biz, you're entering the world of business. Comport yourself accordingly.
Some kinds of words to avoid in screen names in the world of business:
Words that hint at the use of any kind of drugs.
Words that allude to bodily functions.
Words that smack of criminal activity of any kind.
Words that indicate mental defect, or any kind of sickness.
Words that hint that you'd rather do something else besides work on games.
Screen names that are tricky to type (using a zero instead of an upper-case "o" or a one instead of a lower-case "L," for instance).
Words that hint at sexual activity.
Pretty much any screen name that would make a teenaged guy laugh ought to be reconsidered before using it to communicate with business professionals. It's fine to be creative, but be smart.
And lastly, make sure you sign business communications with your real name. Even if posting on bulletin boards or newsgroups, what's the harm in letting people know your name? I understand using a human-readable anti-spam device when typing in your email address, but isn't your humanity more important than your anonymity?