The path into game development really depends on where you're starting from. Some people start with an idea or thing they want to see in a game and learn skills as they go. Others master art or programing first and either find a counterpart or eventually branch out into the other discipline while working on different…
No, on both counts! Because you'll find as time goes on, progressively modeling objects of ever increasing complexity will require ngons or n-poles or triangles for certain situations where they're unavoidable not too which is really an efficient process in maintaining an effective edgeflow, that usually mitigates shading…
Even in such cases it doesn't prevent you from having perfect shading without any visible pinching by just editing , transferring vertex normals. Nobody used sub-d topology on static meshes in games before. Only on characters. Now it looks like a must for some uncertain reason. Here is an example how with totally "bad"…