Alexander J. Velicky.  Most people probably haven't heard of him, but he won the gaming world's equivalent of the lottery—if by "win," you mean spending thousands of hours modding Skyrim and by "lottery," you mean a job in game design.  The odd thing is that Alexander was offered a job by Bungie, who, for those living under a rock, did not publish or develop Skyrim; I figure it's sort of like asking for a PlayStation and getting a Nintendo or Xbox... or vice versa... or something.  Whatever, we have PCs and can see the differences are mostly cosmetic anyway.

The point it, the guy is now a game designer.  If nothing else, this should be an inspiration to all those modding nerds out there.  Granted, your Minecraft mod that makes dateable anime NPC's is probably not going to get you a job at Rockstar or Deep Silver, but it's the foundation that counts.  Falskaar (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/37994/), Velicky's mod and a release that is better than a lot of AAA DLC, adds some 25 hours of content to the game and is totally, 100% free.

Oh, and the guy's 19.