I was wondering if a full pre-rendered texture is what one would use in a videogame, as while losing dynamism it surely gains a lot in terms of performance. In case it isn't, what's the proper way of managing elaborate lighting in Unity games? Is there a course about it on CGCookie?
We don't have a course on it yet, but your thinking is on the right track. As someone who spends most of my CG time rendering with Cycles instead of game stuff, I imagine making games with elaborate Cycles lighting baked in textures while figuring out how to achieve the illusion of dynamism in the game engine.
Game technology is advancing so fast that soon I think we'll be able to have realtime dynamic elaborate lighting capabilities. But currently AFAIK it's a mixture of baking and dynamism.