Slashdot Mirror
IGN Talks Games Industry Salaries
WeebMac writes "IGN has a new career-themed section and one of their first stories is about the earning potential available to those who make their careers in the gaming industry. From TFA, 'Beginning programmers, whether you're working on tools, gameplay, networking, audio, AI, or animation, you can expect to start off with a salary in the area of $60K with the potential for more in the way of sales-based royalties or bonuses or stock options depending on the particular company you've been hired by."
Because since you'll be working 80 hour weeks, you won't have time to spend it!
As for stock options and royalties...yeah right. Carrot, meet stick.
Seriously, IGN is clueless.
What's the dollar-to-hour ratio? If you're making $100K and spending 100 hours a week to make it, it's not worth it.
Call it a flame, but am I the only one seeing the stupidity in that paragraph. They are KIDS for crying out loud! Let us see if they still are willing to work for free when...umm... they graduate or have a family. This author is a moron!
...and make $600 million. I always hated IGN and their half-hearted attempt to make a games site for each and every game that comes out. Nothing could compare to a site made by a dedicated fan, such as Shlonglor's Warcraft 2 page, which was built before this gamespy/ign/daily radar/plan revolution.
as it's the engineers at the various game companies that are driving the Ferrari's, Mercedes SL500's, and Lamborghini's.
First of all. How many engineers are game companies are driving top-end sports cars? And second of all, how many could afford them?
I mean, making $100,000 and driving a Lambo would probably mean parking it in front of a 1 bedroom apartment... and hoping someone doesn't walk along and key it.
I don't know about the US, but I'm a gamesprogrammer in the UK with 4 years or so games experience for a mix of companies.
:)
:D
My starting salary was £20k (somewhere around $35k-40k US I think), which is at the upper end of the starting range in this country. I've known people who worked in smaller companies in lower cost-of-living areas who started on much less.
Most companies that I've known staff at do *not* offer shares, or royalties, or even bonuses. Bonuses, where offered, are by no means guaranteed - I've never had one. I've worked on a finished game for which I might've received royalties, but you don't get them til at least a year after the game is released (and the company went bust before the game was released, lovely!), and there's no guarantee that the contract with the publisher will be such that the staff ever see any royalties even if the company does.
I've never worked for them, but the majority of games companies at least in the UK make GB/GBA/Mobile-phone games, not the big console titles. Even the big players (Rockstar spring to mind) don't pay out regular bonuses on time or at all.
Why do I still do it? Well, now I'm working at a decent company (Sony, if you're interested), I get to make *games* god damn it, it's fun!
If anyone has any more questions about working in games, feel free to reply
Game dev and music blog
A metric that I've always used to guess how well a company pays its employees is the cars in the parking lot. I work at a major game company that produces 20 million dollar games. In our parking lot out of about 100 cars there are no Bmw's, one mercedes, one or two high end sports cars and the majority are grocery getter low end compacts.
The only people getting rich are the high up exec's, one of which rolls up in his bentley once a month or so for a few hours then leaves the office again.
Here in San Diego, if you have your CS degree and say, 2yrs of experience at $60k, you will find yourself at a crossroad: If you have good presentation skills, and have managed to teach yourself .Net/SQL Server/XML (because God(tm) knows they won't teach that to you at SDSU) then you should have no problem contracting for $60/hr or earning $75k+ once you move to another job.
Having 7yrs experience myself, I have come to realization that the easiest way to get a pay raise is to simply move to another company. Frequently updating your resume will remind you of how little you actually know in your field. Diversify, bitches.
If you choose to stay in one place, you can bank on a mediocre 3% pay increase annually, stock option carrot dangling, and work with the same technology you played with last year. Just my 2 cents, i don't mean to offend anyone. Mileage will vary.
If you think
Granted that most of the information presented in the article is either false or hyped beyond exaggeration, IGN is not entirely clueless. Their motive here is not to write a fact-filled article, presenting unbiased information to a crowd of prospective game developers.
What is it, then? To make money. Consider two things:
-This article is geared toward adolescents, and continues the marginal trend within America of promoting questionable possibilities because, survey says: kids like to dream.
-Checking just above the article, one will notice the banner indicating "Sponsored by Full Sail" in so many words. What is Full Sail, you ask? An imitation private college designed to produced talentless chum at the measly expense of $30k. Per year.
IGN is no more clueless than they are poor, but they definitely hope to take advantage of the fact that their userbase is indeed clueless. But what more should we expect from America's biased, profiteering media?
1) IGN is assuming that everybody in the game industry is working in CA because they're clueless like that.
2) $60k isn't much in CA.
Seriously, I know the entry level folks over here at EA Tiburon in Orlando aren't starting out at that.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
Not a student of the labor movement and its history, eh?
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
royalties
BWHahahahahaha ahhahahhhahahahahahhhahahhahahhahahahhh... (pant)(pant)
Ahhahahahahahhahahah hahahahhah hahahahh hhah hhahahha... (pant)(pant)
AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHAAhahahaha hahahahahahhah hahahh hahh... (pant)(pant)
hahahahah.....hahahahh......haha...... (gasp) Oh, *ahem*......hehe..er, *cough*....hehe...hehhhhheee...
Sorry, hehehehe, *ahem*....... Now, I think- royalties
AAHAHAHHAHAHHHAHHAHHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHA!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!