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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."
I tend to think the numbers are lying one way or another.
Either it's an EA kind of environment where 60,000K may be cheap for such devotion, or gaming is in the equivalent of the tech bubble.
Un-related but funny story. I have some aquiantances (sp?) here in L.A. that write scripts and they actually get evaluated (paid too) by people who can get movies made. The latest overwhelming reply to their work has been, "It's a great script, but we're really looking for something based on a video game.."
True story.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Nevermind that the "beginning" programmer has likely already worked on many other games, has a solid background in programming of various languages / APIs, and is able to produce solid quality code.
Sounds like they're souping up "beginning" as "I know how to write a cout in C++!".
I wonder how much time they will spend doing QA on the cheap before they are hired on as programmers and reach that "starting" wage.
Shit, from what I've heard from friends in the industry, it's more like 30-35k. (Most them living here in TX, with a fairly average cost of living on the national scale. [at least the cities where these folks were -- austin, dallas, and houston -- are within 10% of the national average last I checked... it's surely cheaper to live in places like Crockett or Buda or Nacogdoches or whatever, but you don't find many games studios in places where the time zone is still "1952".])
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
I did both man, Back at school I wrote medical visualization software for virtual reality systems. Sure it paid the bills, but it wasn't as satisfying and the work environment was much more uptight (Researching PHDs aren't the most fun group of people to work with).
Now, I work in the game industry and my hours are extemely flexible and the atmosphere is much more laidback. I find that the quality of work I am doing is much better now that I am happy. I make a very good wage (I'm not rich, but I never have to worry about money) and always seem to have the time to take vacations and such. So hey, I guess there's 2 sides to every coin.
Salary surveys are one of the worst examples of statistics. First off you have to be EMPLOYED. The average salary for a football player is say 4 million. Now out of the millions of people that try to get into professional football how many? Telling me people in the game industry are earning $60k a year means nothing if you can't get a job in te industry. Further more the cost of education, hours worked, and benefits compensation are left out largely. In addition salary surverys are biased as they ignore laid off, unemployed, and displaced employees in the industry.
Salary Survey question example:
How much do you make an hour? --- $30 and hour.
As far as the survery is concerned I make $60,000 a year. But if I get laid off for 6 months do they adjust that? Nope. It's too irrelivant to use salary figures. IF wonk A get 60k a year and wonk B gets 70k who makes more? Well Wonka A pays nothing for health insurance and Wonk B pays 12k a year for health insurance. What about deductables and 401k\b performance. Stock options. I know plenty of Eron employees that could talk about the real wage of a staffer just as EA employees could rant a bit on it.
Tired of surverys that mean nothing....
my 2
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Alright, you slashdotters really need to make up your minds. Either going into the computer industry is a bad choice or it's not. First, you say it's a bad idea because most jobs are being outsourced to other countries. Then you publish articles downplaying those claims, and saying companies are fighting to get CS grads and schools fighting to get more people into CS. You see, I will tell you all a little story of a boy who was turned off to his potential future as a programmer:
There once was a boy, aged 12, who was introduced to computers through a Christmas present (more of a "hand-me-down") and became interested in programming. He had to research for weeks just to learn what how to get a compiler on his Windows 95 operating system, and spent the next few months introducing himself to various open source programs. Fast forward about two years and you'll find him spending all the money he recieved every birthday and Christmas on those expensive $100 programming books at Barnes & Noble and reading them. You'll find him immersing himself in his own programming creations, very mature and sophisticated for a boy of 14 years of age. He loved programming! He thrived on it (and coffee). He just loved the idea of creating something out of nothing. Fast forward another 2 years: He now is interested in many fields of computers, such as operating system development, language development, game development. He owns books such as "The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD Operating System" and "Modern Operating Systems". He just begins to hear of this "outsourcing" epidemic. He's unsure of his future, but he continues to plan his life accordingly and wants to be a computer scientist. Fast forward, once more, another 2 years. He's created his school's first computer science club. It has approximately 20 active members and he lectures every week. He is now VERY unsure of his future. All the years of slashdot's warning to prospective CS students has finally gotten to him. The stories of unemployed CS grads and outsourcing and low paying EA-like jobs have gotten him worried. He now programs less, and is seriously considering majoring in Philosophy and English, because those are two other majors he thinks he would enjoy. "What happened," he sometimes asks himself, "why has it come to this?"
One year later he's been out of high school for a year and works at the local grocery store behind the butcher block because he was left stranded and confused. He didn't make up his mind about his future in time for college deadlines, and still reads slashdot and their conflicting outlooks on the future. If he's going to take any plunge he's going to do it with Philosophy and English. The liberal artsy-fartsy way that will at least give him a better understanding of the human condition before he dies of starvation.
P.S. Whether you believe it or not, the anti-bot image I had to type in was "overtime". Hah...
Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. -- Larry Wall
Keep in mind that you're likely working in a town adjacent to LA or San Diego where the cost of living (food and rent) is literally about double compared to 90% of the country. The multiplier for houses is about 3, with a bottom cap of around 400k, no matter how shabby (a 200k house will cost you about 600k and a 90K house will cost you at least 400k).
The pay for me was about 20% less than I made before and after. Education and other experience means less than your list of published game titles, for which I had none.
Anyhow, adding a divisor of two for cost of living,
80k/(4000*2) = $10/hr, less than the $13/hr I made way back in high school, not accounting for the years of inflation. You could also work out how the increased cost of living screws you on income tax.
The surprising thing is that I never expected that I could work 80 hours a week, but you'd be surprised how they ease it in as you become accustomed. The apparent productivity boosts quickly fade as people wear down, and nearly everyone eventually does less with those 80 hours than they originally did with an easy 50.
What you say may be true.
But game development requires more bizarre skills than most common types of development (enterpise applications, web applications, etc.)
It usually involves quite complex math skills, knowledge of physics and many obscure algorithmic techniques that most programmers are not familiarized with.
I'm not saying that one type of programmers is necessary better than the other, just that good game prgrammers are even harder to find than (for lack of a better word) 'regular' programmers. That might justify the higher salary.
People throw out the contractor figure a lot. Hell I've billed 150+ an hour for certain types of programming and database work.
That is NOT the same as making $150 an hour, working a full time job. Not even remotely close. You're lucky if you can pull ten hours a week at those rates, assuming you lack big industry contracts, and it's unlikely you'd be able to do THAT two weeks in a row.
And then there is all the work you have to do, but can't get paid for. Marketing, billing, accounting, keeping your own equipment and skills up. Travel time...Sometimes you can bill for it, sometimes you can't. If you can't, then you're talking an hour or so wasted in transit. Nothing worse than having to drive in, and finding out the problem is a user error that takes 5 minutes to fix...Even if you normally bill at a hour minimum, if you charge someone $180 bucks for typing one command, they'll never call you again...I always charged a 40 dollar call fee, but that's not worth the damn time it takes to get there and back.
Freelance is nice, if the work comes in by itself. If it doesn't, it can be hell.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Still, working in fast food sucked, and I'm glad I graduated and don't do it anymore (10 years later...).
Solving new and interesting problems constantly. It's like getting paid to solve chess puzzles, including the euphoria of finally producing the solution.
Generally, that's any programming job, which is what is so great about the field.
I live in Texas, I have good friends that work for a major game company in the area. They're LUCKY if they only work 70 hours a week, and they make HALF of what I do, and I only work 40 hours a week.
Why do they do it? Because they love it.
But from a purely financial standpoint, if you're just in it for the money, there is a line where you'll make more money managing teenagers at a fast food place.
Generally speaking, this article is not that accurate, as are most "salary surverys," where people typically respond with what they *should* be making, not what they do make. Also, he didn't note how long it takes (years -- your whole career, if you're *successful*) to get from the starting salary to the final salary. Nor did he note the salary disparity between developers and publishers. People who work at independent developers typically make less, but have more freedom and input into what they do, versus being "animator 957" or whatever, so it's a tradeoff.
Also, I didn't like the outmoded description of "marketing stiffs" or the cheap shot about producers: "...someone who's merely making schedules, managing the talent, and dealing with the annoying marketing stiffs." Yeah, that sounds easy, huh? Maybe he should try it! Obviously I came from the production side, and I would have liked to see some description of the differences in jobs between different types of producers, but I guess it was just a quick overall survery and not an in-depth thing.
Anyway, IMHO the reality of making games today is a far cry from the shots he takes in the article. If there is an "us versus them" relationship between marketing and development -- or between any develoment disciple (art and engineering, design and production, production and art, etc), your game's sales, sequel potential, and eventually your career are going to suffer. Good teams work together and while there's always friction, it's the job of the discipline leads -- and that worthless producer -- to minimize it. That's not to say there aren't bad marketing people, or irritating artists, or incompetent producers, all of whom suck and make everyone's life difficult, but there shouldn't be this default adversarial relationship there.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Obvious: If you're a new college grad willing to work 100 hours a week for mediocre benefits, there are companies willing to take you up on your offer.
Not so obvious: If you're a new college grad and are NOT willing to work 100 hours a week for mediocre benefits, there are still companies willing to take you up on your offer. You just need to be good at what you do, and willing to ask for what you want.
Seriously. If there's one group that truly, truly SUCKS at contract negotiations, it's geeks. There's enough money in the industry to pay competent people a good wage, but if you cream your pants at the very thought of EA sticking you in a mildewy basement for $20 a week, that's what you're gonna get.
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
First off, anyone that tells you working in the games industry is a path to fame and fortune, slap them in the face. For 99.9% of people, thats a complete lie.
Sure, our company directors drive Ferraris, 911 GTs, Z4s etc, but the rest of us working class peasants are in 1.1ltr rustbuckets (and worse, some at our place are stuck with public transport!) And we are a driving / racing games company!
Best advice I can give to any games players that want to join the industry - DONT. If you enjoy gaming and love the idea of working on great games, people above you will see that, and get you working all the hours god sends on the back of your passion. Only join the industry if you don't really give a damn, then you can remain objective, work your employment hours and still have a life.
Bottom line, enjoy your games, don't become bitter and twisted like me, stay away from the industry, keep loving games, don't get involved.
Anyway, IMHO the reality of making games today is a far cry from the shots he takes in the article. If there is an "us versus them" relationship between marketing and development -- or between any develoment disciple (art and engineering, design and production, production and art, etc), your game's sales, sequel potential, and eventually your career are going to suffer.
I agree. I worked in marketing for a game publisher for 3 1/2 years (no, I do not consider myself a marketdroid; that's why I quit), and quite honestly there was no adversarial relationship whatsoever between us and the development arm of my company. In fact, our developers liked some of our marketing ideas so much that they ended up incorporating them into the games! (I'm sure at least a few of you guys know what that link is really referencing...)
We also worked with outside developers fairly often and in those cases there was often a bit of push-pull. Depending on the contract, sometimes it would end up being a case of "whatever we say goes", sometimes it was the reverse. (A few times we just had to suck it up and do things we knew were idiotic.) Obviously, when two companies that work together have been doing their thing with success individually for a while, both sides are going to think they know best.
But internally, things were always pretty smooth between the marketing and development sides. And even new acquisitions would get along with us pretty well. The fact of the matter is, if there's dissension at one part of any company vs. another part, that dissension is going to eventually end, one way or another. No company can have an internal rebellion going on at one particular division or another; if necessary, heads will roll and there were times at my company when they did.
And as far as the salaries go, the $60K starting figure is a tad high but not completely ridiculous. Salaries are not the problem in the video game industry. It's the working environment and employee treatment that are the problems.