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."

Comments

Re:And that $60k goes a long way...

[iocat]

Testing usually is a way into production, not programming (not that that doesn't ever happen, of course).

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.