Entry Level Game Industry Salaries

An anonymous reader writes "Game Tycoon has posted some informal information about entry-level salaries for students entering the video game industry." From the article: "Students who applied for engineering jobs seem to be getting offers in the 70s -- in some cases, the high 70s. The same students got offers approximately 10K higher from companies in other industries; i.e. Oracle, Microsoft, etc. So the gap between game company offers and non-game company offers appears to be narrowing for engineers. In general, I was amazed at how high the offers were!"

Comments

not normal students - MIT students

[Anonymous Coward]

This article only talks about several MIT students that the author has experience with - they may be exceptionally bright, motivated students, and they tend to get higher offers. I live in LA and my boyfriend's first gaming job only paid 55K - not 70.

Re:What do the jobs mean?

[iocat]

Engineers write code. Producers manage development, facilitating communications between different development disciplines, (art, code, design) and non-development disciplines (marketing, PR, sales, HR, admin, etc.). Producer is a pretty generic title and the roll can change drastically depending on company and rank (assistant producer, associate producer, line producer, producer, senior producer, exec producer), and whether the producer is on the development side or the publisher side. In Japan, producers tend to hold the "design vision" for the product, in the US that isn't necessarily the case.

Coders tend to make more than producers at all pay ranges, because being a producer requries being a generalist and there are simply more people able to do it than be great coders.

That all said, I call bullshit on a standard $70K job offer to a guy fresh out of MIT. One thing the game industry respects is shipping games, and no one is going to pay a jr. staffer $70K, esp. if they haven't shipped a game. (And frankly, especially if they've only got a degree from MIT, which seems to be heavy on theory, and light on the practical, low-levl, extremely efficient coding experience required for games.) That may be different for guys who've shipped significant or interesting side projects, or developed relevant technology. It may also be different for inexperience teams blowing VC money.

Re:Take it with a grain of salt

[EggyToast]

Conversely, your job is likely more secure as well as having better benefits. I work in non-profit, and the management is less crazed and there's actual sick and vacation days (and a lot, at that, and they don't go away). Regular wage increases and increases from reclassification of jobs affect everyone, not just new/old people, and I feel more secure in my future here.

I could probably make more money out in the for-profit world of corporations, but I'm much happier here. And my sanity and free time is definitely worth something to me.

IGDA/Gamasutra annual salary survey

[saarbruck]

The Independent Game Developer's Association (IGDA) and Gamasutra take an annual salary survey for the game industry, including developers, artists, designers and producers. I think you have to be registered to see them, but here are links to the results from

2003

2002

2001

And yes, I said annual, and the most recent result I could find was 2003. I think the 2005 results are still being tallied? And 2004? Must have been a bad year...