What Game Makers Really Earn

CrystalShadow

don't upset the insane catgirl
Apr 11, 2009
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Therumancer said:
I find it oddly ironic that I've been argueing about this back and forth with a number of people including John Funk, and then this gets posted. :p

So basically what we're looking at is an industry where we have the programmers/code monkeys at the near top of the chart making the better part of 100k a year. Then we've got Game Designers who seem to be ones who don't program and mostly come up with ideas which they pass to the monkeys to make work still pulling down an average of 67k a year. Heck, we've got what amount to on-staff beta testers making 32k a year.

My typical point of course being that of course this Ferrari driving lifestyle (to use the article's term, and referring to game designers who are on one of the lower tiers on the chart) is passed on to us the consumers due to the rising cost of game development as they demand this money which of course requires the prices of games to be raised/stay high, and things like DLC to help support it.

I'm all for capitolism, but as I said, there is a point where I think the consumers need to say "hey, wait a second here" when it comes to some of these high priced products.


I remember another article a while back (which I think I linked to at one point, though maybe it was on another forum) which kind of talked about things from the producer/financers perspective in the Development Team/Money Provider relationship. This article (and others like it) were responsible for a lot of my ideas about how much these guys on the development side get paid, as well as the other perks they collect. It was intended as a rebuttal of sorts to articles on "how the industry works" from a developer perspective which lead a lot of people to tend to blame the evil producers for picking on the developers and being responsible for the prices of games. Specific numbers were not given, but it did talk about pretty high rates of pay for what they were doing (which were always increasing) combined with the use of the dev budget for things like food and board. Basically a development team ordering out on the dev budget for 3 meals a day while they work, or charging the dev budget if they decide they want to take up semi-residence at a motel close to the offices so they don't have to drive, or whatever.

All arguements aside, it all comes down to the fact that with budgets in the tens of millions of dollars, the actual expenses like computers and office space are minimal in proportion to the budget. Most of that money goes towards the human resources, either directly in terms of pay, or in the form of benefits. I seem to vaguely remember the percentage being like less than 5% on materials, but even if you say 10% what this means is that with a 70 million dollar game, 63 million dollars wound up going towards the people
they hired one way or another. What they demand to do this work is of course why game development is so expensive and why us the consumers pay a high price for games and get nickel and dimed.
I see your name attached to arguments like this all the time.
As noted in my post above yours, I found conflicting figures:
http://www.develop-online.net/features/429/The-2009-UK-Games-Development-Salary-Survey

Of course, it's important to note that this is a different country.

On the other hand, £18,000 ($27,000 US) ( a year for a programming job is quite honestly, pathetic
1.5 times minimum wage; If anyone thinks that's going to buy a ferrari, or anything even close to it, they're dreaming.

And that is the reality I face, in persuing this in England.
Average wage: £30,442 ($46,442 US)- By comparison, the average wage of the working population of the whole country is £25,000 or so.



So yeah. Above average wages. Just barely.

A few highly paid leads and senior staff, Highly paid executives (As usual), and a lot of people earning something around the national average...

Sounds so... wrong doesn't it? XD

Then again, maybe the UK industry is a bad example?
 

Therumancer

Citation Needed
Nov 28, 2007
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CrystalShadow said:
Therumancer said:
I find it oddly ironic that I've been argueing about this back and forth with a number of people including John Funk, and then this gets posted. :p

So basically what we're looking at is an industry where we have the programmers/code monkeys at the near top of the chart making the better part of 100k a year. Then we've got Game Designers who seem to be ones who don't program and mostly come up with ideas which they pass to the monkeys to make work still pulling down an average of 67k a year. Heck, we've got what amount to on-staff beta testers making 32k a year.

My typical point of course being that of course this Ferrari driving lifestyle (to use the article's term, and referring to game designers who are on one of the lower tiers on the chart) is passed on to us the consumers due to the rising cost of game development as they demand this money which of course requires the prices of games to be raised/stay high, and things like DLC to help support it.

I'm all for capitolism, but as I said, there is a point where I think the consumers need to say "hey, wait a second here" when it comes to some of these high priced products.


I remember another article a while back (which I think I linked to at one point, though maybe it was on another forum) which kind of talked about things from the producer/financers perspective in the Development Team/Money Provider relationship. This article (and others like it) were responsible for a lot of my ideas about how much these guys on the development side get paid, as well as the other perks they collect. It was intended as a rebuttal of sorts to articles on "how the industry works" from a developer perspective which lead a lot of people to tend to blame the evil producers for picking on the developers and being responsible for the prices of games. Specific numbers were not given, but it did talk about pretty high rates of pay for what they were doing (which were always increasing) combined with the use of the dev budget for things like food and board. Basically a development team ordering out on the dev budget for 3 meals a day while they work, or charging the dev budget if they decide they want to take up semi-residence at a motel close to the offices so they don't have to drive, or whatever.

All arguements aside, it all comes down to the fact that with budgets in the tens of millions of dollars, the actual expenses like computers and office space are minimal in proportion to the budget. Most of that money goes towards the human resources, either directly in terms of pay, or in the form of benefits. I seem to vaguely remember the percentage being like less than 5% on materials, but even if you say 10% what this means is that with a 70 million dollar game, 63 million dollars wound up going towards the people
they hired one way or another. What they demand to do this work is of course why game development is so expensive and why us the consumers pay a high price for games and get nickel and dimed.
I see your name attached to arguments like this all the time.
As noted in my post above yours, I found conflicting figures:
http://www.develop-online.net/features/429/The-2009-UK-Games-Development-Salary-Survey

Of course, it's important to note that this is a different country.

On the other hand, £18,000 ($27,000 US) ( a year for a programming job is quite honestly, pathetic
1.5 times minimum wage; If anyone thinks that's going to buy a ferrari, or anything even close to it, they're dreaming.

And that is the reality I face, in persuing this in England.
Average wage: £30,442 ($46,442 US)- By comparison, the average wage of the working population of the whole country is £25,000 or so.



So yeah. Above average wages. Just barely.

A few highly paid leads and senior staff, Highly paid executives (As usual), and a lot of people earning something around the national average...

Sounds so... wrong doesn't it? XD

Then again, maybe the UK industry is a bad example?

But then again you have to consider the article I responded to disagreed with the average wages you quoted, as did another article posted here about a game studio requesting tax breaks and claiming it was going to be employing people for $85k yearly.

The problem with those that argue against me, whether they "know people in the industry" or not, is that you have to account for these massive budgets that are the reason for games being so expensive and the "need" for DLC being done the way it is, and so on. I mean once you have a budget in the tens of millions the physical costs become fairly trivial. I mean office space and a bunch of computers aren't all that expensive on that scale.

The thing is that nobody who decides to debate this with me, can explain where that money is going. One way or another it's going to the employees.

To put things frankly I suppose it might be possible that some guy is taking home only $27k a year, but might very well be getting 3x that value through the perks of his job. Insurance programs, free food, lodging, and other things. Heck, some people find ways of writing off the gas they use travelling back and forth to work to a company budget.

The bottom line is that there are plenty of people claiming exactly the opposite of the "poor destitute game code monkey" in various places. Those people claiming that people in the industry are not that highly paid, have so far been incapable of explaining where all of this money is going to. That's important to me as a consumer because the industry is telling me that the product has to be expensive because of those huge budgets...
 

Escapefromwhatever

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Feb 21, 2009
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Yes, because I'm so sure that EA gives each member of its legions of programmers a $90,000 salary. Where did these statistics come from?
 

Tom Phoenix

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Mar 28, 2009
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The fact that game writers are completely excluded from this just goes to show the general attitude the gaming industry has towards them. And it makes me a sad panda. =(
 

CrystalShadow

don't upset the insane catgirl
Apr 11, 2009
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Therumancer said:
CrystalShadow said:
Therumancer said:
I find it oddly ironic that I've been argueing about this back and forth with a number of people including John Funk, and then this gets posted. :p

So basically what we're looking at is an industry where we have the programmers/code monkeys at the near top of the chart making the better part of 100k a year. Then we've got Game Designers who seem to be ones who don't program and mostly come up with ideas which they pass to the monkeys to make work still pulling down an average of 67k a year. Heck, we've got what amount to on-staff beta testers making 32k a year.

My typical point of course being that of course this Ferrari driving lifestyle (to use the article's term, and referring to game designers who are on one of the lower tiers on the chart) is passed on to us the consumers due to the rising cost of game development as they demand this money which of course requires the prices of games to be raised/stay high, and things like DLC to help support it.

I'm all for capitolism, but as I said, there is a point where I think the consumers need to say "hey, wait a second here" when it comes to some of these high priced products.


I remember another article a while back (which I think I linked to at one point, though maybe it was on another forum) which kind of talked about things from the producer/financers perspective in the Development Team/Money Provider relationship. This article (and others like it) were responsible for a lot of my ideas about how much these guys on the development side get paid, as well as the other perks they collect. It was intended as a rebuttal of sorts to articles on "how the industry works" from a developer perspective which lead a lot of people to tend to blame the evil producers for picking on the developers and being responsible for the prices of games. Specific numbers were not given, but it did talk about pretty high rates of pay for what they were doing (which were always increasing) combined with the use of the dev budget for things like food and board. Basically a development team ordering out on the dev budget for 3 meals a day while they work, or charging the dev budget if they decide they want to take up semi-residence at a motel close to the offices so they don't have to drive, or whatever.

All arguements aside, it all comes down to the fact that with budgets in the tens of millions of dollars, the actual expenses like computers and office space are minimal in proportion to the budget. Most of that money goes towards the human resources, either directly in terms of pay, or in the form of benefits. I seem to vaguely remember the percentage being like less than 5% on materials, but even if you say 10% what this means is that with a 70 million dollar game, 63 million dollars wound up going towards the people
they hired one way or another. What they demand to do this work is of course why game development is so expensive and why us the consumers pay a high price for games and get nickel and dimed.
I see your name attached to arguments like this all the time.
As noted in my post above yours, I found conflicting figures:
http://www.develop-online.net/features/429/The-2009-UK-Games-Development-Salary-Survey

Of course, it's important to note that this is a different country.

On the other hand, £18,000 ($27,000 US) ( a year for a programming job is quite honestly, pathetic
1.5 times minimum wage; If anyone thinks that's going to buy a ferrari, or anything even close to it, they're dreaming.

And that is the reality I face, in persuing this in England.
Average wage: £30,442 ($46,442 US)- By comparison, the average wage of the working population of the whole country is £25,000 or so.



So yeah. Above average wages. Just barely.

A few highly paid leads and senior staff, Highly paid executives (As usual), and a lot of people earning something around the national average...

Sounds so... wrong doesn't it? XD

Then again, maybe the UK industry is a bad example?

But then again you have to consider the article I responded to disagreed with the average wages you quoted, as did another article posted here about a game studio requesting tax breaks and claiming it was going to be employing people for $85k yearly.

The problem with those that argue against me, whether they "know people in the industry" or not, is that you have to account for these massive budgets that are the reason for games being so expensive and the "need" for DLC being done the way it is, and so on. I mean once you have a budget in the tens of millions the physical costs become fairly trivial. I mean office space and a bunch of computers aren't all that expensive on that scale.

The thing is that nobody who decides to debate this with me, can explain where that money is going. One way or another it's going to the employees.

To put things frankly I suppose it might be possible that some guy is taking home only $27k a year, but might very well be getting 3x that value through the perks of his job. Insurance programs, free food, lodging, and other things. Heck, some people find ways of writing off the gas they use travelling back and forth to work to a company budget.

The bottom line is that there are plenty of people claiming exactly the opposite of the "poor destitute game code monkey" in various places. Those people claiming that people in the industry are not that highly paid, have so far been incapable of explaining where all of this money is going to. That's important to me as a consumer because the industry is telling me that the product has to be expensive because of those huge budgets...
Well, the over-arching problem is simple;

Even if we take the low end figures of say, $30,000 a year or so...


If a game takes 2 years to make, and has 150 people working on it... (not an uncommon figure these days), that still means 2 x 30,000 x 150 ...

Work that one out yourself, and it's $9,000,000 in wages.
Now, sure there are games like Modern Warfare 2, and Grand Theft Auto 4, that have had budgets in the region of 10 times that, but on the whole, $9,000,000

http://www.develop-online.net/news/33625/Study-Average-dev-cost-as-high-as-28m

claims the average budget for a single-platform release is around $10,000,000

Now, here's the dilemma:

With the above figures being the case even with rather low wages, it raises a few problems:

Is it reasonable to be concerned about someone earning $90,000 + bonuses?

Of course it is.

But look at the math, and you notice the problem doesn't exactly vanish if the wages are a lot lower than that.

So... Wages are a huge part of a game development budget.
That shouldn't be a surprise, because the end product is almost 100% intellectual property, meaning no real physical resources are involved.

But wages are proportional to the amount of work required;

The question is, are game developers overpaid?

And that's a hard one to answer, when you see such conflicting reports;
One side claims they get paid huge salaries, and get expensive perks on top of it, then spend a lot of time goofing off rather than actually working.

The other side says they are underpaid (if not in absolute terms, definitely in comparison to their skillset), and practically get worked to death. (I don't know about you, but 120 hours a week isn't long hours, it's rediculous. sleep+work is all you're doing, and there isn't even much sleep going on.).
This is the group that claims 60 hour weeks are 'normal', and crunch mode happens far too often, and involves working 90-120 hours a week for weeks on end.

Which side do you believe? And is it perhaps possible that both are true, but apply to different workplaces?

Not a simple problem in the slightest...
But I've always gone on a worst-case scenario, because I'm looking at being a game programmer.
And if you're going to do that, it helps to avoid illusions about how wonderful it is...

Quite honestly, most stories I hear sound like absolute hell, and not something I would wish upon anyone.

But... I live in hope that it's not as bad as it sounds.
 

13lackfriday

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Feb 10, 2009
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If you ask me, that salary tier should be flipped upside down...couldn't believe the animators and designers were practically at rock bottom when their roles are undeniably the most essential to a game's success.

...QA testers are in about the right place though...
 

Mordwyl

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Feb 5, 2009
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No shit. Have you tried working on a commercial game engine, let alone develop one from scratch? Of course we'll be paid more than the guys with ideas and pretty pictures.
 

RelexCryo

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Lost In The Void said:
Got a question though it might be a stupid one, where are the writers in this chart?

According to this, people with writing experience become "Creative Directors" which makes the second lowest amount of money on the chart. But you see them the most often at press conferences.
 

geldonyetich

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Aug 2, 2006
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No wonder we've got so many boring derivatives if game designers are that far down on the food chain.
ProfessorLayton said:
Alright, it's decided. I'm going to get a job in marketing.
Excellent, it will only cost your soul.

 

Fenixius

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Feb 5, 2007
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Therumancer said:
I find it oddly ironic that I've been argueing about this back and forth with a number of people including John Funk, and then this gets posted. :p
So do I. Haha. But I'm surprised at how high these numbers are - I'd love to ask Maxim for their sources. Not that I'm surprised that manhours are the most expensive single part of game development, but it's definitely insanity if you have a team of 30 programmers and they're all on 90k each. Code monkeys shouldn't earn that much - it should be the guys who decide what to make the monkeys code. Unless the "programmers" in that chart include those people.

Either way, it's still just as easy to argue for small development, with this.

geldonyetich said:
No wonder we've got so many boring derivatives if game designers are that far down on the food chain.
No kidding! Design is the core of game-making... everything else is turning their vision into a product. Power to the designers!
 

Nouw

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Mar 18, 2009
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I want to be a Game Designer. Thats in US so I'M SET FOR LIFE j/k

OT: Interesting article.
 

bobisimo

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Nov 25, 2009
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For those out there who are curious about QA as a career, trust me: a professional QAer can do much better than $32,000. And if the career-minded QAer becomes a senior member of the team, or an assistant lead, or a lead -- then the numbers can easily double. QA can be a lucrative and rewarding field in game development. And that's without going into the manager of the department salary expectations -- which are... large. :)

Yes, a kid off the street, fresh out of high school, looking to "test" a game for 3 months (and by test I mean play the game and hopefully be able to at least articulate that the game is "good") -- even pro-rated out to 12 months, they're not getting near $32,000. But those *are* the entry level situations. But again, QA in and of itself is not entry level.
 

John Funk

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Dec 20, 2005
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Therumancer said:
I find it oddly ironic that I've been argueing about this back and forth with a number of people including John Funk, and then this gets posted. :p

So basically what we're looking at is an industry where we have the programmers/code monkeys at the near top of the chart making the better part of 100k a year. Then we've got Game Designers who seem to be ones who don't program and mostly come up with ideas which they pass to the monkeys to make work still pulling down an average of 67k a year. Heck, we've got what amount to on-staff beta testers making 32k a year.

My typical point of course being that of course this Ferrari driving lifestyle (to use the article's term, and referring to game designers who are on one of the lower tiers on the chart) is passed on to us the consumers due to the rising cost of game development as they demand this money which of course requires the prices of games to be raised/stay high, and things like DLC to help support it.

I'm all for capitolism, but as I said, there is a point where I think the consumers need to say "hey, wait a second here" when it comes to some of these high priced products.


I remember another article a while back (which I think I linked to at one point, though maybe it was on another forum) which kind of talked about things from the producer/financers perspective in the Development Team/Money Provider relationship. This article (and others like it) were responsible for a lot of my ideas about how much these guys on the development side get paid, as well as the other perks they collect. It was intended as a rebuttal of sorts to articles on "how the industry works" from a developer perspective which lead a lot of people to tend to blame the evil producers for picking on the developers and being responsible for the prices of games. Specific numbers were not given, but it did talk about pretty high rates of pay for what they were doing (which were always increasing) combined with the use of the dev budget for things like food and board. Basically a development team ordering out on the dev budget for 3 meals a day while they work, or charging the dev budget if they decide they want to take up semi-residence at a motel close to the offices so they don't have to drive, or whatever.

All arguements aside, it all comes down to the fact that with budgets in the tens of millions of dollars, the actual expenses like computers and office space are minimal in proportion to the budget. Most of that money goes towards the human resources, either directly in terms of pay, or in the form of benefits. I seem to vaguely remember the percentage being like less than 5% on materials, but even if you say 10% what this means is that with a 70 million dollar game, 63 million dollars wound up going towards the people
they hired one way or another. What they demand to do this work is of course why game development is so expensive and why us the consumers pay a high price for games and get nickel and dimed.
Dude, $90k really isn't unreasonable at all for someone who's presumably a college graduate and skilled enough to make it into a very, very competitive industry. That's actually a pretty fair wage, depending on where you live. Hell, if you live in an expensive area (like, say, LA or San Fransisco), that might not be that much at all. Nor is that all that much compared to most successful industries. (And of course most of any budget is going to paying HR, that's the same in almost every company)

It's really a horrible thing for people to want to make a decent salary and make their games, huh. That's so awful. How can any company want to pay its employees a good wage for good work? I can't believe them, they should cut all their salaries in half.

Hold on to your change if you want. Don't buy games if it offends your sensibilities that companies are trying to pay their employees what their talent is worth on the marketplace. The rest of us will feel good about supporting an industry we're enthusiastic about and those in it.
 

CrystalShadow

don't upset the insane catgirl
Apr 11, 2009
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Fenixius said:
but it's definitely insanity if you have a team of 30 programmers and they're all on 90k each. Code monkeys shouldn't earn that much - it should be the guys who decide what to make the monkeys code. Unless the "programmers" in that chart include those people.

Either way, it's still just as easy to argue for small development, with this.

geldonyetich said:
No wonder we've got so many boring derivatives if game designers are that far down on the food chain.
No kidding! Design is the core of game-making... everything else is turning their vision into a product. Power to the designers!
Lol. Do you have any idea of the skill disparity between a programmer and a game designer?
Code monkeys? Honestly, it sickens me how insulting someone can be about such a complex and difficult task...

It takes years upon years to become a good programmer, and games programmers are of nessesity among the highest skilled of any kind of programmer, on average; while a game designer is essentially anyone that can come up with a half-decent idea...

Wages are based on supply and demand, and I can tell you from personal experience; People with the skills to program games are outnumbered at least 3 to 1 by people that think they can design games, and worse yet, a typical project needs more programmers than it does designers.
Aside from which, if you don't pay them enough, a programmer is more than capable of getting a job in a non-gaming capacity, while a game designer often has few skills that are in particularly high demand anywhere else.

A good idea is worthless if you can't get it implemented, after all.

End result? The demand for programmers far outstrips that for game designers, and it probably always will.
On that basis, the relative wages should be no surprise whatsoever.