I see your name attached to arguments like this all the time.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.
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.
CrystalShadow said:I see your name attached to arguments like this all the time.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.
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.
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?
Well, the over-arching problem is simple;Therumancer said:CrystalShadow said:I see your name attached to arguments like this all the time.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.
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.
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...
Lost In The Void said:Got a question though it might be a stupid one, where are the writers in this chart?
Excellent, it will only cost your soul.ProfessorLayton said:Alright, it's decided. I'm going to get a job in marketing.
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.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.
No kidding! Design is the core of game-making... everything else is turning their vision into a product. Power to the designers!geldonyetich said:No wonder we've got so many boring derivatives if game designers are that far down on the food chain.
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)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.
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.
Lol. Do you have any idea of the skill disparity between a programmer and a game designer?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.
No kidding! Design is the core of game-making... everything else is turning their vision into a product. Power to the designers!geldonyetich said:No wonder we've got so many boring derivatives if game designers are that far down on the food chain.