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."

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

[realmolo]

Because since you'll be working 80 hour weeks, you won't have time to spend it!

As for stock options and royalties...yeah right. Carrot, meet stick.

Seriously, IGN is clueless.

What I'd REALLY like to know

[halivar]

What's the dollar-to-hour ratio? If you're making $100K and spending 100 hours a week to make it, it's not worth it.

kids!

[rovingeyes]

"If you were to grab any random teenager from one of the midnight launch lines for the latest Halo, Grand Theft Auto or Madden release and were to ask them how much it'd take to pay them to make games, there's a good chance that you'd find more than a few who would tell you that it's their dream to get into development and that they'd do it for free. "

Call it a flame, but am I the only one seeing the stupidity in that paragraph. They are KIDS for crying out loud! Let us see if they still are willing to work for free when...umm... they graduate or have a family. This author is a moron!

Or you can make a crappy half-assed games site

[Radres]

...and make $600 million [theinquirer.net]. I always hated IGN and their half-hearted attempt to make a games site for each and every game that comes out. Nothing could compare to a site made by a dedicated fan, such as Shlonglor's Warcraft 2 page [winnieinternet.com], which was built before this gamespy/ign/daily radar/plan revolution.

Re:kids!

[mcb]

Agreed. A random teenager has no idea what is involved in making games. Tedious programming, constantly fixing bugs, trying to write software for an insane variety of hardware, working 80 hours a week until your current project ships, losing your job when your game crashes and burns in the market...

Yeah sounds like a dream job.

Re:Starting at $60K?

[hal2814]

It depends on where you live. In my neck of the woods (NE GA), $60k goes a long way. Out where most game programmers are located (CA coast), I'd hate to try to live off of that. When you're taking home $4000 a month (after taxes) and spending $2500 on rent or a mortgage payment, it doesn't look so good.

I stopped reading at...

[nharmon]

as it's the engineers at the various game companies that are driving the Ferrari's, Mercedes SL500's, and Lamborghini's.

First of all. How many engineers are game companies are driving top-end sports cars? And second of all, how many could afford them?

I mean, making $100,000 and driving a Lambo would probably mean parking it in front of a 1 bedroom apartment... and hoping someone doesn't walk along and key it.

Pardon?

[MaestroSartori]

I don't know about the US, but I'm a gamesprogrammer in the UK with 4 years or so games experience for a mix of companies.

My starting salary was £20k (somewhere around $35k-40k US I think), which is at the upper end of the starting range in this country. I've known people who worked in smaller companies in lower cost-of-living areas who started on much less.

Most companies that I've known staff at do *not* offer shares, or royalties, or even bonuses. Bonuses, where offered, are by no means guaranteed - I've never had one. I've worked on a finished game for which I might've received royalties, but you don't get them til at least a year after the game is released (and the company went bust before the game was released, lovely!), and there's no guarantee that the contract with the publisher will be such that the staff ever see any royalties even if the company does.

I've never worked for them, but the majority of games companies at least in the UK make GB/GBA/Mobile-phone games, not the big console titles. Even the big players (Rockstar spring to mind) don't pay out regular bonuses on time or at all.

Why do I still do it? Well, now I'm working at a decent company (Sony, if you're interested), I get to make *games* god damn it, it's fun! :)

If anyone has any more questions about working in games, feel free to reply :D

Re:I stopped reading at...

[djwavelength]

If they replace "engineers" with "executives", the sentance makes sense.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I work at a Major Game Company

[OneByteOff]

A metric that I've always used to guess how well a company pays its employees is the cars in the parking lot. I work at a major game company that produces 20 million dollar games. In our parking lot out of about 100 cars there are no Bmw's, one mercedes, one or two high end sports cars and the majority are grocery getter low end compacts.

The only people getting rich are the high up exec's, one of which rolls up in his bentley once a month or so for a few hours then leaves the office again.

Re:The hard part...

[Buddy_DoQ]

It's cool dude, if you want in, you really don't need that prior exp. Just a hard-core portfolio and the attitude to follow it up. It's a visual medium, so you have to show them what you can do, the easiest way is to show them the last game you shipped, but they don't really expect everyone to have that. Just send them your reel and if it rocks their socks off, you'll get your interview and art test if you're an artist type.

In the meantime, don't stop working on your stuff, keep your self fresh

Re:kids!

[vertinox]

Let us see if they still are willing to work for free when...umm... they graduate or have a family. This author is a moron!

Then they shouldn't have kids then... Sometimes having a particular career means not having a family because you won't be able to support them (that or you wouldn't make a responsible parent anyways).

Look... No one is forcing you to have kids or buy a house or a fancy car. I can live off $20K a year if I wanted to (but I wouldn't want).

If you have dreams follow them. Wait til your 30 to have kids or just not have them at all unless you have some breeder desire. Me... I think I am going to spare the world a few more mouths and get a vasectomy and adopt if I ever settle down.

Don't get me wrong, you can still have your dream career and still have a family, but you have work extra hard for it and give up things that you had before you started to raise a family.

Re:Starting at $60K?

[orderb13]

You're looking at a lot less than that after taxes. If you're lucky you're looking at 3,200.

Re:The hard part...

[TrappedByMyself]

Get a job outside of the game field, and either build a game in your spare time, or volunteer your time to a group building a game or mod.

over something that seems superficial and silly rather than anything related to competence in any given talent.

How is proven experience not related to competence? Put another way, if you claim to have the competence, then how are you not able to prove it to them? What is your competence? Good grades? Projects you did on your own? A healthy ego is not competence.
If you claim to be good at something, then you've must have done it, so you have something to put on your resume. 2 years experience is not a huge demand. If you can demonstrate real skills, you can sometimes get that sort of work if you take the chance of sending in the resume anyway.
However, if you got an 'A' on a six week project, and think you can go after senior level positions, then you need a reality check.

2yr experience needed

[lateralus_1024]

Here in San Diego, if you have your CS degree and say, 2yrs of experience at $60k, you will find yourself at a crossroad: If you have good presentation skills, and have managed to teach yourself .Net/SQL Server/XML (because God(tm) knows they won't teach that to you at SDSU) then you should have no problem contracting for $60/hr or earning $75k+ once you move to another job. Having 7yrs experience myself, I have come to realization that the easiest way to get a pay raise is to simply move to another company. Frequently updating your resume will remind you of how little you actually know in your field. Diversify, bitches. If you choose to stay in one place, you can bank on a mediocre 3% pay increase annually, stock option carrot dangling, and work with the same technology you played with last year. Just my 2 cents, i don't mean to offend anyone. Mileage will vary.

Or are they?

[Anonymous Coward]

Granted that most of the information presented in the article is either false or hyped beyond exaggeration, IGN is not entirely clueless. Their motive here is not to write a fact-filled article, presenting unbiased information to a crowd of prospective game developers.

What is it, then? To make money. Consider two things:

-This article is geared toward adolescents, and continues the marginal trend within America of promoting questionable possibilities because, survey says: kids like to dream.
-Checking just above the article, one will notice the banner indicating "Sponsored by Full Sail" in so many words. What is Full Sail, you ask? An imitation private college designed to produced talentless chum at the measly expense of $30k. Per year.

IGN is no more clueless than they are poor, but they definitely hope to take advantage of the fact that their userbase is indeed clueless. But what more should we expect from America's biased, profiteering media?

A parallel from my generation

[StressGuy]

I grew up (mostly) near the Chicagoland area in a small town where every other male played guitar. All of us were in garage bands at one time or another and, of course, we all had aspirations of "making the big time". As I got older, I would sometimes wonder what I would do if my kid decided he wanted to pursue his dream of being a "rockstar". The answer is pretty simple if you give it some thought. To even have the remotest shot at such a career, you have to be an extremely talented musician (yea, I know, I just put a "flame me" target on my back with that one, but, really, the odds of a mediocre talent making it are a lot smaller than a genuine talent). So, if that is really his interest, I would let him study music. Odds are, he won't "make the bigtime", but he could be a studio musician, producer, etc. A lot of would be rockstars I knew eventually went the studio route. The point is even if he doesn't realize his dream, he's still picking up a marketable skill in a field he loves.

I see the same thing with computer gaming. To write games you need skills in math, physics, computer science, art, storytelling, etc. All very marketable skills. Seems like a no-brainer. Even if you don't write the next "DOOM", you've still got plenty of other options.

So, if my kid wants to get into the video game industry, I'd be inclined to support him.

Take two things into consideration....

[ProppaT]

1) IGN is assuming that everybody in the game industry is working in CA because they're clueless like that.

2) $60k isn't much in CA.

Seriously, I know the entry level folks over here at EA Tiburon in Orlando aren't starting out at that.

Re:Before our friends across the pond get ticked..

[boomgopher]

People who make $100k a year do not neccessarily drive Lambo's either. In fact, I bet very FEW people who make $100k a year drive "great" cars - $100k a year in the US isn't ALL that much money. Especially if you're supporting a family.

Amen - in many/most parts of California, making $100K is barely enough to rent a halfway decent 3BR home and support a small family with a middle-class lifestyle. Heaven help you if you want to actually buy a home.

Re:kids!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I have heard of recently-graduated college kids (probably from well-off families) working at places like Blizzard for far less than they deserve, simply because it's Blizzard. Meanwhile the company cuts the pay for the people who actually know what they're doing because it's cheaper to higher a bunch of novices than one skiled programmer.

Re:kids!

[Fulcrum of Evil]

A random teenager has no idea what is involved in making games.

A random teenager has no idea what is involved in supporting himself.

Re:Gaming industry is insane..

[justins]

. This is an industry where the peasants (programmers, engineers) REVOLTED. I can't think of another example.

Not a student of the labor movement and its history, eh?

I love it!

[TiggertheMad]

royalties

BWHahahahahaha ahhahahhhahahahahahhhahahhahahhahahahhh... (pant)(pant)
Ahhahahahahahhahahah hahahahhah hahahahh hhah hhahahha... (pant)(pant)
AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHAAhahahaha hahahahahahhah hahahh hahh... (pant)(pant)
hahahahah.....hahahahh......haha...... (gasp) Oh, *ahem*......hehe..er, *cough*....hehe...hehhhhheee...


Sorry, hehehehe, *ahem*....... Now, I think- royalties

AAHAHAHHAHAHHHAHHAHHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHA!

Make up your own damn mind!

[Chris Burke]

Either going into the computer industry is a bad choice or it's not.

No. The decision of whether to go into the computer industry or not is complicated, and there is no possible way you can reduce it to a simple good/bad value, especially as a generalization that applies to everyone since that seems to be what you are asking for.

Life is complicated. There are precious few equations in math that can be reduced to a constant. The equations that govern our lives in human society are not among them. But people demand that they be forced into single, binary values. This makes no sense, and decisions based on such nonsensical thinking fail. "Going into computers is a bad choice or it's not." "Getting lasik surgery is a bad choice or it's not." "You're either with us or against us." No! The universe is not a collection of binary choices. You have to think about and consider all the actual variables that make up whether something is true for you.

The fact that not only do you expect "should M go into computers?" to be reduced to a True/False constant for all values of M, but that you expect /. to do pick the constant for you, rather frightens me.

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.

So you're saying this hypothetical idiot was going to base his career choice entirely on Slashdot Groupthink(tm), but because there was no consensus and actually several sides to the story that required consideration, he was unable to make up his mind and became a grocer?

GOOD. We don't need another engineer who isn't capable of basic critical thinking and decision making, or who thinks every decision in life can be represented by a single boolean value. That isn't even true in programming, much less real life, so I doubt this person would in the long run be a good engineer anyway. I can only imagine what will happen when this fool tries to buy a house. "Variable vs fixed rate mortages... why can't you just tell me which one is better?!"

In the end, no, "us slashdotters" not need to "make up our mind". Slashdotters need to continue to hear about and discuss all the factors that go into these decisions so that each of us can make as informed a decision as possble. Not have that decision made for us.

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

[Nept]

you won't have time to spend it

no, you just end up spending it in daft ways ... like blowing $500 on a dinner or in other equally silly ways.

Re:Pardon?

[bigdogs]

I think you missed the grandparent post's point. At $60K/yr in most of the midwest, you can buy a standard 3BR/2BA house and have an entire family live in it supported by a single wage earner. In Orange County (where I live as well), the salary needed to buy a median-priced home is $120K/yr, and that's with one of those interest-only loan gimmicks.

I do agree with you as well that not being able to afford a house is more than offset by the gorgeous women, great weather, and all there is to do here.