The massive gap between UK and US gamedev salaries seems to keep getting larger :(
US salaries also have to include cost of healthcare.
Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter
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Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter
#22It's really weird how this article starts by showing how through negotiation and job searching you can increase your salary, but bizarrely then talks about unions, which are known to depress wages for top performers (just look at teachers unions, where pay is totally disconnected from competence and performance). If you're a really good game developer, artist or animator then you should learn the skill of negotiation…
Unions can at the least increase the standard of pay for everyone other than those few top performers who also know how to negotiate well. Having to adversarially game out every interaction just to thrive in the world, especially those interactions with entities that have a lot of power to make your life good or bad for a long time, is a serious burden to place on people, and unions can help to alleviate it. I have a…
Unions also increase the standard pay for the few top performers. If you are worth 10x a standard programmer, than the average programmer salary doubling doubles your value too. Most unions that represent jobs with vastly different skill levels raise the rate of everyone.
Unions don't necessarily eliminate pay disparity, but they work for increased worker benefits in total.
Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter
#23If my software is online and the company can make profit from across the world, why should I get paid locally?
Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter
#24It's really weird how this article starts by showing how through negotiation and job searching you can increase your salary, but bizarrely then talks about unions, which are known to depress wages for top performers (just look at teachers unions, where pay is totally disconnected from competence and performance). If you're a really good game developer, artist or animator then you should learn the skill of negotiation…
Many people lack the cold-bloodedness necessary to be that mercenary. Especially game devs, who are almost always in it for the love of the product, not for a paycheck. Corporate may not be their friend, but the product they're creating is their creation. Every person working on it knows a hundred things they could do to make it better, and they want to do all of them. They just need a bit more time.
Unions are about protecting everyone from predatory employers like most game publishers. You go in and negotiate? You're fired; there are 100 more people out there with a compulsion to create and share with the world.
So yeah, unions. They address the issue of the party with money exploiting the non-monetary incentives. That's strictly better than assuming the problem is that people have non-monetary incentives.
Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter
#25What is the supply of labor like like when it comes to game development?
It seems like there might be a huge number of folks who want to get into the game industry, but not as many jobs available? Could that have an impact on salaries?
When I changed careers and attended a coding camp, there were a handful of very capable folks who had failed to get into the gaming industry noting how many other folks like them there were trying to break in. They had much less trouble getting into other (not gaming) areas after they retooled a bit.
Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter
#26This isn't unique to game dev. This is true in education as well - most white collar positions pay between 40 - 100k while vice presidents and presidents get 250k + packages. I think more developers need to get better at negotiating. One 10 minute conversation can beat years of 2-4% raises. It's all about setting expectations and being willing to walk away.
Walking away is only powerful if you have leverage. Game devs, unlike a lot of other software, are not super in demand. You can't apply for an entry level job at EA and then pop over to Ubisoft instead when the offer from EA is crap. There are way more folks trying to break into game dev than there are jobs available.
Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter
#27The massive gap between UK and US gamedev salaries seems to keep getting larger :(
US cost of living is ridiculous. You shouldn't just compare two numbers one to one. 150k in California is basically just scraping by.
Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter
#28It's really weird how this article starts by showing how through negotiation and job searching you can increase your salary, but bizarrely then talks about unions, which are known to depress wages for top performers (just look at teachers unions, where pay is totally disconnected from competence and performance). If you're a really good game developer, artist or animator then you should learn the skill of negotiation…
Teacher performance is difficult if not impossible to quantify, especially given how much student performance depends on factors external to the classroom. But more to the point, most teaching jobs are government jobs, and government jobs have salary bands set by legislation. You can't individually negotiate with legislators. That has nothing to do with having a union. Most government jobs are not unionized, but still have narrow, standard pay bands that cannot reward differences in performance.
Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter
#29It's really weird how this article starts by showing how through negotiation and job searching you can increase your salary, but bizarrely then talks about unions, which are known to depress wages for top performers (just look at teachers unions, where pay is totally disconnected from competence and performance). If you're a really good game developer, artist or animator then you should learn the skill of negotiation…
You're probably being downvoted because you mentioned unions in a negative light, but your points are factually correct. Unions have a place for protecting unskilled workers, but what happens in game development is quite unique, because these workers are in-demand software engineers who typically have better options working in a less glorified field.
The games industry is notorious for crunch hiring and firing, low wages and exhausting work regimes. When work conditions like that prevail, people unionize (good for them imo). If there's anything surprising about it, it's that people put up with it for this long.
Yeah, it's a good idea to learn how to negotiate and good advice to leave a failing company if you can.
But "just learn to negotiate" is really a non-solution if the goal is to transform unacceptable industry wide labor practices.
Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter
#30What is it about game development field that makes it so labor intensive with consistent overtimes? I tried to make a simple FPS game and it was astounding how much work was involved. Took 6 month of learning Unreal and Unity and gave up with a functioning prototype. Took 4 months of back and forth with Steam to list my game. Even harder trying to make money off it. I'm just in awe of Roblox, Minecraft, Fall Guy and…
> What is it about game development field that makes it so labor intensive with consistent overtimes?
I helped lead a team that built and shipped a 3D multiplayer game from scratch with a custom engine. I went into it expecting it to be harder than I thought it would be, and it was harder still.
I think the thing that makes game dev fundamentally harder than other types of software is that most software products solve a problem or take away pain. So they only have to be good enough that the user is better off using the product than not using it. And there are still many problems out there that people face for which there is no solution. So even an imperfect solution might be quite good.
Games on the other hand have to be so good that playing them is more fun/appealing/rewarding than the next best thing the player might do with those hours.
While the technical challenges in some types of games are daunting, I suspect that even technically simpler games like 2d platformers are probably much harder to develop now than they were a few decades ago, due to necessity of competing against every other activity the player has to choose from.