Renegen on 10/12/2006 at 15:51
I thought Fuck that shit too until I saw some statistics. Artists straight out of college today earn 45k working for video games. They are paid big money. 80k is not unusual for the senior staff. (programmers had the best salaries with designers the worst, can't remember where the stats were)
Chimpy Chompy on 10/12/2006 at 18:19
Talked to my Sony Games friend, he tells me the pay structure there is:
Junior Programmer: £19,000 - £23,000
Programmer:£23,000-£30,000
Senior Programmer£30,000-£40,000
Principal Programmer:£40,000+
aguywhoplaysthief on 10/12/2006 at 20:27
Quote Posted by Renegen
45k working for video games. They are paid big money.
Since when is 45k big money?
jay pettitt on 10/12/2006 at 20:56
Also what country uses k a currency?
Apart from Kazakhstan
Oh come on, 45k fresh out of college is on the generous side of competitive. Perhaps you've never met a graduate - but they tend not to be all that. The average household income in the UK is just up on £21,000 (and we send our children and grand parents to work over here in europeland) so earning that in a junior position is plenty of wonga.
Renegen on 11/12/2006 at 12:16
Quote Posted by aguywhoplaysthief
Since when is 45k big money?
Since always. Sorry if you live by ultra high standards but any schmo making 45k(Canadian in my case, the statistics were in US dollars) is making a pretty good living.
Agent Monkeysee on 11/12/2006 at 16:41
45K right out of college is fantastic for many professions. For a software developer (at least in the US) it's pretty low.
Rug Burn Junky on 11/12/2006 at 17:02
I'd probably kill myself if I had to work that hard to make only $80,000 a year.
aguywhoplaysthief on 11/12/2006 at 17:06
The people who make 45k out of school make that because they have to live in the most expensive areas of the country. Starting pay for a level artist in one of the more backward areas of this fine country is in the mid to upper thirties.
Quote:
I'd probably kill myself if I had to work that hard to make only $80,000 a year.
Since $80,000 is the average yearly rent in NYC, I can see why ;)
Agent Monkeysee on 11/12/2006 at 21:40
Quote Posted by aguywhoplaysthief
The people who make 45k out of school make that because they have to live in the most expensive areas of the country. Starting pay for a level artist in one of the more backward areas of this fine country is in the mid to upper thirties.
Again it depends on what you're talking about. If you're an artist then yes 45K is way up there. I have a friend who is a senior-level artist in a small gaming house and he makes around that amount and we live in the liberal enclave of Seattle, where the cost of living is so high even Microsofties move out to the boonies. Of course that 45K wasn't entry-level for him (or any artists), he had to work his way up to it.
But if you're a software developer (i.e. programmer), then 45K is very low even for entry-level. Which is why you should be really really really certain you like games before going for that programming position at EA because you can make nearly double that anywhere else for half the hours.
Senath on 12/12/2006 at 00:42
Similarly, with regards to what Monkeysee said, you should probably also make sure you're not going into programming just for the games factor. Game programming may seem glamorous and all (or something), but it can involve a fair amount of annoyance as well. If you can't stand coding and all the myriad hassles of debugging that come with it and just want to make something shiny, it might be worth rethinking.
Of course, I strongly doubt this is the case with you, but I just thought I'd state the obvious. For what it's worth, I was initially interested in programming for game related stuff, but I've given up the idea long since for basically any job I can get in the industry. As others in the thread have pointed out, it's probably better to do something that will pay and that isn't so blastedly hard to break into.
