Just a question on how much an artist gets paid working in the game industry. Whats the average pay like? If you find this a rude question then you dont have to answer it just curious :)
Interesting. I would have thought the pay to be much lower then that. That's good news!
What about programmers? Do programmers generally get paid more then artists? (Don't get offended artists! I just assume that all artists are under appreciated and underpaid across the board in all industries.)
And then there's the production side of things. What kind of pay do these guys average?
(Hope these questions aren?t rude! Like Bullet said, I'm just curious [:)] )
WHAT?!?!?!?! 30-40k entry for an artist? Damn, artists get paid a lot more in Oz then here in the US. Here's some ballpark figures. Design, no experince <('<' means less then for you non programmer types :) ) $28k US. My friends as artists, entry <$30k Max $100k (very rare). Programmers entry $45k-$50k. Experienced... well, the sky's the limit.
Anyway, that's the US figures... of course some companies pay different depending on where you live... so these are just general numbers.
As far as I know entry level programmers are on roughly the same wages as artists here in Australia, maybe around $5k more. Of course this can climb dramatically as they become more important to the developer... artists are generally considered expendable while a talented experienced programmer can be worth his/her weight in gold to a developer.
Just thought id add in that 28K american = 39,823.5 with today oz dollar standings, although like moony said cost of living etc is different.
But having travelled all over the world - its pretty much all relative, no matter where you work or travel, if you get paid peanuts your probably in a place where peanuts is easily livable - its just the change of lifestyle that shocks us into thinking its less money for more work.
The UK also pays well, paticularly around the london area, 18K - 22K for entry level positions which isnt quite so easily livable if you dont have the right contacts, but if you do, you stand to make what seems to be very little - but you can come home after a year or so with quite a package. 18k = 45,677 oz dollars at the moment. so you get the picture.
Well its a quite a tad higher than alot of "entry" level positions. and you can make a nice lifestyle from mid 30k, if you have good spending habits.
Some of the higher paid UK jobs ive seen asking for 2 - 5 years experience ranges from 25K - 35K ( thats english pounds ) so roughly 3 times the amount for oz dollar. thats a pretty decent earnings if you send your money home.
quote:What about programmers? Do programmers generally get paid more then artists?
Overall yes, as for entry level maybe not though. I'm probably at the lower scale of entry-level programming wages at ~32k a year (for a ... "38" hour week :P), which is about $2/hour less than one would get working the cash register at woolworths :P. In the long run though, i hear the senior programmers tend to get around 70k, whereas senior artists are closer to 55k.
DaMunkee: Remember to take currency conversion into account :)
CYer, Blitz
This should have all the info for you for USA
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20020715/Salary_Survey_2002.pdf
Da Munkee, you said that in Oz we get paid more!!? I read the gamasutra salary survey posted by Chaos and the average figures for salaries, even for entry level or inexperience artists are still quite higher than Australian figures!
Approx 53K for artists with less than 2 years experience!? And that's in US dollars.
I don't know, maybe that survey isn't correct, but the figures definitely look enticing and much better than Oz. But getting into the American industry is a whole other story...
Blitz: 32K and 38 hour weeks? When you put it into the woolworths perspective I start to worry :/. If you don't mind me asking, which development house are you with?
Also, to anyone else, is there any advice for cracking into the US industry? I've always considered it an impossible target, but the money seems much bigger over there. Ideally, what would one have to do? I assume it would mean a few years experience in the Oz industry first. Though I heard that immigration laws have become tighter so it's even more difficult to get into the US and find a job, settle etc..
Any advice?
im heading to the US. New York to be precise.
yes it is difficult to get in, ive been in the visa process for a few months now. I should have my visa in 3 weeks, all the paperwork was sent back over to the studio and put into immigration last week.
its broadcast, not games but same story....
i dont know about the money being that much more.
after working out living expenses etc of New York, it looks like ill still be living about the same, maybe a little upgrade.
quote:Originally posted by Jason
Also, to anyone else, is there any advice for cracking into the US industry? I've always considered it an impossible target, but the money seems much bigger over there. Ideally, what would one have to do? I assume it would mean a few years experience in the Oz industry first. Though I heard that immigration laws have become tighter so it's even more difficult to get into the US and find a job, settle etc..Any advice?
Well, it is difficult to get a job in the US without a couple years prior experience. I was just in the right place at the right time and had the skills. Also you really need a bachelors (with honors is better) degree to get through immigration. However if a company *really* wants you, which usually only happens for genius programmers, they can usually find ways to get you into the US.
Yeah, I saw those Gamasutra figures. Mind you, there is a difference between 'no' experience and 1 or 2 years experience. I dont think the survey catered for those with 'no' experience.
Considering the skill that's usually involved with 3d art and gaming art in general - it's rude that they get paid the same as your entry graphic designer (give or take a few thou'). Did anyone else see the other recent Gamasutra survey. Something like 52% of people in the industry dont think they'll be in it in 10 years time. It was a survey on 'quality of life'.
quote:Originally posted by JonathanKerr
Did anyone else see the other recent Gamasutra survey. Something like 52% of people in the industry dont think they'll be in it in 10 years time. It was a survey on 'quality of life'.
[url]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1760[/url]
The IGDA Did a survey/whitepaper on Quality of life. Yeah the numbers definitely show something is wrong with the industry.
Yes I agree!! we need a union! I'm getting paid peanuts at the moment 27k (au) to be exact.. I'm not complaining cause my job kicks ass over what I used to do! But yeah having no union means we are getting shafted...
We should start a thread about forming a union ya know! It's about time we looked after ourselves
lesss hours more Pay!!
yah
quote:Originally posted by Me109
Yes I agree!! we need a union! I'm getting paid peanuts at the moment 27k (au) to be exact.. I'm not complaining cause my job kicks ass over what I used to do! But yeah having no union means we are getting shafted...We should start a thread about forming a union ya know! It's about time we looked after ourselves
lesss hours more Pay!!yah
First up - I'm making this shit up from what I can find on Gamasutra and places like that, I have no idea if it's true or not...
Personally I don't see how any US/UK company stays afloat these days, given the wages they supposedly pay.
Lets say a game takes 18 months, has 30 people working on it (mid-sized project)
Lets pay them each, say, AU$75k (approx US $50k) (everyone gets the same money in this example, at the lower end of the average wage in the surveys)
So wages alone cost AU$3.3 million. General business practice says that an employee costs at least 2x their wage, so thats AU$6.6 million to make the game, approx (some say 3x)
so how many copies do you need to sell to break even ?
Best that I can see, you get 5-20% of the sale price as a royalty (approx, from gamasutra) depending on your history. lets say 20%, pretend you're a hero :-)
Game price is AU$80 (ex GST)
Dev takes home $16 per title
So Dev needs to sell over 420,000 copies to break even...
Add to that another 60,000 copies for every million spent on advertising/etc.
and if you only get 10%, then you need to sell close to a million to break even... before advertising...
And thats not a top-level game - the better known games probably cost double that figure... I've seen suggestions of some games costing 4x that figure to make.
so how do they do it ?
My best guess is that we are similar to the film industry... the Publishers fund a heap of games hoping one will make up for all the others (e.g. GTA)
The other thing is that perhaps game companies can run at lower overhead to other industries - but I doubt that (think of floorspace, computers, power, admin, etc)
Also, the lower paid people at most game companies are not attending GDC and therefore less likely to respond to the survey (since thats where it is primarily run from)
hmm - maybe I should have started another topic :-)
Seriously though, does anyone know real info on how any normal company survives in this industry ?
edit: converted some of my sentences into English :-)
quote:Originally posted by Me109
Yes I agree!! we need a union! I'm getting paid peanuts at the moment 27k (au) to be exact.. I'm not complaining cause my job kicks ass over what I used to do! But yeah having no union means we are getting shafted...
We don't need a union. If you're getting paid peanuts then either your area has a very low cost of living, you have a rather unskilled position or you are just putting up with being screwed by unscrupulous managers. If you had good managers then you'd be doing a 40 hour week and getting a decent wage, because they would only take on projects with realistic costings and plans.
quote:Originally posted by Zaph
Personally I don't see how any US/UK company stays afloat these days, given the wages they supposedly pay.
Agreed. There are studios shutting down in the UK, and this is probably why. (See the article on the front page a while ago about Ratbag having loads of people from the UK applying). I wouldn't say that an employee costs at least as much as they are being paid - $50,000 is a lot of extra expenses for that employee! (But what would I know, I'm just an employee too.)
With the sales figures you calculated you can see why developers are abandoning the PC - there just isn't the market to sustain a large number of big-budget titles anymore. On a console like the PS2, there's a much greater chance to sell a million copies and you don't have the associated support nightmare of a million different configurations like you do with the PC.
Thats a really interesting point - i learnt about this a couple years back when i was doing some research on shareware indy based devleopers, and i basically came up with the same figures, it just somehow doesnt work out.
Like you said Kevin, 6.6 million to build a game is quite a high figure and a couple years back, figures of 10 million for titles like RTCW - was almost unheard of. The companies would need to sell some serious SERIOUS figures to even make headway, but like you also said about publishers jumping in for a whole bunch of titles and hoping like hell 1 comes up trumps would probably be near whats going on.
Even though, that kind of squeeze cant be good for the state of the industry, so much money spent on a whim is why forum after forum talk about " why so many companies fail " - it comes down to almost impossible odds, even uberly impossible for the startup guy with no capital, to spit out a game on the other end, drag 30 - 40 workers through hell for 18 months and NOT pay them a decent wage ?
IMO its all backward,.. you pay peanuts you get monkeys, its as simple as that. If you want to buy good genuine hand made goods - you pay for them, a whole bunch more than a production line stuff ( generally speaking ).
So like Zaph, if anyone can shed light on this topic - id be all eyes [:)]
If we think it's bad now, wait till the next generation of consoles arrive.
Some within the industry forecast massive amounts of studio closures due to budgets escalating up to $40 million + for a AAA title.
Think about it, with those figures being touted publishers won't be willing to take a gamble on any unknown developer whatsoever.
wtf $40 million per AAA title - thats obscene... where will that money go ????
im assuming that would be doubling the team size - paying them a decent specialist wage, the dev time would blow out to 5 odd years on average ? but even so using those figures from above that would say blow it out to 20-25 million at the most!!!
C&C Generals, about $13mil US - Marketing was another > $10mil US Crazy expensive games are already being made.
So how do companies survive? Here's one way. Say you're a company and you have a deal with one publisher for 1 game, you develop your engine (which takes a long freak'n time, that's the bulk of your costs) and then when you ship the game, it's time to make a new game. Well if you started from scratch, you would go through the whole process again and surely you'll fail. So, how about you get a publisher for 1 game and as you're working on that, you get a contract for a second game. If the engine was designed right (being almost 100% data driven) you can now develop 2 games at the same time without having to shell out for another engineering team (which is the highest paid group). Sure your team will have to increase as you need more designers and artists for the second game, but provided you did the numbers right, you stand to make a substantial profit by developing the two games at the same time. Continue like this until the engine is tired and worn out and you can actually survive.
The reason why most studios fail (95% to be exact) is mainly because the people running the studio have no clue about managing people as well as assets. Get some good managers on the team, as well as retain the talent you already have (so you don't have to waste money retraining them) and you'll be on the right track to survive.
quote:Originally posted by HazarD
wtf $40 million per AAA title - thats obscene... where will that money go ????im assuming that would be doubling the team size - paying them a decent specialist wage, the dev time would blow out to 5 odd years on average ? but even so using those figures from above that would say blow it out to 20-25 million at the most!!!
The example I gave was a medium sized project. Transformers had close to double that number of people on it, GPC had similar numbers. External costs like CG movies, Actors, etc, all add up too
I've thin figured out a bit more about how this all works:
Most companies would work on advances from the publisher for that (say) $6million.
So to break even it's the Publisher that needs to make 6mil, not the dev studio - and the publisher takes the studios cut of the sales until that 6mil is paid back. So I guess it's possible for a publisher to break into a profit while there is still money owed on the 6mil for the developer.
this is still guesswork, but sounds reasonable since it's similar to how the film industry works
e.g.
new game: SPISPOPD
Cost: $6mil
Dev takes 10%, Publisher 20% (guessing here, I have no idea)
Publisher starts out at -6mil
Publisher takes $24 per copy (30%) until the 6mil is paid off *using 10%* and then drops to 20%
Sales____Publisher___Dev
0_________-6mil_______0
100,000___-3.6mil_____0 (800k paid off)
200,000___-1.2mil_____0 (1.6mil)
400,000___+3.6mil_____0 (3.2mil)
800,000___+6.8mil_____+400,000 (+6mil paid off)
1,000,000_+10mil______+2mil (+6mil paid off)
So, if I'm right (and this is guesswork) then:
- Developer breaks even from the start, publisher has pissed away it's money :-)
- At some point the publisher starts making a profit on their investment
- At a later point (considerably later) the developer starts getting more money on the sales.
Of course, since most games probably never hit profit for the publisher, it's a big gamble for them. (including cancelled games)
Still, a US$40mil game is going to have to sell a truckload of units to make a profit for anyone! (GTA probably sold enough)
Well, if Alex Seropian (Wideload Games, ex-Bungie head) has anything to do with it, most game services would be contracted out. Have a core team (designers, programmers and artists) and source everything out from there. That way you're not paying artists when you're doing the testing or when bottlenecks build up in the workload.
Makes sense, but not as secure. That's how it is in films tho'.
Average pay for a new employee with no previous industry experience is $30-40k and generally caps off at around $50-60k for a lead artist/art director. I've know of a few individuals making more than this but it's rare in Australia.