Well they aren't really complete numbers. This only salaried employees not contract workers. I imagine there is a slightly larger percentage of females working in the industry. That said there shouldn't be a pay gap. I would also like to see what pay is vs cost of living. Sure it's nice seeing artists average 70k, but I wonder how much of that is skewed by high cost of living areas like California.
I've yet to see a study about men vs woman salary that actually includes previous experience, asking salary, and if they tried to negotiate more. I think men are more likely to be upfront and try and negotiate more, or just generally ask for more from the get go. Im sure there are companies that still have the older generation making the calls and actually paying women less, but I think over all, I don't think it's because they are women in the sense that everyone thinks. I think it's more they are just willing to accept whatever is offered, and companies will always try and low ball people if they can. Men or women, they`ll try to pay them the least possible. You really have to have the courage to stand up for what you believe you deserve.
I've yet to see a study about men vs woman salary that actually includes previous experience, asking salary, and if they tried to negotiate more. I think men are more likely to be upfront and try and negotiate more, or just generally ask for more from the get go. Im sure there are companies that still have the older generation making the calls and actually paying women less, but I think over all, I don't think it's because they are women in the sense that everyone thinks. I think it's more they are just willing to accept whatever is offered, and companies will always try and low ball people if they can. Men or women, they`ll try to pay them the least possible. You really have to have the courage to stand up for what you believe you deserve.
This is just silly. Why would women not want to get paid well? What makes you think women won't ask for higher wages? It's not like it's an insignificant amount of money. Also you really don't believe larger companies don't pay women less somewhat on purpose to save money?
I do not want to get into too much trouble by saying this, but is clear these numbers are only the exception, with a little boost on top. From experience as an artist, we are leading to a system in which future artist (next generation), will be super happy with an average of 40k. I think I derailed a bit, but my point is, salaries in the game industry need an update. Even if you are the exception, you should feel like you are part of something big. A title and the company you work for is not enough, the salary should also accommodate to all the hard work you have put towards the discipline.
If that is not the case, is clear what is going on around us.
It's a big issue that we don't need armchair analysis of.
from Gamasutra:
"According to Gamasutra's Game Developer Salary Survey 2014 [PDF], men working U.S.-based salaried jobs in the game industry made $85,074 on average in 2013, whereas women made an average of $72,882 (excluding students and educators).
That means on average, women made 86 cents on every dollar that men made in the U.S. game industry.
While it’s still an issue that needs to be fixed, the game industry gender wage gap is smaller than the national average: In the U.S. overall, women make 77 cents on every dollar that men make, according figures from a 2012 Census Bureau survey."
Sadly most women are way more shy when it comes to negotiations or even measuring their own skill. Its sad but true but many women don't have the balls (no pun intended) even tho they might be better than their counterparts. I for one do not care. Can an artist deliver thats all that matters. Women, men from the western worl russia or asia, junior or senior. All have the same chances when it comes to money at our place. A junior will naturally takes longer and might need a senior to support him. But he can make the same money as anyone else.
I might be reading this wrong but is there any reason why programmers with a bachelor's degree make over $10,000 less than programmers with "Some college?" I'd think it would be the other way around, but I guess college really is worthless lol.
Ok, so keeping gender out of it then... Artists are being paid less and less it seems.
Is it safe to assume that if people stop accepting less, they`ll stop being paid less? But only if EVERYONE does.
When it comes to new artists who just want their foot in the door, they are willing to accept lower wages. Whatever the company throws at them, they`ll accept. I know I did. I know I was / am part of the problem. I didn't want to risk not getting the job by asking for more.
And when your first salary is low, your next one will be lower than it could have been should you have started higher. It's a snow ball effect. You need to be willing to ask for more. Ask what you`re worth, and stand by your decision, otherwise companies will give you as little as they can. They really don't care about gender. If they think they can pay you less and get away with it, they will.
Sadly most women are way more shy when it comes to negotiations or even measuring their own skill. Its sad but true but many women don't have the balls (no pun intended)
Geezus. All the women that I know that are involved in 3d art (and this spans games, film and oil and gas) are typically far more professional and handle the business side of negotiating for a position far better than a lot of dudes I know.
ANYWAYS, off of that part of the topic..
I would really like these surveys to include where in the world these survey applicants were working when they answered. Working in TX and working in CA is a big difference when it comes to cost of living and the salaries reflect that.
I might be reading this wrong but is there any reason why programmers with a bachelor's degree make over $10,000 less than programmers with "Some college?" I'd think it would be the other way around, but I guess college really is worthless lol.
Given the rest of the averages are within 5% of eachother I would assume that is just an artifact caused by low response rate from people in one or both of those groups.
Given the rest of the averages are within 5% of eachother I would assume that is just an artifact caused by low response rate from people in one or both of those groups.
Just speculating here but it could also be that more veteran industry folk never had Bachelors Degrees available at the time - only college courses.
Ok, so keeping gender out of it then... Artists are being paid less and less it seems.
Is it safe to assume that if people stop accepting less, they`ll stop being paid less? But only if EVERYONE does.
When it comes to new artists who just want their foot in the door, they are willing to accept lower wages. Whatever the company throws at them, they`ll accept. I know I did. I know I was / am part of the problem. I didn't want to risk not getting the job by asking for more.
And when your first salary is low, your next one will be lower than it could have been should you have started higher. It's a snow ball effect. You need to be willing to ask for more. Ask what you`re worth, and stand by your decision, otherwise companies will give you as little as they can. They really don't care about gender. If they think they can pay you less and get away with it, they will.
Yep well said and too be honest the individual is not to blame, instead is the industry it self and the expectations of the discipline. I also did the same, and if I had to go back in time I would do it again(Any artist with the right mind would). We are under the effect that experiences matter more(which is critical, I cant argue) and working in a AAA is used as a some sort of VIP area in other worlds you should be considered lucky, which is quite sad towards the field people are involved. Also don't forget there is more talent than jobs, the field (3d art)is becoming more and more faster and easier to do. High-school kids in some schools are already doing it and it can well be part of an elementary art class in the near future.
To stay on topic, if these are the results of 2013, so far 2014 has not been the best with all the layoffs happening and is becoming more apparent that if the project bombs expect layoffs or total shutdown,(Make a game loose your job cycle). Hopefully things get better not just for the folks at the VIP studios but to all the developers in all places.
to be honest ... I have high expectation to indie developers... ( even though I am not part of indie)
but that chart shows how insane indie game competition is >.< ....
Damn can we not? JUST ONCE NOT make this a men/women thing in games?
+1! It's really annoying.
As for the chart itself, there are too many variables in these kind of charts. Like, just where you live (rents, cost of living etc) will change how these numbers look.
Here in Cali for example, you're lucky to find an apartment cheaper than 1500$ a month. (Average is around 1700$)
That said, the average does look a little bit bloated to me.
Is is just me or this looks way overpaid? I mean it is great for us but even the average 50 000$ sounds like a ton of money... Or maybe I got exploited.
Sounds like a reasonable average to me. Don't forget that number will be skewed by people in particularly expensive areas of the world.
Also, to add some context to why women may have much lower averages - experience factors in. Over the past three or four years, we've seen a massive increase in the proportion of women working in the industry. This is a recent trend, so it isn't unreasonable to expect that these people are mostly juniors on lower salaries.
The average salary for women is still higher than the average salary for juniors, but marginally. This would make a lot of sense since there will be a large number of juniors and a small number of seniors. If anything, it may even indicate that there's either no pay-gap, or that the pay-gap may actually be the other way around.
Averages though, are completely and utterly useless as statistics. They simply don't take enough into account and can be incredibly misleading.
Business and management = $101,522 avg.
Sounds like I found the problem. The dev team should leave for a week and see how the game progressed.
This is sort of being done in Crytek UK right now. Dev team has walked out because they are not being payed which leaves the Management with no progress on Homefront their product if you will. I guess they will be more hesitant to treat their devs like this again.
Geezus. All the women that I know that are involved in 3d art (and this spans games, film and oil and gas) are typically far more professional and handle the business side of negotiating for a position far better than a lot of dudes I know.
Why Geezus? Sorry in my experience this is the case, in many many game and film productions, don#t know anyone in oil or gas.
My experience is, usually they are far better than they think they are while with dudes often times its the other way around.
I really wish there would be more women in games and they will be treated equally, i for one try my best to get this going - here in the studio we have 50% female developers. And i hope we can keep that even after the current productions are over.
I might be reading this wrong but is there any reason why programmers with a bachelor's degree make over $10,000 less than programmers with "Some college?" I'd think it would be the other way around, but I guess college really is worthless lol.
The good ones that make lots of money are self-taught instead of going to college to study useless stuff xD ?
The good ones that make lots of money are self-taught instead of going to college to study useless stuff xD ?
That was my initial guess but it's too much of a generalization because there are probably just as many skilled self-taught programmers as there are skilled college-taught programmers. To be fair, you have to work outside of class to get good at anything anyway.
I'm going to go with the answer in which this was caused by a lack of responses from a specific category. Although I do wonder about programming in the games industry. I'm under the impression that a skilled, self-taught programmer can be just as employable as a skilled college-taught programmer, but I know this may not be the case outside of the games industry as I've asked several people that conduct interviews at different tech companies over forums, reddit, and even some of my brother's co-workers, and many people seem to throw out your resume if they don't see a relevant degree. I'd imagine that working at any company that does that would be miserable for any kind of developer, though.
Sadly most women are way more shy when it comes to negotiations or even measuring their own skill. Its sad but true but many women don't have the balls (no pun intended) even tho they might be better than their counterparts.
Actually, Might just be a feeling on my side. But when I compared myself to my male collegues, I was actually more pushy and demanding when it came to raises and advancement. The thing is that I feel I was taken less seriously, they would play with my (low) self-esteem to make me believe/remind me that I really wasn't that much of a big deal, and that I should just be realist about it.
Plus, I don't know if i've just been real not lucky salary wise, but my salary definitly isn't even close to those number...
Actually, Might just be a feeling on my side. But when I compared myself to my male collegues, I was actually more pushy and demanding when it came to raises and advancement. The thing is that I feel I was taken less seriously, they would play with my (low) self-esteem to make me believe/remind me that I really wasn't that much of a big deal, and that I should just be realist about it.
Plus, I don't know if i've just been real not lucky salary wise, but my salary definitly isn't even close to those number...
I know what you mean, I think we as developers need to stop taking low offers just because we really want to work on a particular project. It's something I'm quite guilty of myself.. But I'm trying to work on that. It can be really hard to walk away though. That's totally silly that they didn't take you seriously, your work is amazing!
Think about it, this industry is very unstable in terms of steady jobs, why shouldn't we be compensated to put up with having to move around the world every few years?
I don't know about you guys but I'm really tired of moving around and having to re-furnish an apartment every time from scratch, and by the time my wife and I get it all looking nice it's time to leave again.
wow this is interesting, I truly think this needs to be updated. Plenty of artists out there seem to be earning around 40K on average. I think what Gamasutra provided is exaggerated there.
But freelancing is a service. If you gonna get an oil changed for your car, or get a heat pump installed in your place, you could just Google up the pricing from different company. When you get a hair cut, you know how much it's gonna charge, because it's usually right on the front door. Ballroom studios also have their pricing available in public as well (brochure, website, newspaper, ads, etc).
Why does it have to be different for game industry T_T
PyrZern, With so many artist wanting to work so bad and basically selling their work away for peanuts . I don't think putting my prices up online for anyone to see will do the industry any good. Artist will start looking at other people's price and lower them a little bit more to be competitive.... Then will all be working for peanuts in no time.
"Why are developers making so much money? Their job isn't life threatening like a police officer's is and it's not important to the future of the nation like a teacher's job is. It might be tedious or even grueling at times and require long hours and lots of commitment, but working in the video game industry is generally fun. People should be working in the gaming industry because they want to create awesome games. Not because they want to become rich. When did the gaming industry become so corporate?"
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Replies
Notable highlights include the fact that 91% of game artists are male and make, on average, $21,000 MORE per year than woman.
Still interesting to read these numbers and compare what you know.
What are your thoughts on the information?
Any questions from people outside looking in?
How do these compare to what you know?
Sad face ; [
Mods can merge if necessary.
About the gender wage gap, it's smaller than the national average, so it's not all doom and gloom.
QA & Design make the least. I can understand design because it covers a large spectrum, from high level steering of a game to low level grunt work.
This is just silly. Why would women not want to get paid well? What makes you think women won't ask for higher wages? It's not like it's an insignificant amount of money. Also you really don't believe larger companies don't pay women less somewhat on purpose to save money?
If that is not the case, is clear what is going on around us.
from Gamasutra:
"According to Gamasutra's Game Developer Salary Survey 2014 [PDF], men working U.S.-based salaried jobs in the game industry made $85,074 on average in 2013, whereas women made an average of $72,882 (excluding students and educators).
That means on average, women made 86 cents on every dollar that men made in the U.S. game industry.
While it’s still an issue that needs to be fixed, the game industry gender wage gap is smaller than the national average: In the U.S. overall, women make 77 cents on every dollar that men make, according figures from a 2012 Census Bureau survey."
Is it safe to assume that if people stop accepting less, they`ll stop being paid less? But only if EVERYONE does.
When it comes to new artists who just want their foot in the door, they are willing to accept lower wages. Whatever the company throws at them, they`ll accept. I know I did. I know I was / am part of the problem. I didn't want to risk not getting the job by asking for more.
And when your first salary is low, your next one will be lower than it could have been should you have started higher. It's a snow ball effect. You need to be willing to ask for more. Ask what you`re worth, and stand by your decision, otherwise companies will give you as little as they can. They really don't care about gender. If they think they can pay you less and get away with it, they will.
Geezus. All the women that I know that are involved in 3d art (and this spans games, film and oil and gas) are typically far more professional and handle the business side of negotiating for a position far better than a lot of dudes I know.
ANYWAYS, off of that part of the topic..
I would really like these surveys to include where in the world these survey applicants were working when they answered. Working in TX and working in CA is a big difference when it comes to cost of living and the salaries reflect that.
Just speculating here but it could also be that more veteran industry folk never had Bachelors Degrees available at the time - only college courses.
Yep well said and too be honest the individual is not to blame, instead is the industry it self and the expectations of the discipline. I also did the same, and if I had to go back in time I would do it again(Any artist with the right mind would). We are under the effect that experiences matter more(which is critical, I cant argue) and working in a AAA is used as a some sort of VIP area in other worlds you should be considered lucky, which is quite sad towards the field people are involved. Also don't forget there is more talent than jobs, the field (3d art)is becoming more and more faster and easier to do. High-school kids in some schools are already doing it and it can well be part of an elementary art class in the near future.
To stay on topic, if these are the results of 2013, so far 2014 has not been the best with all the layoffs happening and is becoming more apparent that if the project bombs expect layoffs or total shutdown,(Make a game loose your job cycle). Hopefully things get better not just for the folks at the VIP studios but to all the developers in all places.
This. Me too ...
but that chart shows how insane indie game competition is >.< ....
+1! It's really annoying.
As for the chart itself, there are too many variables in these kind of charts. Like, just where you live (rents, cost of living etc) will change how these numbers look.
Here in Cali for example, you're lucky to find an apartment cheaper than 1500$ a month. (Average is around 1700$)
That said, the average does look a little bit bloated to me.
Yeah I must be terrible at negotiations.
Sounds like a reasonable average to me. Don't forget that number will be skewed by people in particularly expensive areas of the world.
Also, to add some context to why women may have much lower averages - experience factors in. Over the past three or four years, we've seen a massive increase in the proportion of women working in the industry. This is a recent trend, so it isn't unreasonable to expect that these people are mostly juniors on lower salaries.
The average salary for women is still higher than the average salary for juniors, but marginally. This would make a lot of sense since there will be a large number of juniors and a small number of seniors. If anything, it may even indicate that there's either no pay-gap, or that the pay-gap may actually be the other way around.
Averages though, are completely and utterly useless as statistics. They simply don't take enough into account and can be incredibly misleading.
This is sort of being done in Crytek UK right now. Dev team has walked out because they are not being payed which leaves the Management with no progress on Homefront their product if you will. I guess they will be more hesitant to treat their devs like this again.
Why Geezus? Sorry in my experience this is the case, in many many game and film productions, don#t know anyone in oil or gas.
My experience is, usually they are far better than they think they are while with dudes often times its the other way around.
I really wish there would be more women in games and they will be treated equally, i for one try my best to get this going - here in the studio we have 50% female developers. And i hope we can keep that even after the current productions are over.
The good ones that make lots of money are self-taught instead of going to college to study useless stuff xD ?
I'm going to go with the answer in which this was caused by a lack of responses from a specific category. Although I do wonder about programming in the games industry. I'm under the impression that a skilled, self-taught programmer can be just as employable as a skilled college-taught programmer, but I know this may not be the case outside of the games industry as I've asked several people that conduct interviews at different tech companies over forums, reddit, and even some of my brother's co-workers, and many people seem to throw out your resume if they don't see a relevant degree. I'd imagine that working at any company that does that would be miserable for any kind of developer, though.
Plus, I don't know if i've just been real not lucky salary wise, but my salary definitly isn't even close to those number...
I know what you mean, I think we as developers need to stop taking low offers just because we really want to work on a particular project. It's something I'm quite guilty of myself.. But I'm trying to work on that. It can be really hard to walk away though. That's totally silly that they didn't take you seriously, your work is amazing!
Think about it, this industry is very unstable in terms of steady jobs, why shouldn't we be compensated to put up with having to move around the world every few years?
I don't know about you guys but I'm really tired of moving around and having to re-furnish an apartment every time from scratch, and by the time my wife and I get it all looking nice it's time to leave again.
Now that is a fair and honest look at the salary range as well as the side effects of the job.
Yeah that sounds much more realistic.
A classic!
http://www.develop-online.net/news/revealed-average-game-developer-salary-falls-to-32-500/0188668
On a related unrelated note; why are freelancers not revealing their quotes
Same reason FT salary people do?
Why does it have to be different for game industry T_T
Best Line
"Why are developers making so much money? Their job isn't life threatening like a police officer's is and it's not important to the future of the nation like a teacher's job is. It might be tedious or even grueling at times and require long hours and lots of commitment, but working in the video game industry is generally fun. People should be working in the gaming industry because they want to create awesome games. Not because they want to become rich. When did the gaming industry become so corporate?"