gamedev company payment
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Q-- any idea on an average pay? i mean i'd love to model stuff but i still gotta feed myself. i am guessing its pretty crap for first starters...right?
A-- My first job in the industry was as a contract artist. I was paid hourly and I got $12/hr. After 3 months I got a raise to $15/hr. At 9 months I got hired on salary. I started around $32k/yr. Every year I've gotten a raise. I'm now sitting at 5 years experience and I make $45k/yr.
The pay is also representative of where you live, though. I'm in central Oregon and the cost of living is lower here than in Cali or the Seattle area. If I was working at a studio in Seattle, I'd probably be getting a fair bit more than that.
But it costs a lot more to live there too. So it's variable.
http://athey.deviantart.com/art/Game-Industry-Advice4students-145619882
I understand that its different from one to another, but you know... just interesting
Junior 3d modeller/junior character artist including texturing work, what hour salary (is it correct term?) does he have? Include country and local currency please :poly124:
Replies
I believe the april issue of Game Developer Magazine has a more in depth breakdown: link
$50K for a JUNIOR artist?
Really?
Wow... I had no idea that juniors were paid so much. That's like £30k UK money, there's a lot of people over here who'll never earn that much. Is it comparable here in the UK?
That's my experience over the last few years in the industry.
It's depending on area - I was somewhere in the $40k-$50k range when I started and I kind of screwed myself because what was rich for rural Florida was barely breaking even every month in northern VA, I was lucky that my girlfriend was making about the same amount and we split the rent on our 1 bedroom apartment ($1400 a month).
That sounds more like it.
This thread is confusing me... barely breaking even on $50k? That's over $4k a month before tax.
So you could only just afford a $1400 a month apartment with a combined income of $90k +? Am I missing something?
Junior Artist £18k - £24k. Artist £24k - £30k. Senior/Lead £32k ish +
The latest salary survey puts the average artist wage at $71,354 (this includes the whole spectrum of junior to art director)
Also it would be fantastic if you can say a month room rent and food costs.
And just for fun, my family (3 adult persons) has a salary less than 7k/yr here summary
If you have the work coming in, ya, you could EASILY make that much. But, if you cant get freelance opportunities, then you could make alot less.
this is something which terrifies me. Right now, in Pittsburgh, I'm at 700 /month for what is essentially a 3 bedroom house. I plan on being out in LA in about a year's time, and as I've been preliminarily looking into housing and such, I haven't been able to find a place equivalent to mine, for less than 2K.
I'm boned :poly142:
Most of the people who post here have their online presence here tied to their professional life, and while it's one thing to talk about salary levels with friends or close folks, no one really has anything to gain by posting that they were hired on at exactly $42k at BumFuck Games.
Game Developer's salary survey is going to be a lot more useful to anyone trying to gauge wages than the 3-4 people who are even willing to post a rough range of what they make.
For what it's worth they just stuff a dufflebag full of $20s and hand it to me every other week. It's enough to afford 9.3 hookers a month.
The .3 hooker is always a disappointment.
I'll discuss it openly if you write me a blank check for legal fees and potential lost wages ;-)
Can you please explain to me why paying someone new to the industry 50k a year is crazy and pretty stupid? I see no logic in your thought processes on this and would love to know.
For me it doesn't seem crazy or stupid at all. For a career built around people with talent and not some task a bunch of high school drops outs could do it seems fairly reasonable. I find it odd anyone would think, oh so I made 9 bucks an hour in high school or after college working at the mall, the super market or some restaurant and that my first job in the game industry should be an increase in money but not too much because that would be stupid on the companys part.
Not everyone will make a ton of money right out of school or for there first gig. Talent, the company and the needs of the project all dictate that. Being contract compared to full time also can greatly affect that as most contract gigs don't offer things such as health insurance and such so they pay more.
Its a foolish thing to think that paying talented people for the hard work they do is crazy or stupid. What is crazy and stupid is to believe your worth less then you actually are worth.
doing anything else is crazy and pretty stupid...
in southeast asia is pretty cheap, but its all depends on economy growth. and city/country location.
ok let me estimate am ideal single white collar living cost on my home city back in Southeast asia called Jakarta
(so to let you know this is not estimating gamedev wage but more about wage in general.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_cities_for_expatriate_employees
since its darn expensive for Southeast asian standard, this the estimate living cost doesnt apply if you live in other smaller city.
rent 500$ - 600$
utilities 100$
food 225$
transport 150$ ( transport hell)
very2 nice location apartment is about 70.000$ ( if you want to buy)
so the "ideal" salary is 24.000$ per year , well im not sure this for junior white collar, maybe just replace 500$ rent to 150$ rent ( smaller place)
but animation industry there wont earn that much. its about 3000$ - 15.000$ a year depends on experience
That is an incredible amount of money to pay somebody new to the industry. Judging by the responses, it doesn't seem that unusual to you US residents but over here, as I said, a lot of people will never earn £30,000 GBP in their life, and cost of living isn't exactly cheap in many places.
I just think, for an industry that is in the press for cutting staff so often, and where studios are closing faster than they are opening, paying entry level staff a salary like that seems madness.
my sister went to school in singapore and graduated as fashion designer, and found out the wage for junior designer in that country doesn't live up her wage standard.
then she go back to hometown and open a clothing business... so far she succeed
You're not a talented guitarist then. You might be skilled but a talented performer would be able to pull that kind of money just on a street corner.
Here's an actual example of two experienced musicians who raise hundreds of dollars for charity by busking. And this is not even a whole days worth:
[ame]
If you can produce the same quality of work as an experienced artist then you should be paid as much as one.
Keep in mind that top artists can earn over $100k per year.
Wtf are you talking about? Some of the people I know applying for junior positions are able to produce pretty high quality assets. Why should they be paid much less than other artists just because they're breaking in if they can produce the same amount/quality of work. I can see the salary being lower than say a staff or lead artist, but it shouldn't be drastically lower especially considering some of the hiring processes companies stand by these days are pretty intense whether it be an art test to judge their skills or 8 phone interviews followed by 2 in person interviews.
I've even seen some students who make better shit than people who are leads at some studios. Granted at that point whether they're an AD or whatever determines how much actual artwork they produce for the company outside of managing their team.
It's a lucrative industry so why would you pay your employees peanuts, it's just going to make them not want to work there.
You mention you play guitar, great, but there are tons of people that play guitar. There are much less people that are actually skilled/talented for a job as a proficient game artist. It's not like they strut into a studio and get picked up instantly.
With Arch Viz you are comparing apples and oranges. The work done for Arch Viz is predominately useless to the general populous in terms of a tangible product to buy, sell and market. Video games are not.
Talent is and should be a ticket for a big salary. And why should it not? Would you pay someone who has a lot of experience bad more then you would someone who is new and extremely good? Fuck no, that is just silly. You pay for quality and quantity, and talent gets quality at least. Experience will get you quantity but it wont always get you quality.
The difference between someone who is talented in music playing a guitar and those working in this industry is that is one individual making something against hundreds making 1 project. More often then not the large project will net the highest income for the project leading to those individuals making more then just some dude trying to push his demo tape.
For the too much money going around comment that one threw me for a loop. Are you trying to say that instead of spreading the wealth of the project to all the people who made it is a bad thing? What should these company's do with all this money if they are not going to spread it around to there employees who actually made the product that sold so well?
People in this industry should feel lucky they are here and have a shot at making a good living for the hard work they put in. Most people will never get that. Its a shame for them but that's there industry. We are lucky to be in a great industry where you make what you earn.
Also the only reason you see layoffs in this industry all the time and what makes it seem like a lot is the fact that you read industry news sites who report this type of thing. You will more then likely never really see studio closures mentioned on the news just like you don't hear about other industry cutting jobs and closing shops. It happens to everyone in every industry.
Finally you shouldn't just leave a discussion because you might have ruffled there feathers as you said with your differing opinions. There is nothing wrong with having discussions on various topics with lots of different views. The only time it becomes a problem is when people start bitching and throwing hissy fits instead of sticking to the topic at hand.
It doesn't matter what you imagine a "fair wage" is.
Let's say a game rakes in 10 million in pure profits, but each of it's 10 employees were only paid 50k a year. Was the company stupid to pay them so much, or were the employees stupid to take the job for so little?
Wages vary based on a lot of factors. Junior artists can get hired for a ton of money, or sometimes very little. The same goes for senior artists. One is not more correct than the other. It's just the result of a variety of variables from bargaining power to market conditions.
As an aside, someone who doesn't think they're worth very much won't get much.
When I started learning music (guitar,piano etc) when I was 17 I figured that no matter what my talent would get me results and employment somehow in the music industry.
So I practiced and was very disciplined about learning. 8 years later I had incredible chops and a decent imagination for writing instrumental music. However talent alone in THAT industry won't guarantee success.
But that's the industry!
However in visual arts especially 3D and CGi your portfolio (Show of your talent/skill/chops) can and will get you your job. If your really good...
As a side note I have been working professionally as a graphic designer for one of the largest media companies in canada for about 10 years. And my salary has been dropping consistently the last 4 years. lol. I used to make decent money but now it's just not worth it.
Which is why I decided to take my elite 2D photoshop skills (:D) and learn texturing and digital painting which led me to 3d graphics and learning game engines, environmental design etc.
We are lucky that the game industry pays as well as it does at this time. I suspect that salaries will drop in the future as companies get greedy and cost of dev continues to climb and younger and more talented people start cropping up.
If there becomes a huge supply of talented 3D designers than the industry can start to pay less.
There a loads of graphic designers being churned out every year. Too much supply : ) Too little decent opportunities.
I second this for the UK.
But I haven't seen at lot of jobs listed for a senior position below 35k.
Living in London you are looking at at least £1,000 for a decent one bedroom apartment. Houses are like £2,500 - £3,000 a month. Plus there are other higher living costs in London. So you tend to see 3k - 10k added to your salary here depending on how senior your position is.
London is hardcore expensive.:poly127:
Any information from Germany here?
Well, my danish budget is like this:
7898,- salary
2500,- for rent, electricity, television, internet and heat.(I live in a 20 m^2 basement room around 2km from downtown
well, i personally seen junior get hired at 45K USD. and in several cases the junior artist was more skilled than the senior artists in the studio. the junior title is given only because he doesnt have previous experience but he got that salary because he is worth more than the senior artist.
here in NY the starting salary for 3d artists is around 45-50k USD and for people with 3-5 years experience the salary can be around 80K USD. the living cost is high as well, my 1bd appartment rent is ~ $1400 a month.
When I'm interviewing someone, I want to know they are fully familiar with the workflow (by workflow I mean how to deal with clients, blueprints, file management, and deadlines) and even if they're great artists from an artistic point of view, I can't risk paying them highly initially until I know they know the system and can perform well.
I guess in some studios you'd use the probation period to test that, but again, just how things are done from my own experience.
really, that's not s bad at all