Isn't comparing the salary with the national average a bit pointless? I would like to see a comparison with other people in equally high-skilled jobs. Working in the games industry requires a huge amount of specialist knowledge and skills, and I don't think this is always reflected in people's salaries. There's no point comparing industry salaries with an average that includes people working in Tesco for minimum wage, it would be far more useful to see a comparison with people in other industries that require strong maths and science-based degrees (in the case of developers, at least).

Standard wisdom is that game dev wages are well below other IT jobs of similar skill and experience requirements. However, game developers are young impressionable graduates so it's easy to run them into the ground and get more. Hence the observation that there are very few "old" game developers.

True, there is a huge disparity between job roles and experience between related industries. Plus if you factor in the unpaid overtime and generally poor management of teams and projects and it's undestandable that such a high turnover of staff is a given in the industry. With Uni fees going up and many other industries paying more than games, i'mnot sure how we can get the right new staff in the future to replace the worn out soldiers of today.

I am a recent games programming gratuate and while looking for a job i tend to see that graduates going into games get between £16k-£22k and gratuates in IT Development/ Web Development getting £25k-£35k.
If the UK games industry wants more fresh programmers they will need to atleast match other jobs in the IT industry that require the same kind of skills

thats a terrible rate for a highly skilled proffession and the reason why so many people choose the boring but more highly remumerated banking sectors... .though the confidence stat would be nice...

Even in this climate, going into banking seems to be a more secure and lucrative career than the games industry. That's just wrong.

I would have thought this was due to the fact that (traditionally) there are far fewer jobs in games development than finance or even the whole IT support sector.
If they have too many people chasing too few jobs then the entry level wages are going to be low. On the plus side it's far easier to make a name for yourself in the game dev sector, well far easier than it is to stand out amongst all the IT pros in the banking sector anyway.

Nah, there may be too few jobs in the games industry for people who want to do it... but there are many positions available for people who are good enough to do it.

The reason that wages are low is because project costs have to be low. Publishers are lucky if a game makes a profit.

While banks deal with invisible money. Even a lack of invisible money still gives them enough to pay their programmers.

I think this just shows how lacking the majority of the UK games industry currently is. Theres many good studios about like Rare, but maybe not enough of them in the UK.
I think the problem is that for really good pay (like many other industries) you need to be part of a good company. Lesser studios will not be able to offer great wages because they don't have any good games that are going to sell well whereas large studios like IO interactive can be sure their next games are going to sell well, and can therefore offer better pay and conditions.
Unfortunatly most of the big, successful companies arn't located in the UK. Bethesda, IO Interactive, Capcom, Epic - their all in foreign countries. THe UK games industry needs to get back up their with the big titles again, only then will we see more competative pay.

To be quite honest, I am glad to see the games industry pay less than other IT sectors. It means that those people wanting to "just pick up the paycheck" at the end of the month, will go where the money is, leaving those with a true passion for games development, happy to take a lower wage for the higher job satisfaction.

It's the people choosing games dev for the cash, that has caused the influx of people who don't want to think beyond what they are told to do. A sterile obsession with "efficient code", "fancy physics" and "as many particles as we can get" and if they can cut and paste some code off the net to get it done quicker, then so be it.

That's not what the games industry is about, or at least, it's not what it used to be about. You might earn double the salary in another IT sector, but you won't be able to stand in a game shop watching people buy "your" game. You won't be able to appreciate that people enjoy playing "your" creation.

And I know that from personal experience. I was a software developer for Ericsson/Exi for 3+ years, regular paycheck, no unpaid overtime and negligible job satisfaction. For me, games development is totally a satisfaction driven profession. Has been for the last 23 years and will be for as long as I can continue... when I get back into work that is :(

I've worked for nothing for months in struggling companies before, how many other IT sectors would do that? I've worked 14+ hour days for seven day weeks with no paid overtime before. Ask your average Mr IT to show that level of dedication, without time-and-a-half or double-time pay as compensation.

Games dev is becoming the easy option to a lot of people, because it's too easy to get access to other people's resources. And considering that 80% of games are based on stealing other people's ideas anyway, the concept of using someone else's code seems to be "acceptable" practice.

I think the games industry is going to take a severe beating this year, as the money obsession continues to grow... and that's quite worrying. I hope the money-grabbers do jump ship looking for higher pay, because it will simply open doors for people like me to get back into a job I love doing.

Why can't I have job satisfaction, good pay and a good quality of life outside of work?

While I love my job...

is it wrong for me to not want more out of life? To be able to afford a mortgage? What happens when I want to start a family? Have other interests to make me a more rounded person? Put some money aside because it's rarely a stable job?

What happens when I want to grow up?

But I can't grow up because there are other people who are willing to do the job for free 24/7.

I have to agree, there are people in many industries that put inmore than they get out financially. The problem arises when people want a life and a job, why shouldn't developers get that? Why do we have to put up with poor work practises and a 'nerdy' image 'cus the job is cool? Too many bosses have and do exploit this far too much! When the economy picks up I can see a lot of experienced folk moving on and leaving a big gap in the dev community. Trust me I work with a studio full of these folk looking for away out.

Personally I see that as a semi good thing in a way. I'm about to do a games design course so hopefully after the 3 years of that a lot of employers will be looking for more people. However that move may weaken the UK games industry, which I think we can all agree it isn't exactly 5 stars atm.

Though I totally agree with you Flickerr, if the company your working for isn't treating you right then move. Hell, join TIGA (or whatever the unions called), complain, force better conditions. Why not have a 'developers strike' just like the writers strike? Consumers would soon put the presure on companies as release dates get set back, lol :D

People seem to have a funny idea that if people drop out of the industry that others will rise up to take their place. "woohoo...more jobs for me!"

To some degree this is true. This is why developers, and organisations like IGDA, can't do anything about pay or QoL because there are people who would happily be sold into slavery if it meant making games.

Long-term this is insane the quality of the workforce, and therefore the quality of the games, will drop. Companies will also have to keep up with this constant and expensive cycle of replacing those they have burnt out (money better spent on their experienced staff). The industry doesn't have any trouble finding graduates who will work for beans, but it already has a massive problem of finding the talent it needs.

This problem makes it more likely that there will be less development companies in the future because the project budgets will remain too low and there won't be enough good people to make the game anyway.

Then the tripods will rise from the ground. It shall be the end of days as they burn away our atmosphere...

Interestingly the Gears of War 2 producer Rod Fergusson says that crunch shows the ambition of a team, then in another article tells us that the franchise is a ten year one. I guess getting hold of 'noobs' to make an alien game with expected crunch forever is not an issue, but experience will not see this as a benefit to join. Lets hope that other developers take a more mature attitude to work/life balance for the future health of the sector.

I was just reading that hoping it would turn up here.

"If we’re going to crunch early for something, we made them teamwide. Everything can benefit from getting more done. If the artists were on schedule, then they crunched and they got ahead."

Lovely. If you're a good little developer and do all your work on time... you can have more to do.

There is something rather crushing to know that no matter what you do, how good it is or how on time it is ...you're going to have to work late anyway to pick up the slack. Eventually people will stop being able to give 100% during 9-5 either because they reckon they have all the time in the world or through sheer exhaustion.