Here’s another link with programmer salaries, from Christer Ericson’s blog. It includes the Game Developer results and also data for individual Southern California game companies from the Department of Labor.
http://realtimecollisiondetection.net/blog/?p=70#more-70
Those TD salaries look good!
That poor bastard, its time to move on I think 
$12m… hmm… well, it sounds “low”, but if I run the numbers on the 60 people they called out (45 artists, 15 programmers), that adds up to $100k per over 2 years. Knowing that Epic are in Raleigh, NC., life’s much cheaper than here in OC, CA and they probably beat people down on salary, so most aren’t making $100k. So, that gives wiggle room for the myriad of people hobbyists don’t know sponge off of your budget, like; Testers, Prodouchebags, Sound, contractors, etc…etc… $12 could be about right.
Art takes 3x at least what it did before. It’s even worse if you want to be optimized. I’ve seen many of the Gears assets and they had artists doing 1/4 of the work I had people doing in the previous gen, as far as # of assets, but 3-4x the amount of work.
I’ve had many games that had marketing budgets in the 10’s of millions. It’s not uncommon for “blockbuster” games.
Programmers are notoriously paid more than practically all other disciplines. The only ones paid more are high-up Prodouchebags, who not only make large salaries for being “idea guys” and generally asshats who make bad decisions, but they often are the only ones pulling down bonuses on products.
Juniors are a dime a dozen. Everybody wants in the business (until their souls are crushed and they leave for something that pays more and works you less). Good-to-great Juniors are recognized by smart people and cultivated or they’re smart enough to leave and join smart people or start their own gig.
That’s my two-bits, coming from 25 years in the biz (as pretty-much every discipline there is). That and 25 cents will get you a piece of gum out of the machine…
On my current project we were churning out levels in two and a half to three weeks per, while Epic allows the same amount of time for a single asset.
I will reserve comment on this, since I generally agree 100%. Oh crap, that was my comment.
Shame that they never include cost of living in those numbers. From talking to the people we work with at work, I figure I could easily double my salary if I were to go to work over in the Valley, but the cost of living thereabouts is also easily twice of where I live now. In other words, I’ll be just as well off as I am now…
with the exception of having nice weather year round, which in itself is again offset slightly by the madness of living on a continental fault line. 
There’s also the benefit of having a concentration of game companies (actually two concentrations, one in the Bay Area and another in Southern California) which I’m sure helps out with the salaries but also means you can change jobs without relocating each time. It’s really beneficial for contractors like me - I’m based in Orange County so I’ve been able to drive south for on-site work in San Diego County and north for work in Los Angeles (you do have to get used to driving a lot around here!)
Here’s some new data for this old thread - Game developer salaries revisited – realtimecollisiondetection.net – the blog
God dam 12million to make a game. Id like to know what the money is broken down into, eg how its spent.
Not sure where the producer hate is coming from. A decent producer will turn around a bad game and make it into something fantastic. Larger projects DO need producers, or it becomes a mish mash with no clear direction.
Do you honestly think for a second you know better and that AAA companies would waste money on roles that don’t fufil any goals?
And once again on average, artists are being considered as disposable trash.
And once again, coders are considered more valuable than artists.
Fuck it, seriously, art IS as painful, tedious, precise, and requires as much knowledge/experience as coding.
I know what I’m talking about, because I’m a graphist forced to reconvert into coding because of this worldwide nonsense.
Art requires a lot of knowledge yeah but not as much as coding, as low level, per hardware component based knowledge is a major pain. That would be as if you were forced to learn XSI, Houdini, Max and Maya to do your work, which definitely isn’t gonna happen.
Also its easier to learn art than programming cause being creative and creating good art can be trained, but if you are too stupid for complex math and logical thinking you will just not stand a chance to get there, no matter how long you hammer your head …
Also don’t forget that subpar graphics can be accepted to ship the game, but subpar code won’t pass Q&A which means the requirement and dedication for over hours is expected to be higher on the engineering side than the artist side (some companies have unrealistic hopes on the art side too and found enough stupid staff to push through with 6 months of 7 days of 12h crunch work from artists without paying for it, but thats a decision of the artist, if he has that little self esteme that he assumes to get no job outside of it at all)
and last but not least: artists have multiple fields and thus just exist in much larger numbers than programmers for the field in question (business programmers don’t do game programming as their background is widely different enough to make them bad choices, aside of the fact that they have no interest normally to get worse contracts and payments at longer hours and more slave contracts ;)) aka its just a demand vs availability question here on who is payed more.
Why does everyone thinks that programmers have harder work??Why do they always get the best PCs??I think that programming isnt that hard if 14 years old kid can learn C# its not that hard??
I can get a 3 year old to draw a picture, and your average 8 year old how to play chess.
Other than the exceptions, that don’t make 'em professionals.
Yeah but why do peoples think its easier to program then to model?
Art and programming are both fluid disciplines. You can train someone to code, they might not be good at it. You can train someone to do art, but they may not have an imagination to make something on their own.
$12m sounds about right for a 2.5 year project. And a couple weeks to do a high poly sculpt, retopo, bakes and texture sounds about right, 3+ weeks for characters and development. I imagine that the workflow is much improved now. But still, it’s a highly watched francheise so there’s iteration across all disciplines.
Sub-par code passes Q&A on a daily basis. “This bug can be reproduced if the user does this, this many times in this specific area, but only under these conditions… it’s neigh impossible!!” two weeks later after release on the message boards: “Hey, my character started floating in the air and giant vagina-looking dots showed up all over it’s body… then my system locked up and it deletes my save file.”
wow you guys are making this much?
I only earn about 20k euro’s a year and I program for Wii and iPad.
Am I being ripped off?
I don’t know, I found coding dayjob to be hard the first 6 monthes, but once you swallowed the procedure and framework, it’s just 50% of refactoring.
You can’t refactor art, on the other hand, it just pops on every watcher’s eyes if some graphics are being re-used, and people are 10 times less forgiving about refactored graphics than with refactored code.
Also, graphics requires sensitivity, which is so different from graphist to graphist that when you want a precise style, you can’t just hire the average joe. While on coding, you rarely need a “precise style of coding”, and any “just good enough” coder would fit the job, aside from the purely technical aspect of the 2 disciplines
But I feel it’s a sensible subject that can turn to a Windows/Macintosh level flamewar, so I will shut up now 
Actually, they came in under the standard AAA budget. Standard in '09 was $20 million.
Thing is though, between projects you actually end up resuing very little code. You might reuse input, lists stuff and setup stuff but 80% of that code is gonna still be fresh. This especially in games.
True, a good producer can improve, even turn around a game project… but to answer your last question, in a heart beat. Game dev projects/studios/etc… are still often structured like Hollywood movie productions (not the newer or particularly mature ones I’ll add). Compensation is heavily top down, which is part of the “living the dream”… the idea being once you’ve put in enough time in the industry (not a particular shop… that’s career suicide") you’ll land one of the dream positions and draw down a dream compensation package. Are some of those people a waste of space? Too often. You can also “live the dream” with the right connections.
As for the earlier comment about SQL programmers livin’ rough… well… that really depends on what you dream about. that business coder drew down 30-60% higher wadges, usually normal business work hours, had about 6x more job stability, and has 20x more job opportunities globally. Poor bstrds just get to play the games
Cheers,
Galen