Kristin Kalning Games editor • E-mail

When I told my mother I was dating a guy who made video games, there was a long pause on the other end of the phone.

“Is that a good way to make a living?” she asked.

She needn’t have worried. That guy, who became my husband, has a great job in a booming industry. His colleagues are smart and talented. And the salaries are nothing to sneeze at. According to Game Developer Magazine’s annual salary survey, the median salary in the video game biz is $73,000.

That sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? These folks aren’t saving lives or even doing your taxes. So why would the typical game developer — whose average age is somewhere between 31 and 35  — make twice as much as the average social worker?

“Because the industry as a whole makes a lot of money,” says Matthew Tateishi, a San Francisco-based game designer with nearly 13 years of experience. “And for the most part, a lot of that gets passed on to the employees.”

Big business, big salaries
Of course you’ve read the stories about game-industry revenues topping $12.5 billion in the United States last year. Video games are big business. I know my mom read that story. It’s bragging ammo when her friends look skeptical about her son-in-law’s profession.

But if you think game-makers spend all day playing “Quake,” think again. This is a fast-paced, competitive business with inflexible ship dates and punishing hours.

“If you want to work nine to five, this is the wrong industry,” says David Riley of the NPD Group. “Deadlines are fierce.”

So are the pressures. Only about 10 percent of games released in a given year will make any real money. And every few years, the technology changes — new hardware, new software.

“Who knows how to program for the PS3 right now? Nobody.” says Marc Mencher, president of GameRecruiter.com. “It’s a limited talent pool.”

Steep learning curve
To stay cutting edge, development teams need to learn all new systems every couple of years. Artist, programmers, designers — nobody’s exempt from the steep learning curve.  And the fan base can be punishing if a game doesn’t meet expectations.

This tends to translate into some pretty long hours — called “crunch” in the game biz. The industry is rife with horror stories that sound like urban legends: Two years worth of 70-hour weeks, no weekends. Postponed weddings until ship dates. Guys phoning the office from the delivery room.

“Full-time game developers in most states are classified as exempt, meaning they're not eligible for overtime,” says Jill Duffy, managing editor of Game Developer Magazine and the principal researcher on the salary survey. “Developers do work immense amounts of overtime.”

Game Developer’s survey cuts across all disciplines in the industry: art, design, programming, business and quality assurance. And it’s a national average, pulling in salaries earned by developers in places like North Carolina as well as high-rent areas like San Francisco.

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