[justinhj]

I worked in the game industry for over twenty years as an engineer. Most of the time the work was fun, the projects were interesting and the money was okay. Eventually I needed more stability, better pay and work life balance, and I went into business software, a decision that I wish I had made earlier. I think that the game industry has some issues that are very difficult to solve caused by various compounding factors, and for these reasons there will always be below market pay for engineers, crunch and studio closures/mass layoffs. The factors are 1)games are a creative endeavour subject to fashion. There is no guarantee that your star team that made Space War 1 will make hit sequel nor that people will be into space war games in 5 years. 2)project management is extremely hard when you have 200+ people across the world working on complex systems and a varying product description 3) the combination of uncertain delivery and high marketing spends required for a AAA title, and other hard dates like thanksgiving or a sports season beginning, means that crunch is almost guaranteed. 4)the cool factor of working in games means a supply of young people that can be taken advantage of. below market pay, unpaid OT and little structured career development. In my time I saw project managers come from academia and from government or military contractors and none of them could tame the endemic issues that come with this industry. Not all of these problems exist at all developers, there are bright spots and it’s possible to have a long and lucrative career. Just have your eyes open.

[ido]

Disclaimer: I now run my own studio but I worked as an employee not that long ago and have been working in games for almost 13 years now.

It really depends on the role. Programmers and producers are the best paid disciplines. And while there’s a lot of junior people competing for entry level jobs it’s hard to find senior talent. As a specialist programmer with 10+ years of experience you’ll have very good job security and will be better compensated than most anyone aside from maybe upper management (you’d still get better pay at Google, Facebook or Microsoft though).