[Manuel_D]

Lucrative for a select portion of games. Like music or acting, video game is a winner-take-all marketplace (or rather, winner take most). The typical video game developer outside a well-known studio is working long hours for comparatively little pay because it's very likely the game is not going to make very many sales and there's plenty of passionate people willing to make sacrifices to work on video games.

As other commenters pointed out, it's not like playing in the NFL. It's more like being a high school football player trying to get into the NFL. Or an actor trying to get a part in a Hollywood movie. The chances of a company becoming lucrative off games is slim.

[Ekaros]

Aren't the well-known studios also pretty big and the products they make absolutely humongous in simply the man hours? So even then there isn't that much to pay per employee.

There is some outliers, but simply most games either are not popular or even if they are they also take huge amount of labour to develop.