14 DAY TRIAL // A new video game industry survey reveals that the average salary for game developers dropped by 2 percent in 2013, when compared to the same period in 2012.
The Game Developer Salary Survey is based on information gathered between January 1, 2013, to December 31, 2013, based on over 4,000 responses from countries all around the world and was conducted by Gamasutra.
Its primary findings include the fact that the average salary of indie studio teams has seen a major increase year over year, with a sizable rise of 161 percent, to $50k / €38k. On the flipside, solo indie developers noticed a pretty harsh decline in average salary, down to $11,812 / €8767, which is almost half of what was recorded in 2012.
With 57 percent of respondents saying that they do not have any additional income outside of game sales, this looks like good news for the indie scene's overall health, especially since the decrease in solo indie dev earnings can be correlated with the humongous increase in released titles during the course of 2013.
Since almost anyone can make and release a game on their own if they put their mind to it, many enthusiasts with less market experience turned to video game making as to more than just a hobby, with the result being a large flux of small-scope games inundating every outlet imaginable, making individual games increasingly difficult to find, let alone pay for.
The survey also revealed that the greatest salary in the business (aside from management) is, surprisingly, not earned by software engineers, but by audio professionals, with a reported average of $95k / €71k. Programmers are of course pretty close, with an average of $93k / €69k, followed by producers, artists and animators, designers, and, finally, quality assurance staff.
However, the survey makers did note that there were not many respondents in the audio professionals category, and the smaller pool of high-paid professionals might have contributed to a skewed perspective on how things are in real life.
The survey also shows that salaried employees adjusted to a medium in which there are less and less AAA games coming out, with indies, mobile and casual gaming picking up the slack. Publishers adjusting to the change often resorted to layoffs, and so triple-A development has fewer and fewer positions to compete for.
Also, the general sentiment surrounding game development as a career path seems to be overly positive, with 65 percent agreeing that the game industry is a great place to work in, and 87 percent of respondents being satisfied with their choice of career path.