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Game developer salaries in 2010 tracked, fills us once more with regret
The Game Developer Research group, somehow sensing that we were having a pretty good day, decided to release a portion of its 10th annual, always soul-crushing Game Developer Salary Survey. The information, according to Gamasutra, is fairly optimistic: Traditional mainstream developers are pulling down an average salary of $80,817, a 7 percent increase over last year's average. Indie developers saw a year-to-year increase of around $6,000, bringing their average wages up to $26,780. Many of the average wages earned by individual disciplines remained equivalent to last year's totals, with some exceptions. Programmers saw their average salaries increased $5,000 over 2009, to a total of $85,733. Producers' average salaries increased almost $13,000 year-to-year, for an average of $88,544. Quality assurance testers saw their average wages get fairly prodigiously bumped from $37,905 in 2009 up to $49,009 in 2010. And, of course, the whammy: Business and legal employees made an average salary of $106,452, with 85 percent of survey respondents reporting they received additional compensation. If you need us, we'll be over in the corner, questioning our every life decision.
Survey determines average U.S. game developer income
[Flickr user AMagill] The results of Game Developer Research's ninth annual Game Developer Salary Survey recently surfaced, giving us our yearly reminder that we're totally on the wrong side of this industry. According to the survey, the average "American mainstream videogame industry salary" is $75,573. Over here at Joystiq Inc., we're only pulling in $75,571.42. We're thinking about going on strike until parity is achieved. The survey also breaks down average salaries for the different disciplines which compose our beloved industry. The highest-paid gaming professionals are PR and marketing executives, earning $129,167 a year on average. The lowest head on the totem pole is that of the QA tester, whose average annual income is $37,905. We're betting the recent winner of The Tester wishes he had chosen to participate in The Public Relations Professional instead.
Game developers on iPhone outnumber DS and PSP two-to-one
Game Developer Research has published its 2009/10 survey of video game developers, and the results are pretty impressive for the still relatively fledgling iPhone platform: The number of developers who are working on mobile games increased by 12 percent, and there are actually twice as many developers working on iPhone games as are working on the Nintendo DS and Sony's PSP handheld consoles. That's a pretty amazing number, though it's not quite a surprise when you consider it. First of all, Nintendo DS and PSP publishing takes a much larger investment than Apple's $100 developer fee and an SDK download. Second, while the DS and the PSP are certainly selling a lot of games, they're not actually releasing nearly as many as the hundreds of thousands of apps on the App Store. Finally, new DS and PSP games sell for $30 or $40, while new App Store games sell much closer to 99 cents. So the fact that there are lots more people moving to the much more open and accessible platform isn't really that surprising.
Game Developer Research's 'Top 20 Publishers 2009' stays the same
The industry analysts at Game Developer Research could have saved themselves a whole mess of time and money by releasing the following statement in lieu of the latest edition of their annual Top 20 Publishers report: "See previous year." Differentiation from last year's top five ranks -- which, let's be honest, are the only ones you really care about -- is almost non-existent: Nintendo placed first (again), EA came in second (again), Activision Blizzard followed in third (again), Ubisoft retained its fourth place position (again), and Take-Two moved up from sixth to fifth, bumping Sony out of the top five. The full, totally unsurprising list -- which was calculated based on number of games released, average review scores for said games and estimated revenue for each company -- can be found after the jump. Comments stating why Publisher A is still infinitely better than Publisher B can be found further below. [Via Gamasutra]
Game Developer Research lists 'Top 50 Developers' of 2009
Game Developer magazine (and its brainy Game Developer Research division) recently published its second annual enumerated accolades for the fine folks who make the games that you crudely jam into your home entertainment consoles -- or, in layman's terms, the "Top 50 Developers 2009" report. The rankings are based on how many games a studio created, the sales for those games, and their metacritic ratings. Quality of box art and amount of 'tude possessed by the games' protagonists, however, were not taken into consideration.The results are utterly shocking -- for the second year in a row, Nintendo took top honors, with fellow money-printing organization Blizzard taking second place. Ubisoft Montreal skyrocketed from 12th place in the '08 report to third place in the most recent rankings. Regardless of your fanboyism for a certain developer, we think we can all agree -- in such a financially (and employmentmentally) challenging time, we're just glad to hear there's at least 50 game developers that haven't been forced to shut down.The full list is posted after the jump.[Thanks, Braz!]
