Comment by ac29
6 years ago
> Many who are unfamiliar with this industry are surprised to find that artists are some of the highest paid people. Good, reliable artists are rare! Check out this site https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/games-artist/salary/, for salary estimates.
> [snip]
> If I'm lucky enough to find a good person, with bonuses and benefits and so on, I might be able to get this person for $150000-180000.
His link seems to suggest that "top" (90th percentile) game artists make $62k/year. Lets round up the extra costs to the employer (payroll tax, health insurance, retirement benefits, etc) and call that $75k/year. If so, that suggests $150k would be nearly 2 full time years of a top-tier artist.
I love Jeff's games and have bought and played many of them going back nearly 2 decades. But, I'm not convinced that the next step up from status quo is 2 fulltime years of a top tier artist. According to the same site, a median artist is $51k/year (with benefits/etc, lets say $65k/yr). Would hiring that person for a full year justify that extra $25k over his current $40k budget? I think so.
The full price of an employee are typically around 1.4x salary per (and that if you really know what you are doing, many smaller businesses probably hit closer to 2x; mostly because that's not counting the flat expenditures, that a larger business, or someone that knows what they are doing, won't screw up, like the fact that hiring any employees (including 0 in many jurisdictions) often requires a significant amount of extra paper work every year/quarter/month). Anyway your adjusted numbers would be closer to:
62k -> 87k and 51k -> 72k
So adding in the flat extra work (a lot of which isn't necessarily money based as it's simply just time dealing with things), it probably comes out to 80k, which is doubling his art budget.
I made Road Redemption, and honestly these insane figures that he lists only drive home for me how much he doesn't know what he is talking about here.
He could get an acceptable 2d artist from another country for like 2-3k per month total. Then he could buy a bunch of existing tilesets from the unity asset store, or many other places, and have that person modify them. 1000 terrain icons is not even really very many.
With 120k he could have an entire team of 2d artists if he wanted. He isn't some AAA studio that needs all custom top of the line handmade assets.
I also found his full time employee cost argument weakened by his requirements. He's happy with $25/hr contractors from countries with weaker salaries than the US, speaks highly of them, but on the topic of hiring someone full time he uses a premium American employee living in Seattle as his example? Says he'd want to work with them in person despite wanting to work alone? What?
If dude just said "hiring one of my contractors full time would cost me $40k/year and i don't want to pay that" it'd be a reasonable argument. Instead he makes up all these unnecessary requirements that sound like they'd actually make the arrangement worse for him, and points to them as why he can't do it.
The difference is in the magnitude of work. When contracting he's going piecemeal which gives him substantial oversight on each and every piece to ensure it turns out the way he wants. For a full time artist, this would be micromanaging and isn't really conducive to a great working relationship. Add in remoting and it gets even weirder. What are you going to do, mail them every hour for updates?
>substantial oversight on each and every piece to ensure it turns out the way he wants.
The goal is to avoid this. Him having to do art direction at the moment is a necessity due to relying on a variety of ever changing contractors. He doesn't seem to view it as a strength noting that it would take more time than he's willing to put in to get good at it.
Neither of his articles need be written if this just boils down to him not wanting his art to change because he thinks he's doing a bang up job.
>for a full time artist, this would be micromanaging and isn't really conducive to a great working relationship.
For anyone, artist or not, it would be hell. My last two employers were owner/managers of businesses with ~20 employees and it was enough to make me think "never again". Working every day in a tiny office with just the two business owners, neither of which apparently understand what I do? Just put a bullet in me now. He absolutely should not hire someone to work full time in person, even if he suddenly decided his absurd $140k/year employee idea is worth it, simply because it would lead to terrible work and micromanagement.
>Add in remoting and it gets even weirder. What are you going to do, mail them every hour for updates?
No, you're going to leave them largely alone.
I don't run a business, but my understanding is that a good rule of thumb for the cost of an employee is about double their salary when you start to factor in benefits, insurance, office space, equipment, quality of life things (snacks/coffee, etc), recruiting, etc. So an artist making 75k could cost 150k when all is said and done.
(if youre american and youve ever had to pay for insurance out of pocket you probably know how expensive it is. When I lefta previous job it was 400/mo to continue my insurance, and some of my friends with families have to pay thousands)