It's such an erractic industry in terms of compensation. You can found a studio, make some acclaimed darlings, and still end up shuttering and being no better off than your average joe. Then there's being a "software engineer in games" where you're a cog in a wheel fixing bugs in the yearly Sportball game that gets compensated 200k and you live very well despite never truly "impacting" the industry the same way. 200k isn't mindblowing for a software engineer, but it's well beyond "average joe" range at that point.
I'm that cog. Or at least, was. Situations like this make me thing a lot about the state of the industry and where I lie in life.
Yep, unfortunately that's a big part of the reason I left for a more traditional tech role. The same skills are extremely valuable at any company writing performance critical software.
It's such an erractic industry in terms of compensation. You can found a studio, make some acclaimed darlings, and still end up shuttering and being no better off than your average joe. Then there's being a "software engineer in games" where you're a cog in a wheel fixing bugs in the yearly Sportball game that gets compensated 200k and you live very well despite never truly "impacting" the industry the same way. 200k isn't mindblowing for a software engineer, but it's well beyond "average joe" range at that point.
I'm that cog. Or at least, was. Situations like this make me thing a lot about the state of the industry and where I lie in life.
You contributed to a popular game that lots of people enjoyed? Rest easy with this, friend.
This. It's consistently lower-paying than the rest of the software industry.
Yep, unfortunately that's a big part of the reason I left for a more traditional tech role. The same skills are extremely valuable at any company writing performance critical software.
Video games are an art form, the downside is they pay like one too.