Video Game Design Pay Rate - How much do video game Makers earn?

Video game design is a subset of a few different disciplines depending on what area of game making you are actually interested in. Game making involves designers, level designers, programmers, graphic artists, project managers,asset management, texture artists, writers and well a whole host of creative disciplines and even lots of administrative duties.

But if you are curious about how much money can be earned we can take a look at some basic facts as put out by the Occupational Outlook Handbook. This is the defacto standard for the workforce and the information is accumulated by the Us Department of Labor.

Let's take a look at Computer Programmers:

According to the OOH in 2006 the National estimate was for 396,020 Computer programmers employed and they earned a mean hourly wage of $33.42. Which comes out to $69,500 per year. This number varies and there are quite a few different sub specialties of computer programmer. You can check out the numbers here: OOH for computer programmers They also have some nice statistics that show varaiance across different parts of the country.

Here is nice quote from the OOH:

"According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, starting salary offers for computer programmers averaged $49,928 per year in 2007.

According to Robert Half Technology, a firm providing specialized staffing services, average annual starting salaries in 2007 ranged from $55,250 to $90,250 for applications development programmers/analysts, and from $60,250 to $94,750 for software developers. Average starting salaries for mainframe systems programmers ranged from $52,250 to $70,750. "

Computer programmers can earn a very respectable living and to me this is based on a few different things. They have to have a solid core set of skills in computers and programming, and this takes training, time and skill. But they also have to have a good foundation in mathematics and they have to have an excellent creativity potential. More at the OOH for computer programmers