Quick Advice

Looks fine, but on your first list, switch #1 and #2. Brush up on C++ first.

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Original post by Kiwi Klooops 1. Does game programming pay more than (or atleast equal to) the other fields of CS - a. when we start out? b. and what about later on as we get more experience?

If you are a programmer, and you are interested in maximizing your earnings, you would do well to stay the hell away from game development.

If you can, I would add Mike McShaffry's Game Coding Complete to your list of books. It's a good one for win32/directx programmers.

Thanks for all the help,

So game programming doesn't earn as much as the other fields? Is that true?

Yes, it's true. People will often take game development jobs at a lower wage because they want to make games. By contrast, nobody takes a C++ job in a bank because they want to write banking software. As a consequence, if your C++ is good, and you wish to earn a lot, go for a development job in a financial corporation.

But writing a bank software is like the most boring job ever!
I don't want to spend the rest of my sitting in a gloomy office coding a meaningless Bank software..

What is the difference in pay? Like on an average..

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Original post by Kiwi Klooops But writing a bank software is like the most boring job ever!

Which is why you get paid more for doing it. If a job in the video game industry had the same wage as a job in the bank industry, who would ever want to work for a bank?

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I don't want to spend the rest of my sitting in a gloomy office coding a meaningless Bank software..

If you want to spend the rest of your life as a programmer, you already have a problem. As you mentioned, moving on to one form of management or another is a good idea. In that respect, however, I have mixed feelings about a minor in management—better get some fat money as soon as possible and pay yourself an MBA.

I do plan to get an MBA eventually, but for now I'm gonna stick to game programming..

The pay is decent though, right?

Regarding the pay, the upper limit for financial SW, as far as I could browse last time, is around 100k-160k GBP per year (though, probably only few reach taht high). Whereas, as a game programmer, youd be happy to earn 40k as a senior programmer. So, thats a factor of 4:1

If you dont mind living whole life in a cheap shi*hole and working extremely hard just to make your ends meet and explain your children why you cant afford going to same vacations as their friends (not even talking about the living standard, in general), spending lots of weekends at work, by all means, go for the game programming as your carreer ;-)

If your wife works as a senior manager with high pay, it might be survivable, though. At least, until her patience doesnt wear off...

Toohrvyk - Id love to work on financial SW with the prospects of earning up to 100k-160k down the road :-) With so much money you could afford taking 3 months of vacation after the project ends and travel the world or spend the time with kids. Which is something you can`t afford as a game programmer...

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Original post by joe1024 Regarding the pay, the upper limit for financial SW, as far as I could browse last time, is around 100k-160k GBP per year (though, probably only few reach taht high). Whereas, as a game programmer, youd be happy to earn 40k as a senior programmer. So, thats a factor of 4:1

Personally I've never seen it quite that severe of a difference, but there certainly is a large difference between a regular programming job and a game programming job. Really though, don't expect for Pandemic or Blizzard to offer you a comparable package as a company like Yahoo or Microsoft. If you're going to work in games, it's because you like working on games, which weighs more heavily in how you decide where to work than the money or benefits. Never mind that some game companies have made a name for themselves for poor treatment of their employees. All this with game programming being arguably among the more difficult types of programming due to the variety of skills and constraints that are involved.

Funny thing really, since this really is the exact reason that a bunch of entirely capable game programmers intentionally avoid the game industry. Okay, so it's not very funny at all... more tragic.

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Original post by joe1024 Whereas, as a game programmer, youd be happy to earn 40k as a senior programmer. So, thats a factor of 4:1

Depends on where you work. That's true if you're working for a company that makes licensed ports to handheld devices, or working for an upstart casual games company. But if you're working in the mainstream game industry, senior programmers make a good deal more than 40k. As a junior programmer at my last job, my starting salary was more than 40k.

Working in games can certainly make enough money to live comfortably on, you just have to be confident enough in your own abilities that you don't take the first low-salary job that's offered to you.

That being said, game developers also don't get rich. You want to live the high life, write business software.

Wow! I wish I knew that before I got into this.. Now I like game programming a little too much..

Maybe I can do game programming for some years after college and then move to business software?

Is it possible to do that?

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Original post by JBourrie Quote: Original post by joe1024 Whereas, as a game programmer, youd be happy to earn 40k as a senior programmer. So, thats a factor of 4:1 But if you're working in the mainstream game industry, senior programmers make a good deal more than 40k. As a junior programmer at my last job, my starting salary was more than 40k.

Yes but he was talking £ sterling. £40k is more like $80k.

oooooooooh! That sounds a lot better..

So I can always go into the gaming industry for sometime, then join the spftware industry..

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Original post by Kiwi Klooops oooooooooh! That sounds a lot better.. So I can always go into the gaming industry for sometime, then join the spftware industry..

I'm not saying you would get paid $80k, just that is the US equivalent of what you would be paid in the UK. Cost of living is more over here than in the US.

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Original post by Drigovas Quote: Original post by Kiwi Klooops 1. Does game programming pay more than (or atleast equal to) the other fields of CS - a. when we start out? b. and what about later on as we get more experience? If you are a programmer, and you are interested in maximizing your earnings, you would do well to stay the hell away from game development.

True. But if you're a programmer who above all wants to make games and only secondarily wants to maximize their earnings, then it's a legitimate question.

My thoughts on game development in a nutshell, based on what others have said in this thread and what I've said on other occasions (as always with me, personal opinion and anecdote alert):

As a CS student you're more likely to learn theoretical concepts which would be better served in a more traditional, business computing field; you might be missing out on a lot of stuff relevant to games development and I hope you're planning on building some demos sooner rather than later.

Game development: Don't expect to get paid your own weight in gold unless you're Carmack or better, the games industry is a highly competitive industry and all too often some studios drop off the map or get assimilated by other big studios; hell, it even happens to the bigger studios too (EA swallowing up just about everyone and everything). Be prepared to spend long, stressful hours on fairly unexciting pay for two years working on something which will really have to be something truly epic to stick out from the competition, release it to a saturated market of overhyped, copycat garbage and watch it get pirated like billio and blammed by idiots on forums that know nothing at all about game development who all triumphantly claim "Game x sucks omg", "Studio y can't make games!" etc. etc. etc.; said game will be old news in a few months' time anyway when something else completely identical comes out. Personally, I think life's too short for crap like that. I'd rather play games than waste my life developing them and watch them get blammed by misinformed dickheads, but at the end of the day it's those dickheads who'll be buying your games (or will they be "buying"? Probably not if it's on the PC, TBH) and thus paying any paltry salary you do receive. What goes around comes around.

Business development: You're likely to see 9-5 working hours working with a wide range of technologies, forget your DirectX and 3D hogwash because you very likely won't need it; put on your thinking cap for .Net, ASP.Net, XML, PHP, SQL and other enterprisey endeavours. You'll likely see reduced stress levels due to the financial software market not being cut-throat competitive and being far more specialised, as well as increased pay... why? Because, as ToorVyk alluded to, people are less likely to want to do it because it's not as glamourous or exciting as games, but your software is likely to have a much longer lifespan and support from you and it's likely very exclusive or built for your own business (used internally) so you won't watch cretins sticking it all on XYZTorrents.net and ripping you off, that is unless you're at a big company selling non-games software to the public, like MS or Adobe. If you're really good and reach the top then you can make millions, as many at Microsoft have done for example; if you're not quite so good you can easily make a six figure salary or a high level five figure one.

IMO you'll make more money designing, building and maintaining a stock transaction system for ABC Bank than you would when working on Call of Duty 8, which is a copy-and-paste-but-beaten-about-ever-so-slightly from CoD6 because you didn't work on CoD7 as your publisher screwed you over and gave the rights to someone else (Infinity Ward vs Treyarch).

I personally don't like game development enjoyable or rewarding and woould never want to do it for my whole life as a career (although I'd like to try it out for a small part just so I can say I tried it, I might regret it later), but each to their own. I wish you all the best of luck if you choose to try and enter the industry but it's not going to be a smooth or short road if you want to make a good impression; like I said, it's a highly competitive industry which can go boom depending on circumstances.

I would brush up your C/C++ skills, to be brutally honest it's the best use of your time if you want to become a programmer as it'll cover your back regardless of what type of software development you want to go into. I'd just do the game development stuff as a hobby and that means you'll have demos etc. to show prospective employers if you decide to make the big jump.

Game Developer Programmer's salary survey:

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Original post by yaustar Game Developer Programmer's salary survey:

Those, I guess, are fairly average salaries for the UK but still not exactly epic. I guess that currencies being relative and living costs have to be taken into account, $80k would go further in the US than $50k in the UK. However, it's clearly the same as everything else; salary increases with length of commitment and experience.

Bus drivers in Edinburgh can earn up to US$50k p/a, FFS.