Want to make games? Drop out now!

[alexxkay]

Game Developer Magazine's latest issue features the results of their annual salary survey. Although there are caveats involved with any set of self-reported data, I think at least the relationships between different subsets of data are likely to be accurate. And I noticed something that surprised me in the table "Average Salary by Education and Discipline".

In all disciplines, those who completed "Some College" make significantly *more* than those who completed a Bachelor's Degree. Those who went on to "Some Graduate" made even *less* than those with Bachelor's.

Actually *completing* a Master's Degree gets you a salary roughly comparable to "Some College", though in some disciplines it's a bit less, in some a bit more. In none is it *enough* more to suggest being worth the investment.

At the Doctoral level, only Programmers reported anything. "Some Doctoral" makes more money than "Some College" -- but an actual Doctorate makes *less*.

So, if you're a college student who wants a successful career in the games industry, apparently the best thing you can do is drop out!

Comments

[herooftheage.livejournal.com]

The experience part is directly relevant to the question of dropping out. Since raises are generally based on one's current salary (which is why it's almost always right to negotiate the largest starting salary possible, even at the expense of other perks), unless finishing a degree gets you enough more initial money than dropping out earlier would, or enough specialized knowledge you can't pick up elsewhere for advancement, dropping out is going to end up with more experience than finishing college, since the drop out is spending those college years working.

For the graduate and post-graduate cases, this is already a pretty well-known phenomenon. The increased salary lifetime often doesn't cover the opportunity costs, lost time working, and expense of getting the advanced degree. It may be necessary in some fields to advance at all (doctors, lawyers, etc.), and sometimes, like with an MBA, it's used as an artificial step for advancement, but for lots of fields, they're basically not cost-effective.

[dariusk.livejournal.com]

But even controlling for that, in the game industry in the early days it was UNHEARD OF to have a college degree and in some cases could be a hinderance. It's more to do with the history of the game business than it is has to do with the more general realities of American business practices.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

"and in some cases could be a hinderance"

Why was it a hindrance? And have those reasons gone away? Or, if the reasons were irrational prejudices, have the people who held them gone away?

Seems to me that the industry still has lots of institutional stupidity left over from the early days.

[dariusk.livejournal.com]

I was not around in those days, but from speaking to folks who were, it was mostly the garage developer rock star attitude. People looking at a potential employee would literally say, "This guy must be pretty dumb to have wasted his time on a college degree." Like, LITERALLY THOSE WORDS. Those prejudices lasted all the way to about 2003 I'd say.

There are still people who look down on those with degrees, but they are rare and they mostly have learned to swallow their own prejudices.

[greatsword.livejournal.com]

This might also be industry specific.

The fact that I'm a college dropout has never been held against me in the games industry; it was in my pre-games programming jobs. It's not a matter of relative talent, either - in games I've been working with people as good or better than I; prior to that I was comfortably the best programmer around. (He said modestly.)

I came into games with a higher than normal starting salary based on my pre-games industry salary - and it was still a thirty percent pay cut. It wasn't timing for me - I spent two years after dropping out working a bad job, then nine years outside of the industry working as a programmer.

I suspect the industry has an easier time keeping talented people without a degree because of the industry culture; those with a degree have an easier time leaving it for more money. I'd like to see a correlation with years in the industry, and with the number of platform generations the person has worked through. I suspect that has more to do with salary than education.